This October, YTC celebrates twenty visits from our friends and partners in Mexico. Students who have learned together through a screen will finally meet in person.
News from Youth Technology Corps · Upcoming Visit
About seventy students and teachers are expected to arrive October 11 from Durango and other parts of Mexico. They will spend a week with students at Morton East and Evanston Township High School.
Since 2018, YTC students in Cicero and Evanston have taught robotics in Spanish over video calls. A student here explains a circuit; a student in Durango builds it. This October, some of those students will work together in the same room.
The week opens on Indigenous Peoples’ Day at Morton East with robotics demonstrations, a networking challenge, and dancers from Cicero and Durango sharing a floor. Community leaders and host families will welcome the visitors.
Many of the families opening their homes came from the places these students are arriving from. An earlier host-family survey captured that connection: one of the requests was simply to extend the stay.
This is the twentieth hosting visit over twenty-six years, not twenty consecutive years. The students arriving bring their own traditions, ambitions, and things to teach. Their hosts will become collaborators across a circuit board as well as a screen.
An earlier Durango–Chicago exchange at Cloud Gate appears above.
Read the YTC corporate news story →2004 · An Early Hosting Visit
The 2004 exchange week brought forty Durango students and teachers to Chicago. Morton East students and staff hosted their guests in their own homes. Durango students shadowed Morton students through the school day. There were museum visits, a trip to Northwestern, a White Sox game — and a farewell dinner where both groups performed.
The years after added their own rituals: a Peace Fire ceremony at Northeastern Illinois, a Chicago Wolves game, a folkloric dance collaboration where Morton East's own dancers performed alongside Durango's. This was never a field trip. It was family visiting family.
In Their Own Words
From the 2024 exchange survey — answered in Spanish, by the Cicero and Chicago families who opened their doors.
"Extender los días de hospedaje."
Asked what could be improved, one family's only suggestion: make the stay longer.
"Nunca hubo mala comunicación — todo lo contrario. Excelente."
"There was never a communication problem — quite the opposite. Excellent."
One host mother wrote that the students she welcomed came from the very town where she grew up — her own nephew among them, following a road her family knows by heart. In Cicero, the Durango exchange isn't international. It's personal.
2016 · Bridge to Cicero
EL SIGLO DE DURANGO
The paper described a 14-year exchange and identified the first COBAED student-and-teacher trip to Chicago in 2003. In 2016, 33 students from eight Durango campuses traveled north; Morton East hosted them, and technology competition joined culture, classes, and community visits.
Read the 2016 articleThe Exchange, Still Moving
NOTIGRAM · JUNE 2025
Local reporting documented 38 students and six teachers participating from Santiago Papasquiaro, Santa María del Oro, Tepehuanes, Nuevo Ideal, Canatlán, and Coneto de Comonfort.
Read the original story →RECORRIENDO · OCTOBER 2025
The story names the CBTA 173 students and teachers who traveled, the families and institutions preparing to receive them, and the Chicago schools they would visit—including Morton East and ETHS.
Read the original story →October 2026
This fall’s visit continues twenty-six years of connection. A new generation of students at Morton East and ETHS will welcome their peers for classroom projects, homestays, and time together across Chicagoland.