Three exceptional FFT Fellows made time amidst grading tests and hosting classroom parties to share with us their year in review.

• Sydney Chaffee spent 2017 on sabbatical from Boston’s Codman Academy Charter Public School to represent the Council of Chief State School Officers as the National Teacher of the Year. In 2011, she used her Fund for Teachers grant to witness post apartheid-era restorative justice efforts in South Africa to inform her school’s Fairness Committee and justice-centered curriculum. Watch her interviews on ABC News and CBS This Morning.
• This year, the state of Oklahoma recognized Donna Gradel as its Teacher of the Year. Donna teaches high school environmental science in Broken Arrow, OK, and is a two-time FFT Fellow. Watch her talk about her students’ work that garnered the attention of MIT and took them to Kenya to build an aquaponics system for an orphanage.
• Ashli Dreher, a 2016 FFT Fellow, was one of five inductees into the National Teachers Hall of Fame this year. With her grant, Ashli attended the International Conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs in Linz, Austria, to investigate assistive technology solutions implemented with differently-abled students in school, community and transitional work experiences, to learn strategies for integrating these devices locally.

 

Goals Accomplished

Sydney: One goal I accomplished this year was being brave enough to take a stand by speaking and writing publicly on issues that matter to me–like the role of social justice in education or  the importance of white teachers talking about race–even when I knew some people would strongly disagree with me.

 

Donna: One of my goals for the year came to fruition in the form of a new class I was able to design and teach at our high school. The name of the class is Innovative Research. Student groups research an area of interest and try to help solve a local, national or international problem.  Some of the projects include mentoring and buddy reading programs utilizing high school bilingual students paired with elementary English Language Learners to increase proficiency scores, designing a motor room for autistic students to increase student engagement, sustainable chicken farming and feed for developing countries, bio-decomposition of Styrofoam, and sustainable non-conventional energy sources.

 

Ashli: What a busy year! I completed the work in a second certificate area of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards in the Exceptional Needs Specialist area, and I also successfully defended my dissertation proposal. Inside the Classroom, a television show I produce and host weekly, was selected for national Hometown Media Awards in 2017 for excellence in public broadcasting and has expanded to an audience of 12.5 million on local cable. Episodes focus on individual teachers, their teaching careers, and the creative ways in which they engage their students in the classroom.

2018 Goals

Sydney: Next year, I hope to increase my students’ engagement with people beyond our school, both within the local community and globally.

 

Sydney (right) was the keynote speaker at the University of Central Oklahoma’s annual Honoring a Noble Profession event, where Donna Gradel caught up with her for a photo.

Donna: A personal goal I have accomplished was to give more of my time to volunteer to help those with special needs. In the classroom, I hope my students will be engaged in successful learning and the research projects they have undertaken. We have also begun a collaboration between the city of Broken Arrow and our school district to help test, monitor and improve water quality in all the Broken Arrow streams and ponds throughout our city and parks. I hope to see my students working with city engineers, architects and storm water specialists to help improve our local environment.

 

Ashli: Next year I want to continue to develop innovative, student-centered thematic units that expand the world view of our students. As a FFT fellow, I had the opportunity to visit the Manor School in London, and I am working on preparing grants to implement the flexible seating arrangements we experienced while visiting their classrooms. After observing students with autism using flexible seating at the Manor School, I think my students with special needs would benefit from having flexible seating arrangements.

 

Bonus Question – What are you reading?

Sidney: I read a lot of good books this year, but one that stuck with me was Michael Eric Dyson’s Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America. Next on my list is Ayiti, by Roxane Gay.

 

Donna: For enjoyment, Dust Bowl Girls about the history of women’s basketball in Oklahoma was my favorite. In Order to Live, the journey of North Korean Yeonmi Park is on my list for next month.

Fund for Teachers wishes all of our grant recipients and those whom they impact a happy holiday and year full of learning adventures.

by, Emily Parkinson | Edison Elementary – Morton Grove, IL

For as long as I’ve wanted to be a teacher, I’ve also wanted to teach abroad, immersed in a culture different from my own. During a particularly stressful experience this past year, it occurred to me that spending my summers abroad could be a perfect way to satisfy that international craving. I want to tell you a little bit about my fellowship living, learning and teaching in Nicaragua and Costa Rica, and the biggest takeaways that I will bring to my practice here in the US.

Around November of last year when I considered applying for a Fund for Teachers grant, I started searching for summer opportunities abroad, specifically in Latin America because a large percentage of my students are Latino and Spanish-speaking. My main goal was to become fluent in Spanish so I could comfortably speak with a parent or translate an individualized education plan (IEP).  A Google search led me to a company called Common Ground International, a husband-wife team based in Colorado who lead Spanish immersion trips for teachers, medical professionals and high school students. The ‘Spanish for Educators’ program was perfect for me: living for four weeks in Nicaragua and Costa Rica – working with local education-related organizations and schools, taking intensive Spanish classes with a focus on education, and living with host families in both countries. I knew this program would push me out of my comfort zone and help me not only become more proficient in Spanish, but also become a more culturally-competent educator.

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Nicaragua

My fellowship began in the city of Granada, Nicaragua, a colonial city situated on the coast of Lake Nicaragua. Granada charmed me in every way imaginable, with its pastel colored buildings, bustling Parque Central, and breathtaking horizon filled with volcanoes and church steeples. What I loved most about Granada, however, was the people, including my hospitable host family comprised of three generations.

As for the work I did in Nicaragua, our days were split in half between educational outreach in the mornings and Spanish language classes in the afternoons. During the first week, we worked with an organization called House of Hope, a refuge and safe place for women who have escaped or are still experiencing forced prostitution. House of Hope works with some of the strongest women I will ever encounter in my life, who value their children more than anything but aren’t always comfortable parenting their children due to poor role models. Personally, the idea of being a white American going into another culture and trying to be a savior is something I have a lot of issues with. Who am I to tell these women how to parent, when I don’t even have children of my own? While that is a complicated issue, our program made a point to ask women what kind of support they needed so we could plan workshops that would actually benefit them. We ended up delivering workshops to the mothers about how to involve their children with age-appropriate chores. The women (pictured in a workshop below) were engaged, patient with our sub-par language skills and genuinely grateful for the useful information and resources.

During our second week, we worked with a local school on the outskirts of Granada that serves marginalized neighborhoods or ‘shantytowns.’ For families in these neighborhoods, money is scarce and education is often seen as a way out for their children. The students at the school are excited to learn and see a bright future for themselves. Since students were on break when we were there, we again put on workshops for parents. This time, the theme was more general: how to support your child’s education at home. My partner (Fund for Teachers Fellow Amy Holt from
Franklin H. Mayberry Elementary School in East Hartford, CT) and I focused on math development, and simple ways that parents can reinforce math concepts at home as part of their daily routines like cooking or walking to school. Again, the parents were eager to hear what we had to offer and willing to share their own input on how they talk to their children about math at home.

When not volunteering in the community, I took Spanish classes for four hours each day, focusing on education-specific usage of the language such as how to talk to parents about their child’s progress or how to address student behavior in the classroom. I even learned technical, IEP-related terminology and, by the end of the program, was able to translate an IEP! Goal accomplished!

Overall, Nicaragua left a huge impression on me. Observing people so dedicated to improving the lives of others through education was incredibly inspiring. Parents’ commitment to their children’s education, despite difficult circumstances, was unwavering. The two weeks I spent in Nicaragua went by way too fast, and before I knew it I was hopping on a bus for a nine hour journey to Costa Rica.

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Costa Rica

Costa Rica was drastically different from Nicaragua. I think the most emotionally challenging day for me was the day of transition between the two countries. The beautiful landscape I saw out the window was just as enchanting as Nicaragua, but as we entered the cities of San Jose and Heredia, I was struck by the economic differences. From the abundance of American fast food chains to the (relative) lack of stray dogs, to the style of dress,  Costa Rica was in a very different situation economically. Overall, the drastic differences in the standard of living between two nations was shocking and tough to process.

The work I did in the community in Costa Rica was different, as well. Instead of working with parents, we spent most of our time working with students, which I was so deeply missing! Getting to interact with kids again, although challenging in my second language, brought me so much joy and energy. I was living in a small city in Heredia called Santo Domingo, a town where people say “hello” on the sidewalk and everyone seems to know each other. We spent our first week putting on an educational day camp for kids in Santo Domingo who were still on break from school. My colleagues and I set up separate learning stations and I decided to teach the kids some of my favorite math games from my own classroom. Their eyes lit up when they found out that they could actually practice math through games (pictured below). I asked if they ever played games in school and they laughed and shook their heads no. One student even got excited about a multiplication chart, something she had never seen before, exclaiming, “Ay, que chiva!!” (“Oh, how cool!”) We played dice and card games, practiced our multiplication facts, listened to the Moana soundtrack in Spanish, and laughed as the kids taught me some new vocabulary. Parting with these kids on the last day proved difficult. (One first grade boy even told us, “These were the best days of my life!”) Luckily, we would be seeing some of them the following week at their school.

Students in Santo Domingo were back in school the following week (my last week in Costa Rica) and we got the opportunity to work in a local public school. I got to assist the ‘Apoyo de Aprendizaje’ teacher (learning support) in her classroom where she worked with students with learning disabilities in small groups. This teacher was absolutely amazing. Everything was made into a game (unlike what students had told me the week before!) and students were so engaged and excited to learn. Overall,  this school’s approach to Special Education seemed very effective. I observed a lot of collaboration between the special education teachers and general education teachers, and the school created an inclusive atmosphere, even though students who needed individual attention were serviced in a separate room when necessary.

