International Boarding Students

Boarders come from Asia, the Pacific Islands and a range of other overseas locations, as well as from both urban and rural New Zealand.
Our aim is to develop a system to ensure that international students thrive in our boarding school community.
Both inside and outside the classroom we consider it to be of prime importance to raise the awareness of the academic, cultural and linguistic problems faced by our overseas students.
Our induction programme for international boarders, runs at the beginning of the year before school starts, and has five main aims:

To offer students the opportunity to begin relationship building with others in a similar situation.
To develop an understanding of the boarding environment and procedures.
To enable staff and students to get to know one another through participation in both structured and informal situations.
To gain knowledge of the background (cultural, family, academic) of the international students in our care.
To orientate the international students into the New Zealand culture.

This also helps our new international boarders deal with issues such as climate, dress, food, homesickness, language, study methods and religion.
We believe that at St Cuthbert’s College our international students have much to offer by enriching our culture and our boarding school life.

From Russia With Love

Polina and Elizaveta Zaytseva have been international boarders at St Cuthbert’s College for three years, leaving their parents and 5-year-old sister at home in Russia.
Homesickness was an issue at first, but not for long “We got to know the boarders really quickly, everyone was so nice and welcoming,” says Y11 Elizaveta.
The girls make the 20 hour trip home twice a year to spend time with their family.
School in New Zealand is so different for them both with such a wide range of subjects offered at the College, especially Spanish, as languages were not taught in their previous school. Class structure and teacher involvement is also better in New Zealand, says Polina. “In Russia we are in the same class from the start until the end of secondary school. Here, classes are smaller and we get individual timetables. Teachers get to know our individual strengths and weaknesses.”
A Y13 student, Polina has played tennis, soccer and had a go at dragon boating.
She is also a librarian. She plans to stay in New Zealand and attend Auckland University next year, Elizaveta will continue on into Y12 and Y13 at the College.
The College currently has international boarders from Korea, Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, Rwanda, Fiji and Russia.

College Ties August 2009