In her book Teacher Leadership That Strengthens Professional Practice, Charlotte Danielson defines teacher leadership as “that set of skills demonstrated by teachers who continue to teach students but also have an influence that extends beyond their own classroom to others within their own school and elsewhere.” Today, we are pleased to announce that the following individuals chose Fund for Teachers as their “elsewhere,” becoming our newest Educator Advisory Council members. After a thorough application and interview process by the Council’s seven founding members, these Fellows commit to a two-year term and help inform our organization’s work supporting and elevating the learning of teachers and their students. We are grateful to the following teachers for their commitment to their peers and our programming.

Hyam Elsaharty

Prior to joining Seattle Public Schools as its District Social Emotional Learning Consulting Teacher, Hyam taught math and special education at Stephen T. Mather High School in Chicago, IL. In 2017, she and a colleague used a Fund for Teachers grant to investigate programs within refugee and public schools in Malaysia (pictured). Afterwards, the duo expanded existing advisory curriculum to meet the specific social and emotional needs of Malaysian and refugee students. In addition to her FFT fellowship, Hyam is also the recipient of the P. Buckly Moss grant and was named Chicago Public School’s SEL Teacher of the Year in 2019.

“Becoming an FFT Fellow was the impetus which began my life shift personally and professionally,” said Hyam. “As a woman of color who works in SEL where I get to help folks develop a sense and pride in their identity, self-advocate, and practice empathy, I am deeply committed and connected to the EAC’s objectives. In fact, without FFT I do not believe I would be secure in my own identity.”

Read more about Hyam’s fellowship here and her thoughts on social emotional learning in this Chalkbeat Chicago article.

Marco Cenabre

Marco teaches high school literature at New Haven, CT, in the district where he was born, raised and from which he graduated. In 2019, he used his FFT grant to attend the Bard College Institute for Writing and Thinking in Annandale, NY, and afterwards award-winning author Debra Moffit’s “Gaining Creative Self Confidence Writing” retreat in Lake Annency, France, to implement intentional strategies in reflection and storytelling.

“I believe in teacher-to-teacher collaboration, and leadership,” said Marco on why he chose to join the EAC. “One of the largest issues in teacher development is the fact that administrators, representatives of organizations, and others far removed from the classroom are the ones constructing the ‘solutions’ and offering them to teachers. It is through teacher innovation, reflection and a wide range of perspective that will spark what’s necessary in order for change to be truly enacted. Being a part of the EAC, and collaborating with others, will be an opportunity to offer solutions leading to widespread change.”

In addition to leading Fund for Teachers’ Social Justice Innovation Circle, Marco teaches a graduate course on reflective practice to first year teachers throughout the state, is a member of the Anti-Racist Teaching & Learning Collective and is a Teach for America alumni. Read more about Marco’s fellowship here.

Marin Leroy

Marin teaches at Evergreen Community Charter School in Asheville, NC, where she coordinates for environmental education programs. In 2015, she used her grant to attend the week-long Edible Schoolyard Academy in Berkeley, CA, with subsequent mentoring at a K-8 Life Lab garden in Santa Cruz, CA. She returned to curate a team of educators from her broader community to support local edible education and school yard garden projects.

“My opinion is that most teacher certification programs give teachers a foundation, a starting place, but that FFT provides ways for educators to cultivate our own passions, which makes our teaching and facilitation of subject more highly engaging for students,” said Marin. “The more inspired we are as educators, the more we can spark our kids’ imagination and love for learning. As part of the EAC I will immerse myself in a community of professionals working to shift toward this academic paradigm through teacher engagement and inspiration.”

Read more about Marin’s community impact here.

Rao Olayeye

Rao recently returned from a teaching assignment in Bahrain, where she was the information technology specialist. Prior to that, she taught at the Atlanta International School, where she founded its middle school robotics program and developed the high school program into a competitive team. Her expertise in robotics began in 2012, when she used an FFT grant to attend a Robotics Education Global Conference in Oahu, HI, and enroll in Carnegie Mellon’s National Robotic Engineering Center in Pittsburgh, PA (pictured).

“There are not many women in educational leadership and I want to see a shift in that area,” said Rao on why she applied for an EAC position. “My masters and doctorate degrees, combined with years of experience teaching locally and internationally, are empowering me to be the change I want to see in the world and look forward to bringing that passion and commitment to the EAC to benefit a wider community.”

Victoria Thomson

Victoria teaches Integrated Science and astronomy in East Lyme, CT, after a career as a scientist/entomologist. In 2019, she used her FFT grant to participate in a summer teacher training course sponsored by the Galileo Teacher Training Program in the Canary Islands, home to some of the most technologically-advanced telescopes in the Northern Hemisphere (pictured).

When asked why she wanted to join the EAC, Victoria responded, “I am the first generation to go to college in my family and ended up thriving at an Ivy League School. I wanted to give back to students and inspire them, which is why I became a teacher. As an adult, I see teachers get stuck by the barriers placed on them in the classroom. I see and hear teachers feel like victims of a system. I want to be a part of a group that inspires teachers to find other teachers to be rise up together and be brave, to do what is best for our children, our future leaders.”

Read more about Victoria’s fellowship here.