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Biggest Takeaways: Why Will This Matter in My Classroom?

The most important thing for me in this whole experience was developing skills to better equip me to serve my students. Here are a few major takeaways that I believe will make me a better, more culturally-responsive educator:

1. Knowing how it feels to be an outsider: As a white person in America, my privilege protects me from the emotionally-taxing weight of being an outsider. My students, however, coming largely from minority backgrounds, feel this way every. single. day. It was important for me to have the opportunity to be a cultural outsider, feeling totally insecure in my use of the language and clueless about certain cultural norms. Learning a second language is incredibly difficult, and so many of our students in the US have to do it while we expect them to do so many other things. We expect our immigrant students to adjust seamlessly to the norms of our culture AND keep up with the same expectations as their peers. While I don’t believe in lowering expectations, it is important to be mindful of the emotional toll associated with adjusting to a new language and culture. I now know some of that myself and I will definitely be more sensitive to my students’ needs this year.
2. Learning that you can’t judge based on one snapshot: This truth something consistently challenged me, both Nicaragua and Costa Rica. I can’t count the number of times that something I had heard about education or culture in one of these countries was debunked. For example, I was told by numerous people (Nicaraguan and North American) that the standard of education is so low in Nicaragua, it’s unlikely to see high quality learning taking place. However, my Spanish teacher in Nicaragua was one of the most highly-skilled educators I‘ve met. Costa Rican adults and children told me how most of their learning is dry, repetitive and focused on rote memorization; yet, I worked alongside a Special Education teacher who made learning a game. I could go on and on about the misconceptions that I encountered, but all in all, I was reminded how important it is to take individual experiences as what they are: individual experiences, rather than a general notion about an entire culture.
3. The importance of building community: What struck, especially at the local school in Costa Rica, was the family-like support of the community. For example, at recess students ran into the hallways and onto the field for free play without recess monitors! I didn’t see any student excluded, any fights or major issues. Why is it that in my Chicago school with hired recess monitors, we had to cancel recess because of too many unsafe issues? It really got me thinking about cultural differences and our approach to community building and social emotional learning. I sensed the familial love and respect in a classroom the second I walked in, and this is something I will work hard to build in my own classroom this year

Overall, I could not have imagined a more effective and energizing experience abroad, doing what I love most – teaching! My language skills improved drastically in only a few weeks. Most importantly, I met people with whom I will always remain connected, even though we may be many countries away. I am so grateful to Fund for Teachers for allowing me to have this opportunity and I cannot wait to start this school year off better than ever before!

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Emily is a Special Education teacher in the Chicago area, educating students in a school with a high concentration of Spanish-speaking students. She is passionate about social-emotional learning and
mindfulness in the classroom. Emily is pictured at the top of this post (on the left) with Amy Holt; you can read Amy’s perspective on this same fellowship here.

In support of the recent International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer, we share the learning of Jodie Harnden (Sunridge Middle School – Pendleton, OR) who joined an atmospheric aerosol research project with scientists at NASA Langley to develop a similar student project modeling how authentic science is conducted to collect and analyze data useful to the community.

In emergency medical practices the airway, or being able to breathe, is the first priority, making air pollution a major threat to those who breathe…which is everyone! In my seventh grade science classes we study the structure of the atmosphere and air pollution problems and students learn about different pollutants and how they affect our location. While students do develop an understanding of air quality conditions, they do not have the opportunity to collect their own data and analyze that data in order to answer questions, as scientists would do.

And neither did I – until my Fund for Teachers grant.

One of the challenges of being a science teacher is that I had never been an actual scientist. While I have spent my career learning to be the best teacher I can be, I lacked in experience that relates to the actual processes of scientific research and data analysis. For me to lead students to think and work as scientists, I needed the experience myself. The two-week fellowship collecting air quality data with NASA Langley provided an intensive and exciting opportunity to interact and work alongside actual scientists, followed by developing related classroom applications for students.

I had the opportunity to participate in the data campaign as a volunteer intern under the direction of NASA scientist Dr. Margaret Pippin. My air quality data research took me to sites around Hampton, VA, monitoring aerosols, or tiny solids that are considered pollutants. I became proficient in using the Calitoo, a device that measures aerosol optical thickness, and indicator of particulate matter. I learned what the impact of clouds can be on the accuracy of measurements and established my GLOBE account for submitting my own data.

Previously I had only demonstrated the Calitoo with borrowed units. Now I will be having students collect and submit data on a regular basis to the GLOBE Project. Collecting data for a long-term project is a change from just occasional measurements. Students will now be the scientists,
collecting and submitting the data for use, and have access to the data for future use, as well.

The greatest accomplishment of my fellowship was developing a true understanding of the different stages of scientific research. Data campaigns have a planning and funding period, then, if approved, all participants coordinate for the campaign period (in this case, two weeks), then hope for good weather. Collection days can be very long! After rest and recovery, analysis of the data begins and will be the focus for the next year, prompting future research.

School has started and smoke from regional wildfires has created a difficult situation for many. Outdoor activities have been cancelled as we come to grips with the loss of beautiful forests. We can’t even make aerosol measurements because the smoke blocks the sun. Students are getting an early introduction to the air quality unit. We have begun to enter data into GLOBE, but the smoke prevents the collection of quality data (a good lesson for students!). Normally our rough time is January and February when cold, high pressure settles in to create an inversion, trapping the smoke from wood stoves; however, this year may mark different conclusions. I have taken note of an unusual ozone
concentration near one city west of the Cascade Mountains, a problem we don’t have, but can study from afar.

While there are numerous environmental issues that are worth studying, air quality continues to be a challenge in our area. While the causes may sometimes be out of our control (such as weather and wild fires) awareness and understanding is not. Mitigation of contributing factors that are human-caused are something we will continue to study, learn, and take appropriate action when possible. This August we have experienced a severe air quality issue, something to study further in the fall.

Along with my personal experiences at NASA Langley, I was able to witness the inclusion of student interns in the research process. I came away more convinced that ever that science is a process and something to be understood, not just a set of facts to be learned. The future of science depends on doing science, and I must give my students opportunities to contribute to the field of science. School, in many ways, is an artificial microcosm of life and I will be able to expose students to so much more now that I was exposed to more myself.

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A National Board Certified teacher, Jodie is in her 33rd year of teaching science at the middle
level, most of it in Pendleton, Oregon. She thrives on the opportunity to learn, bringing experiences back to the classroom and sharing with others professionally. While it won’t be a problem until retirement, rock collecting is a favorite activity.

Honoring Maria Montessori’s Birthday by Carrying on Her Vision

Happy (belated) birthday to Maria Montessori, born on August 31,1870, and founder of the eponymous learning style characterized by independence and freedom within limits. Two teams of teachers used liberty afforded by Fund for Teachers to design fellowships that further enhanced early childhood education informed by Montessori.

A team from Alighieri Montessori School in East Boston attended the International Montessori Congress in Prague, focusing on Montessori techniques as a path to social change and a higher-quality education that cultivates life-long learners and responsible citizens. Achala Godino, Lisa Schad and Maureen Magee-Quinn networked with more than one thousand “Montessorians” who embraced their founder’s message: “It is the role of education to create peace in this world.”

“Maria firmly believed that children did not need to be taught ‘peacefulness’ – rather, it was the role of education and educators to help remove the obstacles that stand in the way from children revealing their true nature, which is peace, joy, and kind regard toward others,” said Achala. “It was jolting to reflect on her socio-political writing of the early 20^th
century. She was looking upon a world embroiled in two World Wars and looking upon the child as the answer to the militarism, xenophobia and authoritarianism of the day. Sadly, her writings on the topic are as relevant to the 21^st century as they were 100 years ago.”

A three person team, also from East Boston, crafted a slightly different fellowship, but one that also increased competency in the Montessori system. Deborah Arlauskas (Tynana Elementary), John Arlauskas (Murphy K-8) and Margaret Arlauskas (Alighieri Montessori) studied in the Netherlands Dutch culture’s intersection with Montessori and early childhood learning to better teach/reach their English Language Learners and their families.

After a guided visit of Amsterdam’s Association Montessori Internationale (where Maria’s study was preserved as a museum), John, Deborah and Margaret spent the next five days volunteering and observing at the 2 Voices Montessori School. The fellowship concluded with second school visit at Casa Bilingual Montessori School in Pijnacker. Following AMI’s recommendation, the team visited this particular school due to the bilingual instruction (English and Dutch) and the 50 weeks-a-year schedule.

“My content knowledge of Montessori instruction has deepened to a more advanced level of understanding,” said Margaret. “Specifically, I learned how teachers and instructional leaders in the Netherlands adapt the Montessori curriculum and manipulatives to meet student needs. For example, the Montessori approach to education should be the vehicle to help students meet state standards and content/language objectives for lessons and units.”

Maria Montessori’s legacy lives on on the work of these teaching teams, dedicated to developing children as well-rounded individuals. Throughout the first two of four developmental phases outlined by Maria (self construction from 0-6 years and peace/happiness 6-12 years), students at three East Boston school will now benefit from heightened instruction in this discipline.

“As public Montessori teachers in East Boston, serving a mainly immigrant community living under the strain of poverty, we are committed to delivering the highest quality Montessori education that will usher forth the next generation of global citizens and peacemakers,” said Achala. “We were grateful to have had the opportunity to engage in these conversations and be again re-inspired to manifest Dr. Montessori’s vision.”

