VHS welcomes Costa Rica exchange students
Published 1:30 am Friday, March 13, 2026
In January, Vashon Island High School got a pretty special mid-winter boost. We hosted visiting students and educators from our sister school, Colegio Bilingüe in Guápiles, Costa Rica, and for a couple of weeks our campus felt a little more global.
Our guests came as a group of 12 students, along with a teacher and their principal, and they jumped right into Vashon life.
They attended classes with their hosts, met teachers, navigated our school routines, and became familiar faces in the halls. Outside of school, they got to experience our region. They visited museums, went to Dick’s burgers and even had a snow day.
But honestly, the best parts weren’t the big tourist moments. The best parts were the everyday ones: cooking for one another, figuring out schedules together, talking through a mix of Spanish and English and watching friendships form.
Hosting is real work. Opening your home to someone you’ve never met takes courage and openness.
It takes a willingness to include, even when it would be easier to stick with what’s comfortable. Our host families and host students showed up in a big way, and it made all the difference.
It is important to point out the time and hard work it took to make this exchange happen.
This didn’t come together by magic. Our Spanish teacher Sarah Powell put in months of planning and coordination to get all the moving parts lined up, host families supported, schedules arranged, and details handled.
It was a huge lift, and it’s also a pretty perfect example of what so many people in public education do every day.
Teachers go well beyond their job descriptions because they care about kids and believe experiences like this matter.
Now we’re getting ready for the second half of the exchange, when a group of Vashon students and teachers will travel to Guápiles.
This year, our group going to Costa Rica is small. We had hoped for a bigger turnout, but fewer students signed up than we expected. We’re still excited about the group we have, and we also see this as a starting point.
Our hope is that as more families hear about the experience and see what it can be for students, interest will grow in the coming years.
There’s something powerful about being welcomed into someone else’s school and home. You learn a lot about another place, of course, but you also learn a lot about yourself. You practice being brave. You practice being a good guest. You get better at noticing what you usually take for granted. And you come home with a bigger sense of what’s possible.
This exchange also says something about who we are as an island. We’re a community that shows up. We make room at the table. We do the extra work to make people feel welcome. And we raise kids who are willing to be adventurous, try something new, and represent Vashon well wherever they go.
Sabrina Kovacs is the Assistant Principal of McMurray Middle School.