Today marks the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade History, an annual commemoration established by the United Nations General Assembly in 2007. The aim of the day is “to inculcate in future generations the causes, consequences and lessons of the transatlantic slave trade, and to communicate the dangers of racism and prejudice.” FFT Fellows consistently design fellowships to further this work and we are honored to share the work of one of them today. Aisha Haynes (Academy of Urban Planning & Engineering – Brooklyn) used her grant to research colonization in Ghana on the 400th anniversary of the first enslaved African arrived in Virginia to share learning with the school Equity Team and advance campus inclusivity goals. We’re grateful for Aisha’s work and her story…

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“Akwaaba” is a traditional greeting in Ghana that welcomes visitors. This greeting resonates with me often as a teacher in the neighborhood in which I teach in Brooklyn, New York. Many of my students are recently arrived immigrants, students who are living in temporary housing, or simply new to our school community. This warm welcome invites my students into our classroom space to move from becoming visitors in our community to making themselves at home. I designed this fellowship to celebrate their diversity, encourage their inclusion, and build leadership amongst my adolescent students.

For ten days, I experienced the history and culture of Ghana while staying with a host family to broaden personal understanding of the African country, particularly the role it played in the slave trade, and more effectively teach this period of history. Visiting the Cape Coast was the most transformative of experiences. To stand in the same spaces where enslaved people were once tortured, punished, and forever taken away from the life that they once knew was jarring. Despite this painful past, so many of the Ghanians that I met were willing to acknowledge the dark past while acknowledgouting the hope and promise for the future. I was inspired by this attitude and I hope to share these experiences and attitudes with my student.

The “Year of Return” [2019 commemorated 400 years since the first enslaved Africans touched down in Jamestown, Virginia in the United States] was a carefully curated event by the nation’s government and tourism department. Watching them weave music, dance, art, and history together to tell a comprehensive story of Ghana’s past and present. This has supported a more interdisciplinary approach to my teaching and I am encouraged that my students are learning more because they are engaged. I also hope that my students will feel emboldened to share their identity with newfound ways to tell their stories.

I did not expect to be so personally impacted by the visit. To walk into spaces and hear “Welcome home, my sister,” gave me a sense of joy and belonging that I have never felt in any place that I’ve visited. As a Black woman in America, I scarcely have the experience to be in spaces where everyone looks like me and I was unprepared for how significant that would be to me. Additionally, the visit to the slave castle left me committed to retelling the story of marginalized people in their voices.

Students now have access to the resources I collected during my time in Ghana to begin drafting their own origin stories. After developing these stories, they will be invited to address issues around their own identities and present their findings to the school community. This will culminate in a full day of activities entitled “Day of Dialogue” in which students act as facilitators.

This work is expanding school wide events to deconstruct stereotypes and build our school community. Staff, faculty, and the community take part in this daylong activity, which has become a tradition for our school. Our students lead the activities throughout the day in classrooms and after the day is complete, they often feel emboldened to share their skills at conferences and other schools on the campus.

After Ghana, I have renewed energy and more directed focus toward creating a meaningful experience for students. I teach mostly black and brown students and sharing these travel stories and memories with them is a personal experience that brings us closer. My teaching is transformed because my worldview feels larger as I feel more convicted to make their teaching relevant, interdisciplinary and authentic.

Too often, students feel like their learning is in silos- their personal lives are separated from the classroom. Having had such a rich cultural experience, I am dedicated to giving my students the same experience. Travel also reminded me that teaching should be interdisciplinary, relevant, and mixes the past with their contemporary lives. When teachers are personally enriched, they pass along the experiences and try to replicate those experiences in a meaningful way.

(top to bottom: Aisha in front of the Ghanian flag. The red in the flag represents the blood of those who died for independence from Great Britain, gold-the mineral wealth of the country, green-the country’s rich forests and nature, and black star-African emancipation. | The Door of No Return at Elmina Castle, through which tens of thousands of Africans destined for slavery passed to board slave ships. | Visiting Kwame Nkrumah Square, which recognizes the country’s first Prime Minister and President of Ghana. | Black Star Square, site of the annual Independence Parade. Read excerpts from today’s speech by the UN Secretary-General about this year’s theme “Confronting Slavery’s Legacy of Racism Together” here.)

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Aisha is a high school teacher in Brooklyn, New York where she has taught English for the last eleven years. She is also a doctoral candidate in New York University Educational Leadership and Policy program. Her research interests include the changing educational landscape, education equity and school leadership.

…not a drop to drink. That’s what Richard Lebowitz discovered on his Fund for Teachers fellowship last summer in Indonesia. For two weeks, he collaborated with Balinese municipalities, scholars, citizens and tourists to research the country’s inability to overcome its water shortage crisis. Richard’s inspiration came from observing water waste at The SEEALL Academy in Brooklyn, NY, where his students are now implementing sustainability practices as a result of his research.

“An environmental sustainability practice that my school fails to address is our overconsumption of freshwater,” said Richard. “Our sinks and water fountains often break, and excess water pours out of these faucets while they are not in use. They are eventually fixed, but only after wasting potable water. The school’s sinks and toilets are outdated and overconsume freshwater because they lack modern water saving technology, like reduced water volume sinks and toilets.  I am committed to transforming our school culture, first by transforming the way my students view their roles as environmental stewards within our school and community.”

The most effective way to do that, he decided, was to show students what happens when a community fails to advocate for its environment.