Kate Moore (Citizens of the World Charter Schools – Kansas City. MO) used her Fund for Teachers grant to explore at a Creativity Workshop in Reykjavik, Iceland, the concept of creativity. Her goal in attending was to support diverse thinkers and learners and implement strategies to help students, staff and the community hone creativity despite fear and discomfort. Along the way, she faced her own fear and discomfort, as well.

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Iceland totally amazed me. I attended the Creativity Workshop in Reykjavik and had the opportunity to work with some of the greatest minds in education. We discussed obstacles and hurdles that keep us from stretching our students’ comfort zones in the classroom and how to pull beauty from chaos – which is a pretty good description of most classrooms now and then – chaos.

Like a lot of teachers, I have a side-hustle that keeps me busy after school. I have a small photography business that grew from taking family portraits of my low-income students who otherwise wouldn’t have such memories captured. It just grew from there. Part of my own personal journey with this fellowship was to challenge my own notions of perfection and creativity in photography. It is the medium in which I feel I am the strongest, but also that which I am the most critical of myself. I had a tougher time with this than I thought. Iceland is full of ridiculously picture-esque vistas, and my inner critic was screaming much of the time: “Kate, you are not giving this justice. Way too over exposed. Crappy composition. You didn’t bring a filter for long exposures at the waterfalls, are you kidding?”

I gave myself a pre-test of sorts when I arrived and again at the conclusion of my trip after attending the Creativity Conference. The biggest change I saw: I was noticing my critic and allowing that quiet voice to fade out to another ear. As an art teacher, I do not expect or want perfection from my students.  A fantastic book called “Beautiful Oops” helps prove this point in my classroom: mistakes can create something amazing, something new, something we never knew was possible.

I realized I have to practice this same philosophy in my own artwork, despite carrying the “I’m an art teacher, therefore my artwork should be pristine” mindset. I am still working on this, as any habit takes time, but taking what I learned from the workshop to apply to my OWN work really set the concept and its significance into stone for me and jazzed me up for the new school year. And let’s be honest, that is tough for everyone after two months of eating slow-cooked omelettes, going to the pool and watching Ellen 🙂

Check out Kate’s photography here.

I also learned a lot of small things by simply talking to locals and having the awesome opportunity to visit a family’s home and dine with them and their children for a night. Here are a few big categories that resonated with me and make me want to return to this amazing country:

Iceland & Animals:

• Bugs: Almost none. No mosquitoes. No ticks when hiking. No screens on windows. It’s
  glorious.
• Horses: Everywhere. And their hair is always photogenic and luscious in the crazy
  Iceland winds. They are used for farming, hobby, transportation and touring.
• Sheep: This is a big industry here, both for wool and for meat. Farmers let them roam
  free all summer – truly all over. You see them in little families climbing
  mountains, drinking from glacier streams and hanging out by waterfalls. In the Fall, at least one farmer from each farm is required to help wrangle up all of the sheep to return them to their homes for the winter months. They are tagged, so after they are all herded, they are then sorted by farm. Horses are used most often, but some farmers now use drones so they can have more of an idea of where to put their herding efforts.
• Puffins: Puffins are both beautiful and edible here. However, the country monitors these populations really closely with strict regulations. If there is ever a dip, hunting puffins becomes illegal nationwide until they return to a healthy population. Puffin is usually described as a gamey taste.

Miscellaneous Info I Learned and LOVED:

• Mr. and Mrs. are just not used here. People refer to you by your first name if you are a friend, neighbor​, teacher or even the Prime Minister.
• Speaking of, the Prime Minister’s address is well-known to the public, and it isn’t uncommon to run into him at the grocery store, walking his dog or to just visit at his home.
• When you have a baby here, mothers get 3 months guaranteed paid leave, fathers get 3 months, and the couple gets an additional 3 months to divide up to whoever needs it. We just had dinner with a local who has 7 weeks of vacation to burn in addition to his baby leave.
• There is also a dating app to check if you are related to people in Iceland! Since the country’s population is so small, if you meet someone at a party or a bar that you’re interested in, you want to double check if you are related in any way before pursing them.

I would highly recommend the Creativity Conference to any teacher who feels stagnant or that they want to reach students who strive a little too hard for perfection or to the student who feels lost in numbers and reading does not come easily. This conference can be a benefit to all types of classrooms. And Iceland, of course. Definitely go, but go to Costco ahead of time to bring snacks because a cup of soup is $25.

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Kate works in urban education in Kansas City, MO, where she teaches elementary art. Prior to teaching art, she taught English as a second language, writing and social studies at a dual language school. While born and raised in Wisconsin, Kate attended Iowa State University where she received a Bachelors of the Arts in Art and Deign with a minor in Spanish and Psychology. She received her Master’s in Education from the University of Missouri St. Louis in 2015. She has 3 pet free frogs who are regulars in her classroom named Sam, Brown Sugar, and Reina.

On the final day of their fellowship, Alice Laramore and Kat Atkins-Pattenson shared with us their reflection on a four-week, 9,000 mile road trip along the United States/Mexico border exploring language arts, visual arts, immigration and identity. Thank you, Team Paredes Que Hablan (or Walls That Speak) for sharing your experiences and hope for future students.

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Our students cross borders every day. They switch from home language to school language and back again.Their warm presence, giggles, and questions invite new families inside our school buildings. And, everywhere they go, our students carry the imprint of their family members who came to Boston for refuge, for freedom, for opportunity. Every time these young people change spaces, they reconcile their identities and pasts with their presents and futures.

We know that for students to truly succeed academically, they must see mirrors of themselves in our curricula – art, media, and text – and validation of their identities in our classroom spaces. While we can empathize with our students, as white female teachers, we do not truly understand the depth of our students’ experiences. To effectively understand our students’ experiences, we need to cross borders ourselves and experience the displacement our students have experienced traversing these borders.

Today, the last day of our trip, we are energized by the Borders and Identity Unit that we have built and will use to launch the year with our students. We are flooded with all that we’ve seen in our seven cities. We are entrenched in the creative part of teaching, the part that involves being an interesting, engaged individual to better support the interesting, engaged individuals in our classrooms. The part that means we learn something new in order to teach something new. The experience of being a learner better prepares a teacher to teach, and this summer was an opportunity for us to authentically learn about murals on different borders, to confront not knowing and to investigate, to use art as a lens into community.

Watch in this video the artistic expression Kat and Alice captured in three countries and seven cities to help students answer the question: “How do we show other people the depth of our past and the strength of our future?”

This month, we immersed ourselves in adult project-based learning. We’ve tried lots of new things, from food to cloud-mountain hiking to driving to places we’d never been (while blogging) to talking about art from sunrise to sunset. And we’ve done the whole thing together. Often, in our classrooms, we create groups that we believe will benefit from the individuality of each member. We build in scaffolds meant to allow the group to discover each individual’s strengths and to make empathy a non-negotiable. Though we embarked with empathy and respect already in place, our twenty-six days together have illuminated the strengths and areas of growth (thanks, BPS, for the language) of our partnership. We both value efficiency, and, in the face of less-than-such (e.g., when the internet goes as turtle-pace, when people get motion sick, when you walk up the wrong side of the mountain, etc.), we have learned much about each other. That knowledge has made us better collaborators and better friends.

In San Francisco, where we started our trip, we were oriented to the idea of looking. This was not just because there was so much to look at in The Mission, but also because we did our first day with a guide, who was able to re-frame what we had seen and interpreted in the context of history and community. Carla made us cognizant of how much we needed other people’s knowledge and understanding to build our own. The Pacoima (L.A.) murals added a layer of “looking around corners” to that concept. On the hottest day of our trip, we spent the majority of it seeking out art on the walls of automotive dealerships and in the parking lots of community centers. It wasn’t always going to be all in one alley. In San Diego, a park once occupied by people and now occupied by art, had us looking for four hours and not seeing enough. We returned home those nights googling Aztec symbols and stories, trying to learn enough to know something.

Tucson and Dr. Acosta gave us yet another frame through which to experience our learning. Freedom of education does not mean freedom to learn about the American Revolution and the Civil War through a lens of whiteness. Precious Knowledge, to our generation of “urban baby teachers,” is a reflection of our intentions. Though we (the generation of “urban baby teachers”) are in no way united in our vision or our understanding of social justice, the power of conviction in ideas, history, and lifting stories and voices drove us into the work of education. We wonder if Dr. Acosta knows how many teachers who are only five or six years in are tracking his legal battle and celebrating his victories, most recently the repeal of Arizona’s ban on ethic studies which a district court deemed racist and targeting of Mexican Americans.

In Santa Fe, we absorbed the International Folk Art Market, how artists envision and reimagine, how tradition can morph modern and can accommodate the present day without reneging its roots. This mirrors the murals we’ve seen and the art of Frida Kahlo, taking symbols from the past and bringing them to life in the now. In Mexico City, we saw so much. Teotihuacan, Frida, Diego, the Anthropology Museum, street art, the culinary art of Pujol, the stained glass and craters of Toluca. With American eyes and feet, we navigated the city, and learned all that we still had to learn.

It is hard to classify this experience, and even harder to know all that it will bring to our classrooms. It falls somewhere in the vicinity of sabbatical – an intentional, purposeful break that brings new insight – but also touches the realm of professional development, continuing education, and a creative project. We envision a unit with three parts. First, with our students, we will read several memoirs that broadly address the topic of borders and walls, thinking with our students about potential barriers and how to scale them. Second, we will all generate and share memoirs from our own lives on the same topic. The author of each memoir will formulate his or her own theme about the topic, communicating a piece of knowledge gained from navigating–either adeptly or crudely–a border. Finally, after examining many primary sources collected on our trip and within Boston, students will co-construct a mural combining the themes of their memoirs to create a community creation.

