Relocations happen.
It’s the thing we dread talking about, but probably one of the most common questions we get from new hosts: What if it doesn’t work out?
Most of the time, it does work out. CHN's relocation rate—the proportion of students who need to be moved to a new host family—has remained at around 11 to 15 percent for decades. Put another way, 85-89 percent of first-time matches are successful.
I was surprised to learn that some programs in the US don’t do relocations (students are sent home if problems are bad enough to warrant a new host family), but this is not a goal we strive toward. Partly because not all relocations are triggered by problems, and partly because when they are, a relocation can be like a positive reset button for everyone involved. Relocations can turn a difficult experience into a great one. Over and over again, we see students with problem behaviours in one home flourish in another.
This isn’t to say relocations are easy. For many families, they’re the hardest part of hosting. It can help to remember that asking a student to leave doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be judged as a host, or removed from our program, or offered fewer opportunities in the future. We all know that a relocation doesn’t mean there was a bad host or a bad student. It could have been just a bad match.
As I explain in my book, I also encourage families to look at relocations like a scientist looks at experiments that don’t go as planned: as “intelligent failures.” An intelligent failure, according to author and professor Amy Edmondson, is the “good” kind of failure. It’s the kind that leads to advancements in science, and is always the result of careful experimentation in pursuit of an opportunity or goal. Here’s an excerpt from my book about this:
“Seeing relocations as “intelligent failures” allows us to reframe them as both inevitable and helpful. To the extent that homestay is an experiment with an uncertain outcome, relocations are bound to happen. Not to everyone, but as a whole—which is why CHN’s relocation rate will never be zero. Relocations can be helpful in that failure and learning go hand in hand. Edmondson explains: “In new territory, the only way to make progress is through trial and failure… [Intelligent failures] are disappointing, but never cause for embarrassment or shame.” You aren’t creating new vaccines in homestay, but you can gain other kinds of knowledge, if you’re willing to learn. That learning is another way you create the conditions for optimal relationships… with future students. It’s up to you to decide how you want to look at them.”
How do you feel about relocations, whether or not you’ve experienced them? If you have, what did you learn from the experience that you can apply to the next placement?
