Culture and Social Immersion
In today's interconnectedness, York Academy embarks on a journey to develop culturally-fluent students as respected individuals with the personal impact and skills to interact, connect and understanding other cultures than theirs. The aim of York Academy Cultural and Social Immersion program to students is to:
- Instill cultural and social fluency in our students, i.e. not only knowing, but doing the right things at the right time.
- Entrench greater understanding and appreciation of inclusion, integrations, acceptance, global perceptive of world diplomacy, democracy, and challenges.
- Instigate the necessary value to develop an understanding and respect of cultural differences in order to successfully communicate and collaborate across cultural boundaries.
- Open up to cultural barriers in order to allow more flexible and appreciation of other ways of doing and looking at cultural differences.
- Have the advantages of seeing the world from different vantage points.
- Come to terms with how they understand and view the world and other cultures, and have more appreciation of their own. In the end, come to terms with themselves as future leaders.
- Circumvent neglecting cultural diversity and cultural variables despite their crucial importance in today's multiculturalism.
- Circumvent avoidable cultural conflicts which often are met tragically with ineffectual efforts to forestall specific outcomes.
- Alleviate symptoms associated with "culture stress" or "culture shock", including depression, low self-esteem, and ineffective work, which unfortunately are often denied or attributed to different causes, by exposure York Academy students to adequate cultural experiences and role play.
At York Academy, students are exposed to exciting and in-depth cultural and social immersion experiences that allow them to benefit from the diversity of others' cultural backgrounds. They learn to become more aware of cultural differences through education, training, experience, community excursion, travel, and work. In the process they will gain a deeper understanding of a very different culture and of themselves by living as a member of a local community, participating in experiential learning activities, and actively engaging the local culture. York Academy ensures that all cultural and social immersion activities are combined in the optimal way and that students make the most of the resulting synergies.