The idea of “insider and outsider” has been, in many ways, the crux of our travels. We asked questions and navigated our identity as visitor, as white visitor, as American, as woman. In our classrooms we are often the the outsiders to the communities in which we teach. However our ethnicities and upbringing reflect the dominant histories and tools that are demanded from dominant culture. In this unit, we hope to illuminate these walls, supporting students to name them, scale them, and ultimately paint them. As humanities teachers, we believe that providing students vocabulary and time to think and discuss the world and its issues leads to a brighter, more creative, and smarter future than the two of us can imagine. Solutions lie in the writing, in the art, in the conversations, and in the relationships that students create. Just as we wrote in our FFT proposal, students must see themselves reflected in curriculum, in physical space, and in pedagogy in order to be successful. Because we do not physically reflect our students’ identities, we think constantly about how to make all other facets of our teaching affirming. This unit and this project will be a launching point for discussions about personal identity, community, and what comes next.

In Mexico City, the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, San Diego, Tucson and Santa Fe, this fellowship made space for us to be learners. After the twelfth grade, those opportunities almost always come with one (or many) literal costs. And Fund for Teachers (along with the school year calendar) gave us the time, space and finances to learn more in a way that will support our students, but also in a way that sustains us as teachers, professionals, and individuals. It made it possible for us to end the trip feeling rejuvenated rather than depleted. There is a constant push for teachers to continue professional development; it is indeed essential. But driving this profession development experience (and literally driving more than 900 miles) meant that we could pace our learning and reflection, and that we could intentionally choose meaningful experiences that hit our “zone of proximal development.”

If you’d like to know more about our trip, we’ve been writing the whole time. Read our blog at www.writingisthinking.org

In Solidarity,
Kat + Alice

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Alice is a 7th grade Humanities/Special Education teacher at the Lilla G. Frederick Pilot Middle School in Dorchester, MA. She infuses arts into her Humanities classes, most recently taking students to do pop-up Shakespearean theater in several Boston Public libraries. She works on a cross curricular team of teachers who study the intersection of English Language Learning and Special Education to build inclusive writing experiences in all contents.        

Kat is a 7th grade Humanities teacher at Gardner Pilot Academy K-8 School, a Pilot School in the Boston Public Schools. Katharine was a 2012-13 Donovan Urban Teaching Scholar at Boston College where she earned her Master’s in Secondary Education. Prior to becoming a teacher, Katharine built a college access program in rural Pennsylvania that continues to help first generation and undocumented students find the appropriate post-secondary fit while developing college and financial literacy
within the community.

While many schools are forced to eliminate access to the arts,  Franklin Elementary Fine Arts Center in Chicago was established to integrate artistic talent with academic success. Dance teacher M.K. Victorson designed her Fund for Teachers fellowship around intensive teacher workshops that would help her rewrite her existing curriculum, focusing on creative dance, multicultural dance, and genre studies to engage her K-8 learners.

“Ms. V” enrolled in three opportunities – Dance Education Lab (DEL), Broadway Teachers Workshop, and Finis Jhung Ballet in New York City – to rethink how her curriculum can engage all of her dance students whether they are ballet dancers or breakdancers or just not sure about dance at all. Her excellent blog documents her learning, and we share a post written to her students
below…

Dear Students:

I’m sharing some photos here of my incredible workshop last week at DEL: Planet Dance: Multicultural Dance Education. I attended this workshop with all of you in mind as you are always telling me you want to learn different forms of dance. Words can hardly describe the overall experience of this workshop, which had many interesting strands to it. But I’ll say a few:

We began our week by talking about what culture is and what it embodies. (how would you answer ‘What is Culture’? Think about it). Seeking an answer, we:

 

• looked at our own cultural makeup and created dances about it
• viewed several dances from around the world and analyzed the movement in each
• discussed the reasons why people dance and create dance: recreation, work, communication (to name just a few)
• learned a welcome dance and song from Ghana
• practiced and explored flamenco steps and rhythms from Spain
• viewed a Japanese dance where the dancers used umbrellas
• created new dances inspired by all of these sources, and more!

We danced, created, and we discussed dance in great detail. The question we kept coming back to was:

 

How do you teach a cultural dance if the culture is not your own?

 

What do you think, readers? We talked about this at length. We talked about problems, concerns, sensitivity in exploring dance of other cultures. We did not come up with a final answer, but I know that I came  away from the experience with much to think about and share with you. This year I will be able to bring in even more residencies that I am hoping will expand our cultural dance knowledge and literacy. Do you have something you can teach me?

 

Included in the photos are pictures of my collaborative group. At DEL, we finish each intensive week by collaborating in a group and engaging in practice teaching for our fellow teachers. I am very excited about the work my group did because my collaborators and I really worked well together and listened to each other. Crystal, Eva, Monica, and Halley are smart, inquisitive and sensitive beings and I learned so much from them. Oh, they are great dancers, too!

 

Together we created a lesson around examining bias in dance criticism. It was written for high school, but I think it has relevance to you, my K-8 students. We looked at images and text from a review and created short dances based on it. Then we gave each other feedback on the dance. Finally, we looked at the whole review and discussed the issue of bias and who gets to critique dance. We talked about how to respond to dance by naming what you see before placing judgement. It was fascinating and I am excited to do some of this with you!

 

I also have some flamenco inspired movement to share with you, courtesy of my teacher, Puela. And there is so much more!

 

Dancing at you from New York,
Ms. V

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M.K. is an eight-year veteran of the Chicago Public Schools and has been teaching and creating in Chicago since 1996. She  is passionate about curriculum development, advocacy and inclusion in arts education.  A dedicated and energetic teacher, M.K. has been awarded grants from numerous institutions including Chicago Foundation for Education, the Target Corporation, and the Oppenheimer Family Foundation.

 

Charlotte Brontë, who sent her Jane Eyre manuscript to a London publisher on this date in 1847, wrote, “Your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience.” This summer, Amanda Kingston (Odyssey Leadership Academy – Oklahoma City) used her time (and a Fund for Teachers grant) to research the Brontë sisters, especially Charlotte – regarded as “the first historian of the private consciousness.”

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On my Fund for Teachers fellowship, I navigated through five European countries in the hopes of learning more about Carol Gilligan’s work on the ethic of care in connection to the lives and histories of women. Among the women I journeyed to “meet” were Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë, authors and sisters.

Haworth, England, is a small town that has capitalized on the mythology of the Brontë family. It’s hard to know if the Brontës modeled their stories after the environment of Haworth, or if Haworth has wrapped itself up in the Brontës. Whether it’s chicken or egg, at the heart, they’re inseparable. And, if you can’t get enough of the gothic atmosphere, you can hike out to the Brontë Waterfall across the moors and even farther to Top Withens, a possible location for the Wuthering Heights of Emily’s imagination. In the mist and among the heather you can almost hear Cathy still calling for Heathcliff.

The Brontë Parsonage Museum itself is in the midst of celebrating the 200th anniversaries of the Brontë children: for 2017, this is Branwell. The small parsonage is preserved beautifully, with portraits of the family hung in each room; the table where the women bent over needlework, writing, and dinners; and the study of the family patriarch, Patrick Brontë, complete with his spectacles and magnifying glass. The staff were enthusiastic and kind, offering up knowledge about the family not with an air of pretension, but rather as though talking warmly about old friends. The Brontës are very much real people to this crowd. Prior to this fellowship, I did not know much about the Brontës. I did a quick reread of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre earlier this year, and watched the BBC television special To Walk Invisible. The production worked closely with the Brontë Society and the museum also includes stills and costumes from the series.

For more on Jane Eyre’s iconic line “Reader, I married him,” click here.

In researching before the trip, I learned that in the original publications, the sisters chose not to use their given names. Instead, they used pseudonyms: Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Charlotte explained after the deaths of Emily and Anne in 1848 and 1849 respectively, they wanted their work taken seriously, not frowned upon as womenly nonsense nor praised patronizingly as female folly. The Brontës were real writers with real things to say about the real world around them. And really, in 1847 when Jane Eyre was published, only male authors were taken seriously. The museum even includes a letter from a poet Charlotte admired advising her that writing was not for women.

I realized, a few days before in Chawton, that there is a reason we don’t say that Jane Austen’s books are about the human experience, though they certainly include suffering, trials, family, love, and loss. (The Jane Austen Society, coincidentally, is celebrating her life with the bicentennial of her death this year, as well.) The Brontës recognized this also, and when Charlotte sent Jane Eyre to be published she wanted the story of a young governess, a deeply misguided Mr. Rochester, and a “madwoman” in the attic to be a story received with the utmost sincerity and gravity, a story of human experience- not just male or female. And it was: Jane Eyre became the talk of London and new editions came out almost immediately. It’s a story of human experience and human emotions that belong to all of us, and I believe people recognized this, despite knowing the true identity of the author.

I’ll be honest, I was not a Brontë fan before visiting the parsonage. I enjoyed their books, yes, and they were interesting figures to me. But I wasn’t a “fan.” However, there is something about walking in the home of a person, seeing their correspondence and their village, walking across the moors of their lives for even just a day that spins stories to a different light. It makes you not just a fan, but a friend. I learned more about their heart and the courage they had to put their stories out to the world, and to put themselves in their stories.

I don’t think that it’s any accident that the original title of Charlotte’s first novel was Jane Eyre: An Autobiography.

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Amanda serves as both a mentor and humanities teacher at Odyssey Leadership Academy in Oklahoma City and previously worked as a teacher in Louisiana’s public education sector. She is passionate about creating courses that focus on justice and empowering students to enrich and transform the community around them.