Throughout his fellowship, Richard witnessed and documented the implications of a freshwater shortage crisis:

• More than 60% of the country’s waterways have dried up;
• Densely populated areas along the coastline have lowered the water table level, causing saltwater to leach into aquifers;
• Agricultural runoff pollutes bodies of water; and,
• Tourism creates an increased demand for freshwater.

Back at school, Richard introduced students to the topic of Bali’s water crisis through his fellowship pictures, videos and interviews. Then the students got to work, proposing solutions to four primary challenges listed above. The process included creating visual representations of their solutions through a classroom model, as well as science fair tri-folds.

This project sparked further student activism around the school, including elimination of single-use plastics and a new recycling program.

“Before the fellowship, my professional obligation as a science teacher was to inspire students to develop a love for learning while aiding their growth and development,” said Richard. “Now, my job continues to be what it was plus to inspire students to become positive contributors to society, the community, and the world within areas of science such as environment conservation. I have an obligation to share my experiences with others. I am grateful that I was able to have this opportunity to learn.”

We’re proud to share Richard’s story in celebration of World Water Day. Learn more about his fellowship by clicking here.

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Richard is a middle school science teacher, sustainability coordinator, and science department chairperson in Brooklyn, New York. Currently, Richard is leading an effort that would bring recycling into his middle school. He spearheaded the construction of a greenhouse with a roof rainwater collection system. Next year, he plans to bring a reusable water bottle filtered refill station into his school. He is a Math for America Master Teacher and Greentree Foundation member.

Today California’s state legislature will officially apologize to Japanese Americans sent to internment camps during World War II. This aspect of World War II is one many students don’t learn about during history classes, but one that many FFT Fellows seek to understand and share. Today, we share the learning of Timothy Nagaoka, whose grandfather fought for the United States in the European Theatre during the war.

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At the Minidoka National Historic Site in Idaho

I teach Japanese as a foreign language to elementary and middle school students, many of whom come from immigrant families. Some families are from Central and South America, some from the Caribbean Islands, and others from Southeast Asia. I share this heritage. I grew up in Japan. My mother is sansei (third-generation Japanese American) from Hawaii; her father, a nisei (second-generation Japanese American), was one of many Japanese Americans on the island who enlisted after Pearl Harbor. He wanted to prove his loyalty to the country that had become very suspicious of his people, so he fought with other nisei from Hawaii in the 100th Infantry Battalion, which became one of the most decorated in military history.

Growing up, I heard my grandfather tell stories of fighting in Europe in World War II. Not until much did I learn of another battle fought by Japanese Americans on the mainland. It was not a battle of bombs and bullets, but a battle of patience and perseverance. Like my grandfather, who demostrated his patriotism by enlisting, many Japanese Americans proved their loyalty by enduring relocation to internment camps.

To fully understand and better teach this period of American history, I designed my Fund for Teachers fellowship to explore the Japanese American experience during World War II and – more specifically – the US government’s handling of these citizens.

With Secretary Norman Mineta and Senator Alan Simpson at Heart Mountain

I drove 3,500 miles through 8 Western States over 11 days to research 10 monuments and former internment sites. I also stopped at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles (where I took a selfie with  George Takai). An unplanned experience was attending the Annual Pilgrimage at Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Wyoming, where we honored those who who advocated, resisted and fought for Japanese Americans. It was this stop where I met former Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta and Senator Alan Simpson.

Throughout my fellowship, I focused on two topics:
• What Japanese Americans endured throughout relocation, and,
• How relocation of the Japanese Americans is remembered today.

At the Gila River War Relocation Center in Arizona

During the fellowship, I filmed interviews with former internees about their experiences, which I’m using as resources with students and colleagues. I am also designing two curricular units that teach about the Japanese American internment experience: one for Japanese language teachers that incorporates phrases and dialogues used in camps; and one for English Arts and Social Studies teachers who want to teach about the topic. Upon completion, I will offer workshops throughout Boston Public Schools and through local non-profit teacher training organizations.

In my classes, I’m using the knowledge and connections I gained through my fellowship to teach about the forced internment of Japanese Americans during the war. Previously, I’ve taught Japanese customs, traditions, history and culture, but I’d never considered teaching the Japanese American immigrant story. I now incorporate into my language lessons words and phrases, such as gaman (perserverance) and shikata ga nai (can’t be helped), that were often used by the Japanese Americans to describe their confinement. I’ve come to understand that by teaching my culture’s extraordinary circumstances, I can deepen connections with students whose lives reflect similar themes, old and new.

Tule Lake Segregation Center in California

On January 2nd, 1945, restrictions preventing resettlement in the 100 mile Exclusion Zone along the West Coast was removed. I believe a strong democracy lies in not forgetting the past, especially not the mistakes. My fellowship researching the plight of tens of thousands Japanese Americans was humbling and allowed me to gain a more complete perspective of the American immigrant experience. I am using this perspective to better understand (and teach) my students from immigrant families themselves.

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Timothy Nagaoka teaches Japanese in six schools around the greater Boston area and has dedicated his career to creating opportunities for students and colleagues to connect with Japan. In recognition of his work, Timothy has received the John E. Thayer Award from the Japan Society of Boston, and the Henry L. Shattuck Public Service Award from the Boston Municipal
Research Bureau.

Read about another FFT Fellow’s experience researching life in and around Japanese Relocation Camps in Utah and Colorado here.

