PHILIPSBURG:--- On Saturday, March 14, 2026, host families along with the Internationalization Team of the Milton Peters College, the Education Director and the Head of the Havo/VWO department bid safe travels to their German partners, who were returning back home, and two teachers of the Milton Peters College, who will be visiting (job shadowing) the Githo Nijlen (technical) School in Belgium for a week.
The airport departure hall was filled with smiling faces as the group of ten students and three teachers from the Anne-Frank-Realschule in Ahaus, Germany, departed from Princess Juliana International Airport after spending a week on our beautiful island. The group arrived on Sunday, March 8, 2026, to reconnect with their student and teacher partners, who are part of the Erasmus+ student exchange program at Milton Peters College. Their visit marks the completion of the 2025-2026 school year exchange between Germany and St. Maarten, which started in 2022-2023 and has become an annual project for the school, thanks to local funding (Trepar Management NV, Steflogix, Tri Sport, Pharmacy Outlets Orange Grove, Caribbean Concrete, Sol Antilles, Sunline Technical maintenance, Bureau Telecom & Post, SXM Lions Club, Notary Boekhoudt, Pineapple Pete, Soggy Dollar, PJAE Airport) and the Erasmus+ funding.
The students enjoyed a week with their host families. A program was put in place by the Milton Peters Internationalization Team that included classroom visits by the German teachers (job shadowing), while students followed their hosts' classes. Both groups also embarked on a
tour around the island; they visited four of our 37 beaches, and they participated in various excursions, such as a scavenger hunt in Philipsburg, a visit to Parotteville, the Amsterdam and St. Louis Forts, and Perpetual Plastics. This allowed them to explore the island's history and the current state of recycling. These activities aligned with those that the group of St. Maarten students and teachers participated in during their visit to Ahaus in December 2025, when they also stayed with host families, learned about the city’s history, and visited their waste management center.
A heartfelt thank you goes out to the host families and the sponsors on the island, who helped in making this trip a reality. The driving force behind the internationalization ambitions of MPC and Sundial School is the Erasmus+ Accreditation. Both schools can look forward to many other exchange activities in 2026, such as online correspondence and teaching, as well as mobility on the student and teacher levels. Meaningful trips to high schools abroad and innovative teacher trainings are part of the broader internationalization planning.