This weekend marks the 48th anniversary of Ireland’s Battle of the Bogside, a riot between Protestants and Catholics that initiated a three-decade conflict known as “The Troubles.” FFT Fellows Saul Fussiner and David Senderoff (New Haven Academy – New Haven, CT) are currently in Ireland researching this period of history and share their experiences below…

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We teach a Facing History & Ourselves course for sophomores called “History, Legacy, Judgment and Justice,” which deals with how societies attempt to heal after long periods of conflict. We originally taught this course using the case studies of South Africa and Rwanda, but five years ago, in response to student surveys, we switched our second study to be Northern Ireland. We shaped a unit to include an inquiry activity and some quick background on the history of the Republican/Unionist divide, some lessons on Northern Ireland’s Civil Rights Movement and on Bloody Sunday, some classes on the period of the Troubles (especially 1972-1998) and activities and an assessment based on the Good Friday Agreement and its legacy. After teaching on Northern Ireland for several years now, we wanted to learn more about the background of this crisis–the long history of British colonialism and Irish resistance–that led to this struggle in the first place. And we wanted to see how this struggle is remembered, on both sides, in the lands where it took place.

On our Fund for Teachers fellowship, we are gathering relevant materials across Ireland and Northern Ireland. Along the way, we are gaining awareness and knowledge to help students contextualize the Irish situation (both before and after partition) and demonstrate how people behave in groups.

Our fellowship focuses on museums, tours and arts events that provide a nuanced background on Irish and Northern Irish history. Initially, we intended to research only Dublin and Belfast, but are now expanding to a wider range of places, including Limerick, Galway, Sligo, Derry and County Down. We also are documenting our visit with photography and video showing some of the places we visit; we are especially intent on conducting interviews.

Our ever-expanding agenda has included:

• Glasnevin Cemetery Museum (provides a comprehensive and interactive tour through Irish history)
• the Kilmainham Gaol Museum (contains the history of Ireland’s largest jail from the pre-partition period from
  1798 until the Irish Civil War of the 1920’s, including the detainments and sometimes executions of the
  leaders of the major Irish rebellions in that period)
• the Little Museum of Dublin
• the GPO Museum (documents the 1916 Easter Rising, which was
  headquartered at the General Post Office, or GPO)
• Derry walls walking
  tour
• the Apprentice Boys of Derry Museum
• the City of Derry Museum (the largest collection anywhere
  regarding Bloody Sunday)
• Ulster American park in Omagh
• Mural tours in Belfast and Derry
• Stormont
  Parliament in Belfast
• the Somme Heritage Center (focused on the legacy of the Irish in World War I), and
• Corrymeela Peace Community in Northern Ireland, where one of our visiting teachers is
  a community member.

These activities are the backbone of our fellowship, helping us to build a comprehensive background for our course. By walking in the places where history was lived, one discovers interesting details about it, such as when I visited Alabama and saw with my own eyes how close King’s church was to the Montgomery state house and how close the projects of Selma were to the church where the marches were planned. In addition to everything else, we are spending much of our time in the North with the family of one of the teachers who visited us at our school two years ago, and he is a guide for us during our Belfast excursions.

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Why teach about Northern Ireland in an urban school district in Connecticut?

We do so because the Good Friday Agreement represents what author Penn Rhodeen has referred to as the most successful example of a political solution to a major conflict in our time. Through dialogue and compromise, Nationalists and Loyalists were able to bring an end to thirty years of police brutality, bombings, kidnappings, murders, gangsterism and riots to forge a lasting – if precarious – period of peace. The warring factions in America’s own political system have been far less successful at dialogue and compromise, creating our current situation of mistrust of government and political institutions at home.

When we teach the Civil Rights Movement in American History, that teaching rests on an understanding of a long history of America and a feeling for the present day in our country. We are looking to replicate that long view and awareness in our understanding of (and teaching of) the Civil Rights period and Troubles period in Northern Ireland. We want to be able to “read between the lines.” We are both trying to become better historians of this place, and in order to do so, we wanted to experience it first hand, through interviewing of people there, and through studying in some of its most important museums and taking some of its tours and in walking
from here to there, literally, on its streets. The content of our Northern Ireland unit is always growing, and this fellowship will help us to become better resources for our students to understand this complex and confusing history.

There is an inquiry activity that we always do right near the beginning of the Northern Ireland unit, where students try to piece together clues to the puzzling struggles in Northern Ireland. Clippings and photos and statistics and maps and excerpts from interviews are examined and students create questions and inferences. We do a similar activity as they get into the specifics of the Northern Irish Civil Rights movement. Later, a big paper activity guides students through the escalation of violence in the 1970’s that followed Bloody Sunday. These are activities that can be added to and rejuvenated with the interviews and the video and photographs that we bring back.

For background information on The Troubles, the 1981 BBC documentary series directed by Ian Stuttard and compiled of key first-hand historical footage, is a good place to start. We also created this blog we’re maintaining throughout our fellowship to help document our learning throughout this grant and beyond.

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 Saul teaches History, Civics and Facing History & Ourselves at New Haven Academy. Previously, he was Assistant Professor of Film Studies at Hunter College. He has screenwriting credits on two produced films and regularly performs as a live storyteller with the Institute Library Group and the Story City Troupe. Saul has led workshops for other teachers on storytelling, student social action projects and the Holocaust and was a teacher with March of the Living in Poland in 2012 and 2014.

Dave found his niche in education while searching for a way to inspire people to seek achievements through willingness and determination. His “false starts” in the military and as an extremely amateur musician paved the way for higher learning. Always a New Haven Public School teacher, he has taught middle and high school, focusing on critical analysis and inquiry skills.

(Photograph of Dave and Saul at Lough Gur with their “I’m a Fund for Teachers Fellow” sign)

As tensions heated up this summer between Russia and the United States, Kathy Morse served as a self-appointed ambassador of education, researching the arts in St. Petersburg, Novgorod and Moscow. She returned to ACES Wintergreen Interdistrict Magnet School in Hamden, CT, with insight into how the arts plays such a vital role in Russia’s past and present culture and shares a few of her experiences below…

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Before leaving on my fellowship, I asked my fifth graders to journal their impressions of Russia. Their input framed my research, which I will now use as the foundation for their sixth grade social studies class. Together, we will now look at our diverse world through the common lens of art, specifically, the music, dance and architecture I experienced with my Fund for Teachers grant.

For three weeks, I observed how culture is a driving force in Russia. In St. Petersburg, also known as “Venice of the North,” I explored the arts, history and geography of the city (the famed music conservatory, the Vaganova Ballet Academy and the State Hermitage Museum) while attending the Stars of the White Nights Festival. Specifically, I dove into the compositional techniques of Dimitri Shostakovich and his inspiration for his Seventh Symphony during the winter of 1941.

Listen to an extract from Seventh Symphony here.

Next, I traveled to a city fixed in time, Novgorod, which lies between St. Petersburg and Moscow. At its peak during the 14th century, Novgorod was one of Europe’s largest cities and was recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 1992. Novgorod has maintained itself as a historical center and it is possible to get a glimpse of what Russia looked like hundreds of years ago going back as far as the Middle Ages. This gave me a deeper historical context of Russia.

Continuing on to Moscow, I spent three days exploring the Kremlin, Red Square, St. Basil’s Cathedral, museums and attending performances at the Bolshoi Theatre. These sites are the most iconic, so I wanted students to know what they mean for the Russian people, as well as the importance Moscow plays in our world today.

Understanding WWII through the eyes of the Russian People by exploring Victory Park and the Museum of the Great Patriotic War (WWII) in Moscow was an extensive history lesson. This country lost more than 25 million citizens to battle, starvation, disease and Stalin’s Terror.  The museum also emphasizes the important role the United States and other Allies played in securing victory over Nazi Germany.

Using the Lincoln Center Education model of inquiry (practicing skills like noticing deeply, posing questions, making connections, and empathizing), my students and I will now be able to explore the Russian culture through the study of the arts of St. Petersburg, the history of Novgorod and the political importance of Moscow while making real world connections to other curriculum areas including literature, history and geography. If we Westerners hope to understand this enormous country, we might intelligently begin by trying to understand the culture which drives this mysterious country. That’s where we’ll begin in my class.

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Kathy Morse (pictured in a Moscow subway station) graduated from Duquesne University with a degree in Music Education/Music Therapy while pursuing her passion of performance on the
French Horn.  Her first job was with the State Orchestra of Mexico. Upon returning to the United States, she earned her Masters Degree from Yale University and toured world wide with various ensembles. She has carried her passion for music into the classroom for the past 26 years and has led teacher workshops for Carnegie Hall and the New York Philharmonic.

August 9th marks the first meeting of the United Nations’ Working Group on Indigenous Populations in 1982 and the occasion designated by the UN General Assembly for honoring 370 million Indigenous People living across 90 countries who remain subject to political, economic and social oppression.

Indigenous People are defined as ethnic groups originally in a territory prior to being
incorporated into a national state, and who are politically and culturally separate from the majority ethnic identity of the state that they are a part of.

This summer, fourteen Fund for Teachers Fellows chose to research Indigenous People on three continents to increase student awareness and appreciation of the history, culture and challenges faced by those also known as first peoples, aboriginal peoples and native peoples. Read on to see how these teachers pursued knowledge of and experience among these inheritors and practitioners of unique cultures and ways of relating to people and the environment.*

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Charles FitzGibbon and Christine Faye Dunbar (Metropolitan Expeditionary Learning School– Forest Hills, NY) used photo journalism and oral interviews to examine the immediate effects of climate change on coastal Alaskan natives. They plan use their research to convey to students the interaction between individuals, communities, government policy and the climate.