They gathered data in national parks, followed the Brothers Grimm through Germany, researched the secret to happiness in Southeast Asia, built an aquaponics system in Africa, and conducted interviews in Northern Ireland. Now they apply those experiences in the classroom and they want to share strategies  — and learn your own — for connecting students to global peers.

On Wednesday, February 19th, Fund for Teachers is hosting its inaugural webinar series designed to facilitate learning beyond the initial fellowship experience. All teachers are invited and encouraged to participate. Registration for the event is available here.

A little more about our panel…

Connecticut Fellow Dory Moore connects her students with peers in Michigan and Bermuda using Flipgrid.com. Students in each location design underwater robots to collect water and sand samples, then use the Flipgrid platform to sare ideas and prototypes. This spring, these citizen scientists will meet up in Bermuda (using grant money Dory secured) to test their designs and collect data on the invasive lion fish.

Kate Craven is a library media specialist who helps students practice research skills using Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Her fellowship in Germany led to a collaboration through the German American Partnership Program and now map how each country is meeting indicators of the United Nations Global Goals.

 Carly Imhoff uses Empatico to be matched with international classrooms and connect through live video. They are currently sharing projects about climate change and renewable energy. (Her students also taught students in Nigeria about “Baby Shark” and they shared a hand clapping game.) Carly’s students also use Flipgrids to share with peers in Uruguay Lego creations for UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Oklahoma Teacher of the Year and two-time FFT Fellow Donna Gradel developed long-term relationships with a school and orphanage in Kenya that has resulted in two student expeditions there to implement an aquaponics and sustainable food initiative they developed in AP Environmental Science.  Watch her tell her story here.

And Saul Fussiner is a high school writing teacher who has experimented with classroom partnerships between his students, students in other parts of the United States and Ireland.  He has leveraged a virtual pen pal structure using e-mail and Google hangouts, which he talks about in this brief video.

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What questions do you have for these exemplary educators?

Submit them to carrie@fundforteachers.org and join the discussion on February 19th at 4 pm CST.

Register here for the webinar.

Abraham Lincoln High School, located on the west side of San Francisco, is far from the traditional ethnic neighborhoods of Chinatown and the Mission District; centers of the city’s Asian and Latinx communities. Eighty percent of Lincoln’s students identify with these ethnic groups so AP Human Geography teacher Leon Sultan decided to utilize his own city to design a research project in these well-known locations in order to help his students dig deeper into their own communities and see them in a new light.

“Concepts of identity, culture, language, ethnicity, nation and the concept of the ‘nation-state’ are all central to our course – as well as to the lives of my students,” said Sultan. “I sent students on field trips into their own communities to research these concepts through new lenses.”

And by lenses, Leon means figurative and literal. Mirroring  research he conducted on the Catalan independence movement in Barcelona last summer, Leon’s students took photographs, shot videos and recorded audio to document Sense of Place.  They then worked in mixed ability groups to produce Vlogs (video blogs) using a clear narrative structure, voice-over narration, text graphics, and montages of still photo/videos and interview footage. The result were research projects that effectively demonstrate course concepts, utilize academic vocabulary and connect learning to their lives.

Project 1: “What is the impact of gentrification in the Mission” and “Is Chinatown Authentic?”

Project 2: “Chinatown district through the lens of Human Geography”

“Students benefit from seeing their teachers as role models and life-long learners,” said Sultan. “This summer, they watched me conduct field research through Vlogs I produced on my fellowship. When I arrived back to school this fall, students I had never met before were already well acquainted with me, and with key course concepts. Then, they engaged in the same type of learning that I did. Ultimately I want this project to serve as a template for other teachers to follow as our school moves towards more technology integration and interactive project-based learning.”

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In celebration of Lunar New Year, we are also proud to highlight the learning of a few additional
2019 FFT Fellows:

Today marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. In November 2005, the United Nations General Assembly designated this day as International Holocaust Remembrance Day to honor the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust and millions of other victims of Nazism. We choose to do so by sharing the story of Kimberly McCabe, social studies teacher at Gulf Coast Middle School, Spring Hill, FL. With her Fund for Teachers grant, Kimberly joined a professional learning tour in Finland to explore that country’s model of Phenomenon-Based education practices, then researched historical sites and landmarks in Germany, Poland, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic to create a Phenomenon-Based unit on the Jewish Holocaust.

On January 27, 1945, the Soviets liberated the largest of the Nazi death camps which was located in German-occupied Poland. By this point Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau had an estimated death toll of over 1.1 million people and although it had originally been a detention center for political prisoners, it had turned into a death camp for Jews, Roma, and others who were deemed enemies of the Nazi state.

As we memorialize the beginning of the end of Auschwitz, I am brought back to this summer when, through Fund for Teachers, my colleague and I stood inside the gates of Auschwitz and took part in a six-hour educational tour of the camps. Our purpose? To more deeply understand life inside a concentration camp, to have the opportunity to speak directly to the very highly trained guides at Auschwitz and ask them the questions we still had, and to bring back resources to our classroom. Although we left Auschwitz with our arms full of books, professional photos, and other resources, the biggest resource we brought back to our classroom was our memories of that day and the feeling of walking through history.

One of the memorials that I found most impactful was the book of names at Auschwitz. Here is listed every single victim of the Holocaust. They also included blank pages for the 2 million people who were not identified.

