Aussies are local students 2 weeks

Elia Powers

They are bona fide celebrities on campus, with their bright-red

blazers, fresh faces and noticeable accents.

Students at Estancia High School yell for them in the hallways.

Teachers ask them to give speeches during class. Even City Council

members have requested their presence at a meeting.

For the next two weeks, 16-year-olds Rhiannon Gudde and Joel

Anderson are American high school students. For the rest of the year,

they attend Werribee Secondary College, a seventh- through 12th-grade

institution in Wyndham, Newport-Mesa’s sister city, near Melbourne,

Australia.

Teachers from Werribee and other regional schools have visited

Newport-Mesa each winter for the last seven years. But Gudde and

Anderson are the first two students invited as part of the exchange.

“They are the guinea pigs,” joked Sarah Serong, one of two

Australian teachers accompanying the students. “They are going to

report back to their classmates about the culture, the school, the

whole experience.”

The program is intended to give all parties involved a glimpse

into another country’s educational system. Visitors take trips to a

handful of Newport-Mesa classrooms, and attend seminars and

classes.Airfare for the trip is paid for by sponsors, but the rest of

the program is kept afloat by volunteers such as Dave Brees, a

retired school teacher who spent 33 years at Estancia High.

Brees, one of the program’s main coordinators, said students

immediately embraced the idea of a student exchange, immediately

matching Australian students with host families. Serong and fellow

teacher Janine Sutton arrived in the United States on Christmas Day,

and the two students flew in on Tuesday. All four will leave on Jan.

25.

Brees said Estancia High is narrowing the list of candidates for

this summer’s inaugural student-involved trip to Wyndham.

After four days, Gudde and Anderson have been guests of honor at

potlucks, attendees at a school board meeting and, this weekend,

first-time visitors at Disneyland.

Thus far, Serong and Sutton are pleased with their students’

involvement.

“I have never seen them so excited about school,” Sutton said.

“They are becoming great leaders, whether they know it or not.”