Their excellent blog documenting the fellowship begins:

“We are two teachers from a public 6-12 school in Queens, New York, who are traveling this summer to Alaska on a research grant from Fund for Teachers. We’re passionate about the work we engage our students in, and strive to make learning as relevant and real-world as possible. Our mission this summer is to research the impacts of climate change on coastal
communities, particularly those in the arctic region who are facing the more drastic effects of warming temperatures, melting permafrost, and land erosion. Namely we seek to answer three key research questions:

What challenges do coastal Alaskan communities face in the age of climate change?

How do borders ensure, enshrine, and entrap the communities of coastal Alaska?

What can be done to preserve and affirm the cultures of indigenous peoples as climate change threatens the future of their communities?”

For 21 days, Christine and Charles explored Juneau, Nome, Shishmaref, Fairbanks, and Prudhoe Bay, providing a broad scope of how climate change is impacting the state, its economy and social fabric. Click here to see what they discovered.

Glen Meinschein, Greg Gentile and Alejandro Avalos (Brooklyn School for Collaborative Studies) investigated of one of the most controversial figures in Mexican history, “La Malinche,”
by exploring across Mexico themes of colonialism, feminism and indigenous history to engage students of different backgrounds and support their academic achievement.

This blog documents their experiences, characterized by the sentence, “It was unsettling how much of our investigation of her has resulted in silence, shrugs or lack of any answers or any significant information.”

Exploring Xochimilco, a part of Mexico City where Aztecs built floating islands, or chinampas.

Renee Lukaniec (Fox Run Elementary – Norwalk, CT) was handed a curriculum, outdated textbooks and asked to teach a unit on Native Americans three years ago. The search for authentic information and artifacts inspired her Fund for Teachers fellowship living and learning on the Huron-Wendat Nation reservation in Quebec. Read more of her experiences here.

Michelle Broxterman and Rachel Southard (Westside Elementary – Pittsburg, KS) chose to investigate with their Fund for Teachers grant the Mashallese people, culture and environment because their classes increasingly welcome immigrants from the cluster of small islands in the Pacific Ocean. Despite the contingency of immigrants living in their small town, the teachers found that many people have no idea where the Marshall Islands are. Their goal is to reach, teach and assimilate Marshallese students and families – and to educate the community about their new neighbors. In their grant proposal, Michelle and Rachel wrote:

“The Marshall Islands face numerous obstacles resulting from global warming and continued effects of nuclear testing. According to scientists, the Marshall Islands could be underwater within our lifetime. These looming threats have resulted in a mass immigration of over 20,000 Marshallese people living in the US. Although there has been a large influx of Marshallese people, their language and culture are relatively unknown and seem to be gradually disappearing along with their islands. We feel an urgency to gain as much information as we can now because later may not be an option.”

Rachel and Michelle checked in after their fellowship:

Our fellowship took us to Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands, for an amazing experience. We were able to ride on a traditional Marshallese canoe, sample local foods and gain a deeper understanding of the nation’s history. In addition, we studied the Marshallese educational system and toured an elementary school.

The most meaningful part of our fellowship was spending time with the people. We were welcomed with open arms by relatives of our Marshallese students. They ensured that we were able to learn a large amount of
information in a short period of time. It was obvious that generosity, caring, resilience and hospitality were and continue to be key attributes in the Marshallese culture. It is our hope that from our fellowship, we will help our Marshallese students to be proud of their heritage and continue on their traditions.

Additional 2017 Fellows focusing on First Peoples include:

• Kelly Shea and Sherry McCullough – Meeting with Maori guides and professors from the University of Auckland in New Zealand,to learn how the Maori use storytelling to represent cultural values and unify community for a new “Power of Language” unit (pictured above with guide Robert McDonald on top of Te Mata Peak).
• Rebekah and Robert Polemeni – Investigating in five national parks the impact of climate change, with a specific focus on drought and indigenous peoples, to guides students’
  creation of a local service project based on water conservation.
• Amy Manware – Volunteering with conservation groups and native communities in Hawaii to
  learn about ecological restoration, explore the impact of water on ecosystems and create blended learning activities that integrate Next Generation Science Standards and enrich STEM and instructional technology curricula.
• David Hunt – Investigating the effect of 1800’s Westward Expansion on the American
  Tribes of Arizona, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Montana to better teach topics including The Trail of Tears, Battle of Apache Pass and surrender of Geronimo, Battle of Wounded Knee and the Battle of Little Big Horn.
• Judie Cavanaugh – Exploring the art and culture of Indigenous Peoples of the Pacific
  Northwest to integrate art lessons with social studies curriculum.
• Rebecca Cutkomp – Exploring Washington’s Spokane Indian Reservation and Alaska’s Denali National Park to enrich student learning in thematic units on identity and aid in students’ deeper insight into rhetorical analysis.
• Timothy Kiser and Vincent McCollum – Exploring Dominica’s history and geography through an intersectionality  lens of race and colonization to better understand two central questions: How did the Kalinago survive while others did not? and why do the Kalinago continue to thrive? And,
• Samantha Verboven – Observing Alaska’s Native American population and the culture of
  storytelling to create a after school writing club based on reader’s theater designed to improve oral storytelling techniques and the narrative writing process.

Click on the following links for further research accomplished by previous Fund for Teachers Fellows on:

The ‘Namgis
The Maori

The Aborigines
The Lakota Sioux, Blackfoot and Salish Peoples

The Zapotec
The Navajo, and

The Incas

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* Indigenous People at the UN web site

Supriya Kotagal reclaimed her time in an airport to send us these beautiful images and update from her fellowship. Supriya used a Fund for Teachers grant to explore the methodology and best practices of community-based efforts in the Maldives and Solomon Islands to mobilize youth in island nations and Brooklyn confronting climate change.

“My hope,” she wrote in her proposal, “hope is that my fellowship experience will enable me to leverage both of these foci as my students engage in their design thinking work. Ultimately, I hope that ideas generated in my classroom around climate change can begin to be applied to the pressing issues that impact the neighborhood our school serves. I hope to mobilize my own students to be natural drivers of change in their community by creating a student advisory board or governing organization with my colleagues where youth weigh in on key problems and solutions that can better their neighborhood and school experience.”

Read more about her learning that will precede student advocacy.

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As I type this, I am at the airport in Abu Dhabi waiting for my connecting flight to take be back to New York City. I think this is probably the perfect time to reflect on the experience and provide you with some closing thoughts and some of my favorite videos from my time abroad:

Through my Fund for Teachers fellowship, I set out to document the impact climate change is having on small island developing states in the Indian Ocean – specifically the Maldives
and Zanzibar. Providing tangible examples of how climate change is impacting ecosystems and people is incredibly important to me as a science educator. We are living in a time when the impacts of climate change are deemed “debatable” by some and my goal was to make this environmental crisis as tangible as possible for my students. I did this by collecting qualitative data in the form of interviews, photographs, and film clips in order to create “Country Kits” that will enable my seventh graders to explore climate change more deeply. As part of my “Country Kits” I am also producing several  mini-documentaries that help explain different environmental issues and innovative solutions I encountered along the way.

Another aspect of my fellowship was to explore sustainable, community-based efforts that empower youth to tackle the very real challenges of climate change and to use this information to engage my students in thinking more globally about the environment. In the Maldives, I partnered with a sea turtle rehabilitation center called Naifaru Juvenile which seeks to spread awareness about the endangered sea turtle population and create sustainable solutions to protecting beaches and improving waste management–both environmental issues that stem from climate change and directly impact the sea turtle population. I met some amazing young activists who helped organize and participate in a festival bringing awareness to their local community. I was able to interview young people who are developing ways to improve environmental outcomes in their community. One young woman I met started a fashion line where she develops bags and purses from the trash she finds on the beach!

Read more about Supriya’s learning on her blog.

In Zanzibar, I explored how the country’s seaweed industry is being impacted by rising ocean temperatures. I met with a seaweed scientist and attended a community festival aimed at promoting the local development of seaweed products as a way of providing supplemental income to seaweed farmers, the majority of whom are women and who have seen recent declines in profit because of climate change. I also met with a collective of female seaweed farmers who are trying to create innovative products from the seaweed they cultivate in order to support their families. Additionally, I formed a valuable partnership with a youth organization called Zanzibar Learning 4 Life that seeks to encourage young people to become environmentally engaged and develop sustainable solutions to the problems that affect their community. I learned of some amazing work and ideas young people are formulating including using discarded plastic water bottles as bricks for water tanks. I hope to develop a deeper partnership with this organization in my classroom and am working on creating a pen-pal partnership between my students and theirs.

I wanted to share with you two mini-documentaries I made. The first [above] explains the seaweed industry in Zanzibar and the changes female farmers are making there in the face of climate change to maintain a profit. The second shares the perspective of youth on the island of Naifaru, the Maldives on the environmental issues impacting sea turtles and what needs to be done.

Thanks again for such an amazing opportunity. I can’t tell you how valuable this experience has been in re-energizing my passion for this work.

Best,
Supriya

(photo below of a group of young girls getting ready to dance at the youth-led “Turtle Festival” in Naifaru, the Maldives)

Supriya, middle school teacher at The School at Columbia University, is a curriculum designer, consultant and educator who has been involved in the field of education for ten+ years. She was a 2007 Teach for America Corps Member, a New York Hall of Science Design Fellow & Master Teacher, a New York Public Library Cullman Fellow in Creative Writing and currently teaches a STEAM* science course in New York City. Through her experiences, she understands education to be a powerful and transformative tool in uplifting individuals and communities.