As a Social Studies teacher, standing in a place where history has taken place always has a particular reverence to it. Touching a piece of the past always feels transportive and surreal. Auschwitz was no exception; in fact it may have been even truer there. I took a few moments during the tour to sit in one of the memorials and reflect on the sheer number of lives lost there and what could be taken from that ash and turned into beauty in the future generations, and what role I would play in that as a teacher. The six-hour educational tour is the longest tour that Auschwitz provides. It covers both Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau, and while I recommend the experience if you are visiting, I cannot stress enough how taxing it is both physically and emotionally. We left the location completely drained. Our evening was spent silently reflecting on our day. My thoughts kept returning to the fact that I had spent less than a workday in Auschwitz under voluntary circumstances, on a beautiful day in mid-summer. How could I possibly ever understand what life in Auschwitz was like for those who lived it? How could anyone survive that? Moreover, how could any human inflict that on another? The thoughts seemed too heavy for that day, and even today, months after my visit I feel the same when I reflect back. Now, even more than ever, it is my goal to honor the victims and celebrate the survivors of the Holocaust while also empowering the future generation to create a world in which discrimination no longer exists and differences are embraced.

Each year I am humbled by the task of teaching the Holocaust to my 7th grade students. For weeks prior to the unit I begin to feel the weight that comes with that responsibility. My ultimate goal is always to honor the victims and survivors as well as their families, while at the same time opening up my classroom to discussions of how this applies to them today. If I could choose one thing that every student would take away from this unit, it would be that we should always stand up for those being persecuted among us. This will not always mean large groups of people who are being persecuted by their government; it may be as simple as standing up for the kid being bullied on the playground-or more likely via social media. It may mean reaching out to those who are different from you in order to better understand their perspective. It may mean choosing to vote with other groups in mind.

One of the memorials at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The location was once used as a dumping site for crematorium ashes. However, now it is a quiet place to sit and reflect and memorialize those lost here.

Whatever form it takes, being an upstander is worth the temporary discomfort that may accompany it because if we don’t stick together as members of the human race, we will eventually look around us to find that there is no one there to support us in our time of need. 

For this I rely on a particular quote by Martin Neimöller that always makes an impact on me regardless of the number of times I have read it.

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.

To me this quote embodies everything that went wrong during the Holocaust while at the same time allowing me to give honor to those who chose to stand up and do what they could to help others during the Holocaust.

Each week students are shown the biography of a different upstander. They are highlighted as the true heroes of the Holocaust, regular people who did extraordinary things to help strangers. To encourage this sense of empathy in my students, I hand-select a person for them to follow through the Holocaust. I talk to them about how each one of the people they will follow was someone’s child, sibling, parent, or friend. That just like all of us, they were a real individual with hopes and dreams, with fears and insecurities, with a whole future in front of them. I let them know that I am counting on them to take care of this person during our journey. To care about them, to become invested in their life story. Some even take time to research the person on their own time to learn more about them. Throughout the unit they find out more about the person they are following. They learn about their lives and families prior to the 1933. They hear about their family’s businesses and work, their home life, their country. As we move through the timeline of events they witness the changes in their individual’s life. Finally at the conclusion of the unit they find out whether or not their individual was a victim of a survivor of the Holocaust. It is a very somber class period because by this point the students have realized that no matter what the outcome, their individual has faced years of anguish that we can’t even imagine today. It is eye-opening to students that life can change so quickly because of one idea.

This year as a capstone to the unit, our students took part in a project which memorialized the victims and survivors of the Holocaust by creating a memorial quilt. Our local Holocaust museum is to credit for the idea behind the project as it is one they have done with visiting classrooms and have displayed in their learning center. Our students had the opportunity to visit the museum, hear from a survivor, view the quilt designed by past students, as well as take a guided tour of the museum. This visit created many questions for them which we explored during our unit. At the end of the unit they each created a felt quilt square. Each individual also wrote an accompanying essay explaining the symbolism present in their quilt square. The pieces were then combined to make one large class quilt as a memorial to the lives lost in the Holocaust and display in the school as a way to remember the lessons that can be learned from this tragedy.

Although there is nothing we can do to change the horrifying things that occurred during the Holocaust, the quilt project allowed our students to feel as though they were able to give something back to those who suffered by remembering and honoring them.  Rather than focus solely on the horrible things that were done, it allows us to focus on the beauty of the individuals and the hope that future generations will never allow this to happen again.

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Kimberly (pictured on the right with a member of their group at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam) is a middle school Social Studies teacher in the Tampa Bay Area. She is a mom of 3 and enjoys learning as much as she enjoys teaching. She is always looking for new ways to learn through experiences, and traveling to historic sites is her preferred way to learn. She has been awarded with 3 NEH teacher grants, is a graduate of the Florida Justice Teaching Institute, and a member of the 2019 iCivics Teacher Network.

On Pearl Harbor Day, we remember the 2,403 people killed in the surprise attack by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service. The “date which will live in infamy” launched America’s entry into World War II; the bombings also resulted in the internment of 7,000 Japanese American citizens in relocation centers by order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Teaching the complexities of this time is complex in and of itself for Tim Barry. His students at Nathan Hale Middle School in Coventry, CT, fall within a wide range of ability levels.

“This drastic range creates difficulty when choosing and providing engaging and appropriate text for students of all abilities,” explained Tim. “Fortunately, with the broad scope of our World War II unit, we are able to provide high interest and appropriately leveled options so that all students may contribute and draw connections to classroom discussion and produce work that they can be proud of.”

