AFS-USA will support teams by offering two National Virtual Arrival Orientations to students who are not able to attend an in-person or virtual local orientation event. As always AFS recognizes the preferable benefits of local in-person, or virtual orientation events and we encourage you to hold those for September arrival students wherever possible.
Led by staff and volunteers, content for the national AO will be the same as the local AO and focus on setting realistic expectations; rules & safety; seeking help; and intercultural learning concepts covered in the Student Learning Journey.
One of the core elements of an Arrival Orientation is the inclusion of local information, rules and guidelines that a student should know about. As these are national events, we will not be able to include local information, and we ask that local volunteers work to ensure relevant local information is delivered to each student in the first couple of weeks after their arrival. Your Team may want to hold a Zoom call for this purpose and/or ask your liaisons to share this information with the students during their first, in-person monthly contact. Please refer to this document for some suggestions on local information to be shared with students.
If a student is not able to attend your local AO as scheduled, or your team is not able to offer a virtual or local AO for late arrivals, please share the below registrations links with the student/s as soon as they arrive and let them know they must attend a national virtual AO. To verify whether a student from your area has registered for one of the below national, virtual AO’s, please contact Martha at mfriend@afsusa.org.
Saturday Sept 11. 3:00pm EST
Saturday Sept 18 3:00pm EST
Please refer to the Arrival Orientation page on Help & Learning to access additional information about Arrival Orientation Materials.