Happy birthday to J.K. Rowling, who brought the magical world of Harry Potter to readers of all ages! Last month, we sent two Fellows off on their Potter Trail journey. We’ve checked in with them to learn more about the author’s inspiration for her beloved books and how the librarians Vilma Martinez and Christina Stark plan to inspire readers after “being there”:

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“Our Fund for Teachers fellowship has come to a close, but the magic will continue to brighten our library worlds and in turn the world of our students. We are grateful that Fund for Teachers “chose” us to be recipients of a 2017 grant! Harry Potter has been in our hearts for years, what better way to re-ignite the love for the series in ourselves, our students and future generations of readers than by going to the sites captured in the pages of J.K. Rowling’s magical series?  Reading the books, biographies, newspapers, watching movies…NOTHING…can compare to the experience of seeing and learning things for ourselves.

To stand in the grandeur of places like Tower Bridge, Lacock Abbey, Gloucester Cathedral, Warner Bros. Studio Tour London, and all the others, it’s just an indescribable feeling. We love J.K. Rowling for creating such vivid, complex, beloved characters and a truly magical world that continues to touch so many people – young and old alike! Through our walks, we saw older couples getting just as excited to stand in the places where Harry, Ron and Hermione stood and we could hear the excitement in their voices, see the excitement on their faces. (People could say the same thing about us!)

Twenty years after Rowling’s first book was published, we were there to celebrate her spirit and her characters and the magic welcomed us with open arms as we created videos that will enhance students’ reading experience. In addition, we’re planning the following activities for students after they read each book in the series:

• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone: Choose your House: a sorting ceremony where students will be placed into their House (and earn house points throughout the year). “Plenty of courage, I see. Not a bad mind, either. There’s talent, oh yes. And a thirst to prove yourself.  But where to put you?”–The Sorting Hat
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: Photo opportunity with robe and house scarf, plus Make Your Own Wand MakerSpace project.
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: Write a handwritten letter to J.K. Rowling and a tweet using our schools’ library Twitter accounts.
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: House competitions in which students compete for points answering questions based on the first four books read using Quizizz. (if you haven’t used this app in the classroom, check it out, it’s tons of fun for students, they will beg you to use it again and again).
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: Use Google Slides or TouchCast to write or report on their favorite characters. (Write Ups will be showcased on the library “Hogwarts: Heroes and Villains” bulletin board display.
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: Using MovieMaker or other video making app or program, make a promotional video to entice new readers. Special screenings to occur live during Morning Announcements.
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Discover the most popular title in the series. Provide students with a ballot which they will cast at the end-of-the-year Harry Potter Party where students can have a magical time talking and sharing their favorite parts, books, characters, scenes, the list goes on and on. The House Winner will be announced and photographed! More photo ops such as “Have You Seen This Wizard,” Platform 9 and ¾’s and anything else the students come up with!

J.K. Rowling said it perfectly,  “The stories we love best do live in us forever, so whether you come back by page or by the big screen, Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home.“ So again, thank you Fund for Teachers and a big thank you to our blog readers for following us on this magical exploration of all things Harry Potter!”

On their blog, which they maintained throughout their fellowship, Vilma and Christina also offer Harry Potter resources for students, parents and teachers.

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Vilma Martinez is the Library Media Specialist at Boone Elementary in Alief, TX. She is an instructor for both online and face-to-face professional development courses for her district and also presents at the state Technology Conference and Support Staff Association Conference. Christina Stark is the Library Media Specialist at Albright Middle School, also in Alief.  She, too, presents professional development in her district, teachers an online course as an adjunct professor at the University of North Texas, and has received two grants from the National Endowment for Humanities. 

Frank Mangan and Brandon Hubbard-Heitz (The Howard School – Chattanooga, TN) are assessing the past and present effects of people’s interaction with the Alaskan wilderness to empower students to embark upon future conservation work in their contexts.

You can follow their learning on Twitter and read more about their adventure below…

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“Late in life, noted naturalist John Muir traveled to Alaska. As he sailed along Alexander Archipelago, he wrote,“To the lover of pure wildness Alaska is one of the most wonderful countries in the world. No excursion that I know of may be made into any other American wilderness where so marvelous an abundance of noble,newborn scenery is so charmingly brought to view…”

Today especially, Alaska stands out for its 54 million acres that have been set aside as national parks, a vast expanse of wilderness that can only be appreciated by the naked eye. Even so, Alaska’s history is also a decidedly human tale of exploitation as much as conservation, abuse as much as preservation. From the migration of humans across the Bering Strait to the gold rush to the ExxonValdez, Alaska is a microcosm of the human-nature relationship within American history. Thus, it offers itself as an excellent starting point for an exploration of this dialectic that has defined the American people’s relationship with their land.

Unfortunately, this relationship often goes unexplored by students at the urban high school in which we teach. The school primarily serves children of color, many of whom lack the resources to explore the local,state, and national parks near their neighborhoods. According to the Outdoor Foundation, only 8% of black adolescents and 12% of Hispanic adolescents participated in outdoor activities in 2015, miniscule numbers compared to 71% of their white peers.As America grows increasingly diverse, this gap portends significant consequences not only for communities of color, but for the earth itself. The damaging effects of human-caused climate change are increasingly manifest and necessitate an “all hands on deck” response – one that is only possible if all people, including our students, become advocates for conservation.

Our self-guided fellowship into Alaska’s wilderness will enable us to report back to our students not only its beauty, but also the imperative to preserve that beauty. As a U.S. history teacher and an English teacher who teach juniors, we will equip our students to step into the wilderness – Alaskan and local, past and present – in order to experience the wonder of the earth and the need to preserve it for future generations. Like Muir, we are documenting our adventure, in writing and digitally, in order to create a meaningful experiential unit that transports students to the Alaskan wilds with the aim of inspiring students to seek out such experiences for themselves while also advocating for the preservation and protection of the natural world.”

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Armed with a 360 degree camera, Frank and Brandon are capturing experiences for their students, including:

• Observing the impact of the ExxonValdez oil slick and climate change on Kenai Fjords National Park;
• Witnessing the human-nature relationship on Reeve’s Field, the airstrip used to support the Pacific Theater during World War II;
• Exploring in Denali National Park and Preserve the Kantishna Mining District;
• Flying above the Arctic Circle to tour Simon Paneak Memorial Museum,
  which documents the natural, geological and cultural history of the Nunamiut people;
• Backpacking in lands preserved by the
  Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act

In addition to incorporating images and experiences into U.S. History and English III classes, the teaching team plans to collaborate with colleagues to create an experiential interdisciplinary unit that promotes outdoor engagement and conservation. They also believe their experiences will help grow the school’s Outdoor Leadership Club, which Brandon founded last year. Lastly, students will visit a local tract of land managed by the National Park Service, interviewing rangers about local issues that interact with what their teachers learned in Alaska. Students’ research will culminate in a joint English – U.S. History research and advocacy project they’ll present to peers, teachers, parents, community members and park rangers.

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Brandon is dedicated to preparing his students for active citizenship in the world by infusing his classes with authentic reading and writing. In 2016, he co-founded the school’s Outdoor Leadership Club in an effort to diversify the outdoors and expose students to the beauty of nature. In addition to being a Fund for Teachers Fellow, Frank has received a Teaching American History grant and studied the Civil Rights Movement at Cambridge University through the Gilder-Lehrman Institute.

As I think about my teaching practice, I believe it is important to provide my bilingual second grade students with a well-developed and engaging science curriculum. I recently read a study that showed only 10% of workers in science and engineering fields were African-American or Latino. As a teacher of students who are 98% Latinos, I want my students to see opportunities in these fields and I believe it is my responsibility to provide them with a strong base in early childhood to empower them to pursue scientific careers.

To that end, I decided to model for them scientific inquiry by designing a Fund for Teachers fellowship to explore the unique geography and biological diversity of the American Southwest. For two weeks last summer, I investigated geological formations and desert habitats to develop an integrated unit that references Southwestern literature and folk tales.

Before my fellowship, I was struggling to find meaningful ways for my students to connect to our science unit about rocks and pebbles. The curriculum felt stale and boring to me, so it was understandably difficult to get kids enthusiastic about something that I was finding dull. By exploring the parks and learning about the formation of canyons and rock formations, my excitement flourished and in turn reinvigorated the unit with some fresh lessons and demonstrations. I learned that, like my students, real authentic experiences deepen my knowledge.

During my fellowship, I was able to learn extensively about our national parks. I visited 8 national parks, 2 state parks and 2 parts of the Navajo Nation.  I collected information from both Park Rangers and locals about the region and its treasures. Since I couldn’t take my students with me it was important for me to bring my learning back to them. Through photos, artifacts and stories I was able to find ways to incorporate my leaning and experiences back to our work in the classroom.

I attended a number of presentations given by park rangers. It was truly inspiring to see the wide variety of topics that individual rangers and researchers are currently studying. I attended programs that varied from evidence of dinosaurs found in the Grand Canyon to the formation of the Rocky Mountains. One of the biggest lessons for me was how the rangers were definitely looking for more questions than answers. When I questioned different rangers for ideas for my own classroom, they often returned to the idea of encouraging student questioning. This pushed me to incorporate more inquiry into my lessons.

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Back in the classroom as a result of my fellowship, students are now:

• Conducting investigations on how rocks can be classified in different ways.
• Simulating erosion, weathering, and glacier’s effects on lands.
• Reading folktales from the region.
• Writing creative legends to describe natural phenomenon in my photographs.
• Studying the unique characteristics of the desert habitat and what adaptations are needed to survive there.
• Creating maps and travel logs that recreate my fellowship practicing map skills and elapsed time.