But that unit lacked dialogue about the domestic impact of the war. Tim designed a Fund for Teachers fellowship fill that gap and, last summer, examined life in and around Japanese Relocation Camps in Utah and Colorado to help students:

• Connect to the past and apply that knowledge to the current climate in the United States?
• Draw parallels between the treatment of Japanese Americans in the United States and Jewish (and other minority) people in Europe during WWII?
• Understand the Pyramid of Hate and how the act of dehumanization impacts individuals and large groups through self reflection and journaling, and
• Support other disciplines across the curriculum such as math (budgeting), social studies (constitutional questions), and science (geographic significance of camps and land features that made them ideal).

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Last summer, I was fortunate to travel to Colorado and Utah to study Japanese Internment Camps as part of my Fund For Teachers fellowship.  My intention was to supplement our current World War II unit with experiences from the home front to allow students to draw parallels in today’s climate of cultural bias.  I want my students to draw inspiration my own curiosity and go out and explore the world.  I want them to challenge what they know or think they know and I want them to be acutely aware of how history has a tendency to repeat itself.

Granada Relocation Center memorial

Trip Details: I spent nine days traveling from the Topaz Camp in Delta, Utah to the Moab Isolation Center in Moab, Utah and finally to Granada Relocation Center (Amache) in Granada, Colorado.  In Delta, I was struck by the beautifully curated Topaz Museum which highlighted the blending of traditional Japanese culture with the easily recognizable American identity of the time.  High school yearbooks, recounts of baseball games, and a letterman’s jackets sat side-by-side with instruments of the Japanese tea ceremony and watercolor paintings.  Despite the dramatic civil rights violations perpetrated by the United States government, these proud people still created a sense of normalcy and everyday life.  The message of their resilience is one that I hope will resonate with my students.

Pictured with Mr. Kitajima and Dr. Clark

The highlight of my trip was being able to connect with Denver University at their biennial open house at the Amache site in Colorado.  There, I was introduced to Dr. Bonnie Clark who is the Project Director of the DU Amache Research Project.  I was able to meet several former internees of the camp, including 87 year old, Mr. Ken Kitajima who was a resident of the camp from ages 12-15.  My hope is that I can provide my students with a first hand account of what it was like to be of middle school age in a Relocation Camp.  I plan to connect with Mr. Kitajima virtually to conduct interviews and provide insight into his experience.  Perspective is one of the most important things I can offer to my students.

Middle school is a trying time and although the experiences of my students will be different than those of the past, the challenges will not be unique.  My hope is that my journey will foster a sense of intellectual curiosity as my students create their own world view and tackle the test of growing up in an increasingly demanding world.

The digital world in which we live allows people to instantly access information and make snap decisions based on their own experiences and biases, yet we don’t often slow down to assess all sides of a story. Ultimately, I want my students to be willing to challenge what is accepted by society and greet people from all walks of life with an open mind.

On this day in 1911, Suffragettes stormed Parliament in London. All were arrested and chose prison terms. Their leader was Emmeline Pankhurst – the focus of Eric Reid-St. John‘s fellowship.

Eric, a theatre teacher at Spain Park High School in Hoover, AL, researched Pankhurst and the suffrage movement they incited. While in London, he found in Trafalgar Square the location of the 1908 rally for which Mrs. Pankhurst was also arrested (pictured). He then studied with three avant-garde theatres, laying the groundwork for his students’ creation of a play about Lady Constance Lytton, an English aristocrat who disguised herself as a working woman to support suffragettes.

“Through research, I found that I could relate a lot to Constance,” said Rachel Ponder, who played the lead. “However, most of all, I was so in awe of her dedication towards the suffrage movement. Being a part of this creative process has inspired me both as a woman and as a human being.”

 

Ponder and 23 students representing each grade spent three months researching the suffrage movement in the United States and Britain before collaborating on a script and set. Each performer created a character journal comprised of photos, newspaper articles and other primary resources they uncovered. An Oxford professor who authored a book on Lytton Skyped into class to inform students’ research, as well.

“Current events were on my mind when I began this process and they continue to bring about a sense of urgency surrounding women’s rights,” said Eric. “My students took the history of this topic and explored its correlation with today’s headlines. They created a story that allowed people to see that the expansion of equal rights is the natural progression of a free society.”

Reviews are in, and at a state theatre competition, Ponder won Best Actress, her cast mates won Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress and Best Ensemble and Deeds Not Words was named Best in Show.

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Update from Eric:

“Several of our seniors from that year’s show have gone on to study theatre at various universities, including Viterbo in Wisconsin (our lead actress from Deeds Not Words studies musical theatre there), University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa; Samford University and Birmingham-Southern in Birmingham; and Emory in Atlanta.

That ended up being my last year teaching in Alabama, as I took a position at a school in Middlebury, VT, the following year. This marks my second year directing the Addison Repertory Theatre at the Hannaford Career Center teaching ART – a class that allows students from area schools to focus on either technical theatre or performance during the school day.

The techniques of devised theatre that I studied along with the suffragettes while in England that summer still impact the way I teach. The students and I have created two plays using devised methods over the past year; one took fables and folk tales and turned them into a children’s show that we toured to five local elementary schools, while the other challenged students to develop a series of short plays that were presented to sold-out crowds over two nights.

