Our partners – Sète Expo Sciences

Our partners, Sète Expo Sciences were formed over a decade ago by Franck and Regince Granier and had installed Paul Borrel as their president. This enabled the Pleasantville students to travel to Sète and participate in a large Science expo which displayed their projects. This expo ran some three days during which the excitement of the younger participants was palpable and helped elevate the happiness in the large hall. The Pleasantville Students comprised some 3 of over 50 projects that were displayed at the expo where they presented their work in French. Impressively, the Mayor of Sète came to talk with each of the 50+ groups about their projects including our own Pleasantville students. Sète Expo Sciences https://www.setexposciences.fr created the exposition which our students attended and reported on the corresponding visit of the students from France on their web site. During their visit to Pleasantville, Deb Hurdis and Christine Pallotta, the PHS French and Science teachers organized much of their visit including an open air bus to NYC, a visit to the famed IBM TJ Watson Research Lab in Yorktown Heights and West Point, to name just a few locations. A corresponding, but smaller exhibition of the work from Sète together with presentations from our students completed the visit. The Sète contingent’s visit to Pleasantville and the original PHS trip to Joliot-Curie school in Sète provided unique insights for both groups. The Sète team participate in a School which draws on some 100,000 students from a large cachement area covering an equally large economic spectrum. The Sète contingent soon learned all about Pleasantville’s compartatively much smaller geography and despite the fact that Pleasantville’s population draws on a much smaller region, the resources at PHS astounded our visitors. This pointed to the large difference in educational structure, the resources assigned to the two schools and the comparative wealth of the two regions, where the median household income is some 400% higher in Pleasantville than in Sète Of course these are rough approximations, but they do help explain the surprise our visitors expressed when they visited us. These two trips have cemented a relationship which we hope will continue when the very same students who exchanged visits have their own families who will repeat their experience !