Orientation Update: accessing materials, re-enty orientation, culture grams
From AFSWiki
Accessing Orientation Materials
Did you know that you can access all of the current orientation leader's guides and handbooks via the wiki? While hard copies are still sent by staff from the regional service centers, registered wiki users can access orientation materials either via the wiki article entitled Orientation, then by clicking on the appropriate orientation where related documents are housed under the "Resources" section. There is also a "Best Practices" section for each orientation where you may view the best practices of other volunteers and add your own! Orientation handbooks and leader's guides may also be accessed by clicking on the document titles found in the wiki article entitled Table of Orientation Publications.
Best Practice:
Send your orientation group leaders links to orientation materials well in advance of the orientation so that they may familiarize themselves with the information before hard copies arrive.
Re-entry Orientation
While Re-entry Orientation for U.S. participants is not a required orientation, it can be very beneficial to returnees and serve as a way to engage these youth in your Chapter or Team. The Re-Entry Orientation Leader's Guide is available to order through your regional service center or via the wiki.
Best Practice:
If you don't have enough returnees and/or resources to run a Re-entry orientation in your area, invite semester summer departure and year winter departure returnees to your Mid-stay orientation. Conduct a few of the activities from the Re-Entry Orientation Leader's Guide with returnees only and have them join the general sessions in which discussing their own experiences would be helpful to hosted participants. It is advisable to use recent returnees as group leaders only if they are paired with a more experienced volunteer at all times.
Culture Grams - New Features
As you may know, Private:Culture Grams is a country-specific, password protected, on-line resource available to AFS Staff, Volunteers, host families, outbound U.S. participants and their families. Through the on-line site users may access individual sections devoted to each country containing videos, MP3 files, recipes, etc. as well as email a country report to one of the above users. In this case you will need to include the user name: afsusa and password: cgrams in the body of the email. There is also a collection of teaching activities for K-12 educators.
Best Practice:
Send an email to your host families containing a link to the Kids Version and World Version of the USA and the country or their student, including the user information given above. In the email encourage them to review the information together and ask each family member to note and be prepared to share during the in-person orientation: one thing that surprised them about the other culture, one similarity with and at least one difference between the U.S. and the other culture and how that difference might impact their and/or the participant's AFS experience. Follow up by discussing their responses in small region- or country-specific groups during your in-person host family orientation or by asking people to volunteer this information at points throughout the orientation. (Tip- If you do not have enough people to do the split by region or country, you can count off by 5. You could also separate host siblings and host parents during this activity.) A similar activity can be done with outbound participants and their parents.