The theatre creation techniques I learned will continue to affect the way I teach for years to come. The research into the suffragettes will always continue to influence the way I view the struggle for equal rights. (I have also since been able to take my mother and daughter to the Women’s Rights National Park in Seneca Falls, NY, and have now attended two Convention Days there, annual celebrations that commemorate the first conference on women’s rights in the US).

Thank again for thinking of Deeds Not Words. I believe that was one of the most immediate and important works I’ve been a part of.”

Program officers are Fund for Teachers’ primary point of contact for grant recipients. These individuals field applicants’ questions; support new Fellows throughout the summer; and continue to encourage them once back in the classroom. Other than living vicariously through the Fellows with whom they work, program officers’ favorite part of the job is meeting those teachers in person — which Alycia Johnston did this month at Reflection events in Oklahoma, Tennessee and Chicago.

Reflections are just that, evenings in which Fellows convene to reflect on all they accomplished over the summer. We asked Alycia to share a little about these inspiring nights when she witnesses the impact of Fund for Teachers grants…

[minti_dropcap style=”circle”]Q[/minti_dropcap] You see Fellows twice a year: at Orientations in the spring and Reflections in the fall, after they’ve had a few months to process their fellowships. What’s the “before and after” you observe?

[minti_dropcap style=”circle”]A[/minti_dropcap] At Orientations, I hand teachers checks for up to $10,000 and say, “We believe in you and your ideas.” Because they rarely hear this sentiment, the teachers look shocked — even though they worked diligently on their proposals for months and received their award notifications via email weeks earlier. During these “pre-fellowship” events, the teachers are reserved, cautious and sit far apart from each other. During the Reflections, however, the same teachers are chatty, warm, laughing and sharing their learning. Getting their attention can be a challenge because they are eager to network and leverage each other’s fellowships to benefit more students.

[minti_dropcap style=”circle”]Q[/minti_dropcap]What are the most common things Fellows say during Reflection events?

[minti_dropcap style=”circle”]A[/minti_dropcap] Hands down, that they’ve never been trusted with so much autonomy as educators. Teachers live in a one-size-fits-all/cookie cutter/prescribed environment when it comes to professional development, so the freedom represented by a Fund for Teachers grant is unprecedented for most. Fellows talk about walking back into their classrooms after their fellowships with a confidence they didn’t previously have. They feel like experts on topics they pursued during the summer and that impacts how they teach the rest of the year. I also hear:

• “I’ve never seen an organization that meets me where I am.”
• “At every turn, Fund for Teachers says, ‘Yes! Do that!'”
• “Throughout the process of designing a blueprint for learning, executing my plans and bringing it back to students, I felt honored, trusted and respected as a professional.”

Read more about the Tennessee Reflection here.

[minti_dropcap style=”circle”]Q[/minti_dropcap]You’ve been a program officer for eight years. What advice do you have for teachers preparing their application for a 2020 grant?

[minti_dropcap style=”circle”]A[/minti_dropcap] In my opinion, the most important part of crafting a solid proposal is identifying one’s passion. It’s so clear when someone wants to travel to Italy and writes a proposal for that purpose versus when someone finds a need in their practice or gap in their knowledge and then creates a road map for how they are going to address those learning goals. Also, no matter what teachers want to learn or where they want to learn it, their proposals should be personal and capture their passion for the topic. If a teacher can make a case for why it’s vital for them to make this fellowship happen and their passion shines through, that’s a great start.

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Click here to meet three of our program officers and hear their tips for crafting a strong grant proposal.

(Pictured L-R: Salma Zaky, Alycia Johnston and Stephanie Ascherl while filming a Facebook Live tutorial. Watch for upcoming Wednesday Webinars led by these experts on November 13, December 11 and January 8. Register here.)

Barbara Walters said, “Most of us have trouble juggling. The woman who says she doesn’t is someone whom I admire but have never met.” FFT Fellow Helen Dole, however, seems to be managing fairly well. Helen teaches sixth grade at Lower Manhattan Community Middle School in New York City. With her teammate Molly Goodell, she and five-month-old daughter Sophie Tilmant set off for Alaska this summer to tour boreal forest, coastal, tundra, and glacial ecosystems and collect first-hand evidence of climate change for a sixth grade unit called Human Impacts. She shares some of her experiences below…

Why was it vital for you to pursue this particular opportunity/experience?

An educator in Denali shares with us about the methane that is being released as a result of permafrost melting.

We teach in a school that has students from a wide range of socio-economic backgrounds. Some students have second homes in the Hamptons, while others have grandparents/aunts/uncles cousins all under the same small roof in Chinatown. We previously did a Human Impact project; students relied on internet searches to source information. Now we have brought real data; photos, interviews, and our stories to ALL of our students–we are bringing the world to them even if they have yet to board a plane.

I now see the bigger picture in a deeper way and I’m more passionate about making my students ‘see’ it, too. It’s easy to read articles about climate change and cognitively understand what is happening. It’s an entirely different boat to stand by the sign showing where a glacier was just 10 years ago (and now it’s ice-free) and not viscerally feel how the world is being affected.

Why was this opportunity transformative for your teaching on a macro-level?

On our heli-hike adventure, we learned how about it’s not how warm it is, but rather the length of the growing season that is changing the vegetation.

