FFT Fellows take planes, trains and automobiles in pursuit of knowledge that will engage students. Kristie Blanchard and Christine Troup’s transportation of choice? Camels.

UNESCO World Heritage Sites can be hard to get to.

According to the United Nations Education, Scientific & Cultural Organization (UNESCO), World Heritage Sites are cultural and/or natural sites considered to be of ‘Outstanding Universal Value’ with special importance for everyone. Everyone, that is, except Kristie and Christine’s students at Bacon Academy in Colchester, CT.

“Our rural public high school lacks diversity and global acuity,” said the teaching team. “Freshmen also take a year-long geography course that lacks geospacial technologies used by professionals in the field. We designed our fellowship to explore iconic sites of Catalan, Andalusia and Morocco. Documenting the destinations with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) linked world cultures with geography to emphasize WHY these places have value.”

Taking their lead from the UNESCO theme “Protecting our Heritage and Fostering Creativity,” Christine and Kristie started their fellowship at the Creativity Workshop in Barcelona. There, they deepened proficiencies in the “Four C’s of Deeper Learning” outlined by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills: work collaboratively, improve communication, critical thinking and creativity.

Then, they set off for the Iberian Peninsula to interview citizens and learn from local guides and docents how UNESCO sites represent the cultural landscape of each unique region. Their odyssey took them to:

• Antoni Gaudi sites, including Sagrada Familia
• the Alhambra
• Alcazar of Seville
• El Torcal de Antequera, and
• the “Blue City” of Chefchaouen

The question that guided all of their research was “What makes a place worth preserving?”

Kristi and Christine began the school by addressing the lack of Middle Eastern and European elements in their curriculum. An ESRI Story Map documenting the fellowship models for students how technology can bridge information with authentic learning in multiple aspects of their lives and their community.

“In keeping with our fellowship’s guiding question, students will be challenged to find sites that they believe are worth preserving in our town,” said Kristie. “Through research, inquiry and writing, students may influence the Historic Preservation Office of Connecticut to add additional sites to their register.”

“We’re now able to make text-to-world applications through our experiences and gathered artifacts,” added Christine. “By using new techniques, all students, including those who read and write below proficiency level, will be encouraged to participate in more personalized ways to tell their authentic stories, as well as those of our community.”

[minti_divider style=”1″ icon=”” margin=”20px 0px 20px 0px”]

Christine Troup has taught grades 6 – 12 in three states over the past 23 years. In her free time, she enjoys reading, writing, and traveling, or any combination of the three. Kristie Blanchard has specialized in teaching 9th grade Geography and 10th grade AP Human Geography for nearly 20 years. Her career accomplishments include: the National Council for Geographic Education Distinguished Teaching Award, New England St. Lawrence Valley Geographical Society’s Friend of Geography Award, and the American Geographical Society Teacher Fellow.

We received this note from Lana Greenawald last week after she returned from her fellowship. Inspired by her work and her words, we’re pleased to share it with you.

To the Fund for Teachers team:

 

I am writing to express my deepest gratitude for the opportunity to study the Spanish language and Mexican culture at the Spanish Language Institute for Teachers in Cuernavaca, Mexico, through a Fund for Teachers grant.

 

During my five-week immersive fellowship, I lived with a host family, attended Spanish classes 30 hours per week, toured local schools and important cultural sites, met local teachers and constantly interacted with people in Spanish.

 

English learners with disabilities are an underserved population in public schools. I am especially honored to have received a Fund for Teachers grant so I may work to change this. My improved Spanish language skills and understanding of Mexican culture will enhance my culturally- and linguistically-responsive assessment and treatment of this unique population.

 

I am also confident that my fellowship experiences will help me to be a more inclusive educator as I have improved my ability to communicate with Spanish-speaking families of students with disabilities. Additionally, the grant allowed me to purchase three speech-language pathology professional textbooks about issues specific to assessing English learners with disabilities and an additional 21 private Spanish lessons to continue my studies following my international fellowship.

 

Thank you again for an unparalleled learning experience that will impact my work with English learners with disabilities throughout my career.

 

Yours sincerely,
Lana Greenawald
Speech-Language Pathologist
Margaret Ross Elementary & Hopewell Elementary – Aliquippa, PA

Lana is a speech-language pathologist for the Hopewell Area School District in Pittsburgh. She has served students with disabilities in the public school for five years and was previously awarded the Vira I. Heinz Scholarship for Women in Global Leadership, which funded a learning opportunity in France.  Before school begins, Lana will speak to the district’s special education department about her experience living in a non-English speaking town in Mexico for five weeks, the power of home language use in instruction, and her experience visiting an inspiring local special education school for people with Down’s syndrome. She plans to serve as a resource for the department and students with communication disorders for years to come.

FFT Fellow Ariel Laguilles, chairperson of the Modern and Classical Languages Department at Gonzaga High School in Washington DC, just returned from an extended field trip. Inspired by his fellowship, Ariel and his students navigate the ancient Camino de Santiago from France to Spain as the culmination of an elective that reflects on the history of the Camino, Ignatian Spirituality, the idea of pilgrimage, and other topics related to one of the oldest pilgrimages in the world.

 

Wisconsin is home to the third largest population of Hmong immigrants in the country, but students at Pittsville Elementary knew little about their peers from Southeast Asia. Kate Van Haren turned to textbooks, but most social studies information focused on European ancestry. Online research surfaced only immigration statistics and an occasional Hmong recipe.

“I realized a key component of the American immigration story was missing from my curriculum,” said Kate. “My students interacted with the Hmong community due to the large number of families relocated here, so I knew it was a group of people I could create interest around. I designed a Fund for Teachers fellowship to create a narrative around push/pull immigration that affirmed the fact that, despite our differences, most immigrants to the United States and their descendants share similarities with us, as well.”

Kate spent one month traversing Southeast Asia, researching Hmong culture and their modern societies in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Along the way, she learned about the custom of story cloths — series of embroidered pictures that document daily lives and legends. She purchased one from a Hmong tribal woman and created curriculum for fourth grade Wisconsin History and fifth grade US History students. After learning about the Hmong culture and welcoming guest speakers from a local Lao community organization, students drew personal story cloths sharing their personal ancestries.

“The stories of Hmong families who settled in the area are both tragic and heroic, yet my students were unaware of the diversity in our small farming community. It has been amazing to watch how this project opened their eyes to the different groups of people living around them,” said Kate. “In the age of data analysis and standards based testing, developing a globally conscious curriculum becomes more difficult. This fellowship inspired me to continue meeting my goal of shaping students with global and cultural awareness.”

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.

---

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.

---

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.

---

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!

---

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 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.”