Participating in my own self-directed learning experience revitalized my teaching with fresh perspectives. As I enter my sixteenth year in the classroom, this fellowship provided me with time and space to reflect upon my teaching practice, as well as how it has changed over the years. By designing my own learning plan, I was able to focus on some of the elements that brought me to teaching in the first place. I am excited to recommit myself as an educator to curiosity and questioning.

I did not anticipate how much the level of autonomy would effect my learning in this fellowship. I knew that I would learn more about land forms and geography; I didn’t realize how much I would be influenced by how we learn. The education system has been moving to a more test based, data based, linear view of education. This fellowship reminded me to push back on this and allow space for questioning and curiosity. By exploring my own topics, I was able to connect to ways my students can explore in our classroom. By seeing various researchers explore their own topics and connect with
others in novel ways, I was able to see how intellectual sharing is able to deepen one’s own understanding.

This fellowship helped bring me back to center in my educational philosophy which has in its own way eroded over time. When I have spoken with other FFT Fellows, I think that this is one of the key components that makes this fellowship successful. I was able to create a fellowship that met my needs and as a result I was able to reflect on what the fellowship meant to my professional practice. This
time that I was able to study something of interest helped me connect to myself as a learner. This experience is personal for each grant recipient as we pursue topics of interest, but also immensely professional as we develop as educators.

To me, it is very powerful that as a veteran teacher I can speak about how my fellowship helped me to
develop as an educator. There are few learning experiences that I have that focus on my professional development; instead they are more frequently about analyzing data sets and adopting new methods. My Fund for Teachers fellowship let me step back and take a big picture view of what I want to do as an
educator. I went to study sand, rocks and land forms and left recommitted to fostering intellectual curiosity.

Mary Beth Werner (Telpochcalli Elementary School – Chicago, IL) is a second grade teacher who is passionate about bringing hands-on experiences to her classroom. She is a Drive Award winner, as well as a two-time FFT Fellow.

I teach high school Spanish, serve as chairman of the National Network of State Teachers of the Year (NNSTOY) and am an FFT Fellow. All three of these roles converged in December when I co-led a group of 50 Connecticut FFT Fellows in a one-day workshop asking the post-fellowship question, “What’s Next?”

NNSTOY is a professional association of teachers leading in policy, practice and advocacy. Our national organization’s primary membership consists of State and National Teachers of the Year, as well as finalists. NNSTOY’s mission is to engage ALL educators in leadership opportunities that promote relevant policies and best practices. One way we accomplish this goal is by providing workshops designed to train and grow teacher leaders. The sessions are rooted in the Seven Domains of the Teacher Leader Model Standards. It was my privilege to host this opportunity for my FFT peers and guide them in developing  the skills and dispositions that will allow us to extend our impact beyond the classroom.

As FFT Fellows, we are committed to integrating into our classroom practice the learning that results from our fellowships. We learn, return and can’t help to reflect on the question: “What’s next?” It is easy to create lessons as a result of our fellowship experiences. NNSTOY’s Teachers Leading workshop is special because it allows Fellows to explore how to scale the impact of those lessons beyond individual classrooms. During the session, we spent the day discussing our current and potential roles as teacher leaders and agents of change and considered how we could shift teaching in a way that ultimately impacts more students.

In my presentation, I elaborated on the shift from teaching students to collaborating with adults. The goal was for Fellows to consider how they could expand their impact post-fellowship and promote positive, sustainable change in their schools, districts and beyond. Practically, this meant demonstrating how to facilitate highly effective teams, navigate the change process, and create and implement action plans – new skills for most teachers. In the weeks ahead, NNSTOY will virtually reconvene the Fellows on a webinar to assess how they’re doing and how we can further help them scale their fellowship impact.

As a Fellow I am extremely grateful for the professional learning experience that FFT made possible for me, and through my sharing of NNSTOY’s work on teacher leadership, I felt that I could pay it forward. And so, while our Teachers Leading workshops are normally fee-based, I asked the executive director of NNSTOY if we could provide this training to FFT Fellows at no cost in order to extend their summer learning. She enthusiastically agreed and shared that only by empowering great teachers to lead will we be able to effect real change in education. With teachers leading, I firmly believe that we can improve outcomes for all children and help them to live the lives they dream.

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A previous Connecticut Teacher of the Year, Chris Poulos (Joel Barrow High School – Redding, CT) is National Board Certified and teaches all levels of Spanish, while also serving as an adjunct professor at Fairfield University. He previously served for two years in a hybrid role, splitting his time between teaching in his district and working alongside policymakers as a Teacher Leader-in-Residence at the Connecticut State Department of Education.

Today mark’s the third annual Mindfulness Day, but an increasing number of FFT Fellows use their grants to incorporate mindfulness into EVERY school day.

Deborah Howard and Judith Fitzgerald (Naubuc Elementary – Glastonbury, CT) spent a week this summer at the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in Stockbridge, MA.

“When we arrived at Kripalu, we were bubbly, excited and couldn’t stop talking, much like our students on the first day of school. Then, we immediately cringed when we noticed the ‘Quiet, please’ and ‘Enter mindfully’ signs posted everywhere,” said Deborah. “Through the techniques we learned and practiced, we can now help our students learn better emotion regulation leading to less stress and reduced impulsiveness.”

Although strangers prior to their fellowship, Shannon Kephart (Roberto Clemente Community Academy High School – Chicago) and Jodie Lang (Mary T. Murphy Elementary – Brandford, CT) both sought mindfulness practices at the same Buddhist monastery. Shannon teaches Algebra to special education students with various learning and emotional disabilities while Jodie teaches fifth graders at a Title I school. Independently, they observed students lacking focus, patience and cognitive flexibility. At Plum Village Mindfulness Retreat Center in Bordeaux, France, the teachers learned how to bring mindfulness into their own lives through learning sessions, meditations and the integration of mindfulness into daily chores on the working farm.

Shannon says her FFT fellowship completely shifted her mindset about how best to work with students to help them achieve as much success as possible.

“It has given me a new approach for helping students overcome anxiety, low confidence, and concentration difficulties and feel more connected to their school and schoolwork,” she said. “Often, students’ emotions and anxieties get in the way of them being willing to work and put in their best effort. By practicing mindfulness, students can begin to build their comfort level with themselves and grow into the strongest, most courageous, and thoughtful learners possible.”

Additional FFT Fellows research strategies for implementing yoga into their classrooms, like this team from Hinojosa Early Childhood/PreK in Houston who completed Yoga for Classroom Teachers training in the United Kingdom to promote teamwork, healthy living and improved concentration. See how other Fund for Teachers Fellows pursued mindfulness education by visiting our Project Search and enter the key word “mindfulness.”

In June 2014, Washington DC Fellow Ariel Laguilles began his Fund for Teachers fellowship – a 200 mile section of the historic Camino de Santiago pilgrimage from France to Spain. The following three years, he’s returned with his students from Gonzaga College High School.

Ariel’s goals for his FFT fellowship were twofold:

1. Become a pilgrim walking one of the oldest Christian pilgrimage routes to reflect on his
   personal, spiritual and professional life, and
2. Research and create a unique upperclassmen Spanish curriculum for students to reflect on where they have been, where they are and where they hope to be.

Judging from his student’s final observation on the blog maintained throughout the 2015 journey, both of Ariel’s goals have now been met…

“We have arrived! Señor Laguilles, Mr. Szolosi and the boys have made it into Santiago de Compostela! The morning started off relatively early – 6 am – as the goal was to make it to the pilgrim mass at noon. After a short breakfast at a nearby cafe in Pedrouzo, we set out, with the two veterans quickly leaving the high schoolers in the dust.

Today’s mileage was nothing compared to earlier in the week, clocking in at a paltry 12.5 miles. After watching the Km markers on the side of the road slowly dwindle, the boys were excited to see the glimmering city of Santiago on the horizon. It was a shame that that horizon was cleft in two by a mountain. Hours of hiking later, we were finally in the city…

…which was a shame, because the cathedral (where the pilgrimage REALLY ends) was another two miles inward. It was kind of cruel, in a way. The streets of the city were filled with cafes of all sorts and citizens who were clearly not strangers to tired-looking Americans with packs on.

Then, we truly arrived at our destination. The cathedral of St. James, with centuries-old stone towers arcing into the sky, stood before us. The fact that it was covered in scaffolding didn’t faze us at all, as we were too busy congratulating each other on having completed El Camino. Maybe we were celebrating the last day of walking. I dunno.

However, with the end of the Camino only ended the trek. This trip has been full of unique experiences which I wager will come to impact me and my actions for years to come. Reflecting on the trail has been a common theme, and now it is time for us to step back and reflect on what this adventure has meant for all of us. It may be different from person to person, but that’s the magic of the Camino: it provides. Exactly what it provides is up to the peregrino to decide.

The Eagles are on their way home. I hope the plane and train rides pass quickly. I miss my dog.”

Read more about Ariel’s 2014 Fund for Teachers fellowship on the blog he maintained throughout his “walk.” Ariel is a Spanish teacher and Department Chair at his alma mater, Gonzaga College High School in Washington, DC. He taught in Managua, Nicaragua, as a Jesuit Volunteer for three and a half years and has been at Gonzaga since his return in 2004. In 2006, Ariel was recognized by the High School Principals Association of the Archdiocese of Washington as a New Teacher of the Year. Aside from teaching, he coaches the school’s cross country and tennis teams, and enjoys ultrarunning “to stay sane.”