Teaching is a joy and a grind. You are always “on;” engaging with students in person, families via email, via google docs with colleagues, or in person at staff meetings. This opportunity allowed me to turn my brain to a different mode from the regular routine. I was learning, yes, but in a more open and unencumbered way than the minute-by-minute schedule of a middle school environment. I landed back in NYC feeling enriched and invigorated for the year ahead.

Also, we experience the world through storytelling and now, our stories are going to be much richer and more vivid; filled with cutting edge science and personal anecdotes from our time in Alaska. They will be able to cite specific examples — equisetum plants spreading, the number of days above 50 degrees Fahrenheit North of the Arctic Circle, soil that doesn’t hold rain, roadways decimated from melting permafrost, increased frequency of wildfires, heavier snowfalls in winter, methane gas being released at an alarming rate, the list goes on — and then have teacher stories/images to connect to these sometimes hard-to-internalize science facts.

How did your fellowship changed your personal and/or professional perspective?

In 2010, the ice used to be where we’re standing.

I went into this fellowship with the understanding that I was traveling with my co-teacher, Molly, and that we would strengthen our co-teaching skills on this trip. I didn’t know how much so, though! I traveled with my 5-month-old infant, so I relied on Molly in SO many ways for support and sanity. This journey to Alaska was like the ultimate trust-builder. If students thought we completed each other’s sentences BEFORE this trip, now they’re going to think communicate telepathically!

Additionally, living in a city, it is easy to go about my day and not feel fundamentally affected by climate change. My food, my transportation, my workplace, and home are all far enough removed from Mother Earth that I am not forced to see how climate change is a real thing affecting real people, animals, and plants. On this fellowship, I was able to witness how ice has shifted, plants and animals have migrated, and people have altered their ways of life because of a warming planet.

And finally, what we’re all here for…What did Sophie think?

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Helen is in her 15th year of teaching. She is a New York City Teaching Fellow, Math for America Master Teacher, and former Department of Energy Teacher as Scientist. She believes in helping students to see science in their everyday lives; continually striving to make connections between their world and the science they are learning about. Outside the classroom she is a passionate runner. She’s a proud mom to two young children.

“The congratulations email we got from Fund for Teachers on April 4 about our grant said “This is just the beginning…”  Little did we know how true that sentiment was…”

So began the note from 2019 FFT Fellow Kelly Whitaker. She and team mate Sherry Grogan (Monroe Area High School – Monroe, GA) designed their fellowship to collect data and capture 360 video in the Galapagos Islands to inspire scientific field experiences in Georgia that culminate in student presentations at elementary and middle schools intended to pique student interest in biology. Now, photos from their fellowship will also help fund conservation efforts of the Islands.

“My team member, Sherry Grogan, submitted some photos to the photography competition for the Galapagos Conservancy.  She was notified this weekend that one of her photos of a lava lizard (above) had received an Honorable Mention and will be in the 2020 calendar.”

Read on to see more of “Team Darwin’s” adventures:

What Changed As A Result of Your Fellowship?

Sherry: “I pushed the limits of my comfort zone routinely while in the Galapagos. I learned to snorkel and engaged with land and sea creatures while shooting 360 videos and taking pictures. Learning in this manner has shown me the importance of capturing student interest in every unit and I feel that I am better equipped to make this happen after the fellowship. Students will surely perform higher in the evolution unit with newly designed lessons of 360 VR experiences and having studied Darwin’s work.”

Kelly: “As my teammate said, ‘We showed up as teachers and we are leaving as students. Our ‘I wonder…’ list is a mile long; our confidence has exploded; our friendship bond is rock solid. The emotional impact was more than I could have imagined. I sat in a panga with six other people with tears rolling down my cheeks at my first sighting of a blue footed booby. I found out that I can’t cry and snorkel at the same time, when I was bobbing in water with penguins.”

How Do You See Your Teaching Evolving?

Sherry: “I will be entering my 22nd year of teaching next year. This fellowship has completely overhauled my passion for teaching and finding ways to spark interest in my students. I have already tentatively created a plan for involving some portion of the “Galapagos” in each unit. I think this recurring theme will brilliantly help the students learn about such a fascinating place on earth, while also mastering the standards in Biology.”

Kelly: “Our students are going to see our excitement and come up with their own ‘I wonder…’ lists. Our students will be able to ‘visit’ the Galapagos using our 360 video and still shots. They will have a connection to this material that they didn’t have before. We are already looking at the photos we want to exhibit in the elementary schools and middle schools. Our students will have a different level of engagement due to this connection.”

How will your students learn differently because of your new knowledge or skills?

Sherry: “With all of the footage we shot (i.e., 360 video, photographs, 360 still photos, etc), we have a new approach to many of our units. The photos will come to life in the classroom through the eyes of two very enthusiastic teachers who absolutely cannot stop talking about this trip with friends and family. I learned so much about myself as a teacher, reevaluated my students, and I am prepared to provide a growth opportunity for all students in my room with exciting new material!”

Kelly: “We wrote a grant for mini journals for every student, as well as for field trips to the state park and the Atlanta Botanical Gardens.  Sherry’s winning photograph with the Galapagos Conservancy inspired us to have a photo competition among our students. Our media specialist printed the winning photos and our principal ended up paying to frame them! (That’s the water lily picture below).

We also worked in some interdisciplinary activities. We invited the art teacher in to teach a mini-lesson in nature sketching. