German exchange student says she’s ‘mesmerized’ by U.S. education

Having an unforgettable cultural exchange was a paramount goal for German foreign exchange student, Emma    Heckmann when she arrived in Aurora from Hanover, Germany last summer. Now, as she approaches the end of her adventure the Aurora High School senior says she has achieved that goal. 
“It’s kind of between Berlin and Hamburg in the middle line of it,”  Heckmann explained, speaking of her home town. “It’s the capital of Lower Saxony and the population is around 600,000 people, so the jump to Aurora was really big surprise, which kind of scared me at first, but now I really like it.”
“When you come from a big city, there’s public transportation everywhere, you have everything close by and everything multiple times,” she explained, adding that the slower pace and smaller population of Hamilton County was jarring at first. Heckmann said she is grateful for her Aurora host family, Douglas and Hillary Betka and their three children, who she says have welcomed her with open arms. 
“Their baby is like 16 or 17 months now,” she said. “His birthday is one day before mine, Nov. 8, which I love that. Then I have an 8-year-old host brother, Kiptyn and then (my host sister) Hazel, she just turned 12-years-old.”
“I think one of the biggest expectations (about becoming an exchange student) is that’s like the year of your life that you have an incredible time and then you get a second home, a second family and friends for life and I can say that I definitely have that,”    Heckmann stated.  
After sometimes difficult adjustment in her early days here last summer, Heckmannn says her outlook brightened when she started the school year at AHS.  
“For kids in Germany, you go to school just to learn and study,” she explained. “There’s no pep rallies, there’s no sports, just P.E. class and that’s it. There are no cheerleaders, no school song, there’s not that fun you have in American high schools.”
Coming to Aurora also gave    Heckmann the opportunity to participate in the fine arts. She sings in the school’s choir, helped with one acts and recently helped with makeup for the spring play production.
“I’m happy that I did crew,” the senior commented. “Makeup was just fun and it was incredible to play with people’s faces and doing their hair, especially because stage makeup is kind of like clown makeup.”
Heckmann says she is also amazed by the teachers and staff at Aurora.

Compassionate teachers
“When I came here, I was so mesmerized by the teachers,”    Heckmann said. “They actually care about you. They ask you if you’re okay when you’re not looking good in school or if you missed a lot. They’re like, ‘Okay, we can work on a plan to make up your missed work.”
After missing school for several days in March because of illness,  Heckmann said she was moved by the attention of her teachers wanting to help her get caught up.  
“I was sick last week and they were like, ‘Yeah, we can work out a plan,’” Heckmann said. “They just tell me that when I’m ready and that just means so much because, especially as a senior, you have a lot of extracurriculars and then having teachers helping and supporting you means so much. Having the whole school support you, I think that’s just one of the things that makes my year here feel so good.”
Heckmann was also excited to see the variety of classes offered at Aurora, particularly the science classes such as medical terminology.
“I wanted to take that because my dad’s a surgeon in Germany and I’ve always been interested in medicine,”    Heckmann shared. “Then when  got to know that we have an anatomy and physiology class and medical terminology, it just made me so happy that I took both.”
Heckmann said the contrast between her educational experience here versus her 11 years in Germany is stark.
“I think the American school system is far, far more developed than the German school system,” she commented. “It always depends on how you look at it, but here you can prep so much for your coming career. Like if you want to go into the medical field, you can take a lot of bio classes, or in general, scientific classes.”
As she anticipates her graduation in a few weeks,  Heckmann is seizing every opportunity to learn as much as she can about the medical field here. When she graduates from high school in Germany in a year or two, she said she wants to pursue a healthcare career.
“Like my dad, I want to be a surgeon,” Heckmann stated. 
She said when her year is up it will be hard to leave.
“I’m very sad to leave my friends and family here,” she commented. “I know I’m going to see my friends again, but if I come back here in two or three years, most of my friends are going to be off in college. So if I want see them, we’ll have to make a schedule or like at least get like a time schedule of each other when we have time to meet.”
While she cherishes each day as she counts down toward her return to Germany, she says she knows it will not be the last goodbye and is excited to continue school back home with a fresh insight.
“I’m happy to still have two more months with all my friends and my family here,”    Heckmann said. “Even though it kind of makes me sad, it’s also good, because then this experience, once it’s over, I can start new in Germany,”    Heckmann said.
Heckmann said she was inspired to become an exchange student by her sister, who spent a year at a high school in Moose Lake, Minn., several years ago.
“I looked up to my sister during her exchange year, because I was just mesmerized by it,” she said. “She always wanted to travel and I really loved traveling. I just thought an exchange year is a perfect opportunity to get to know a different place and see how Americans live, too.”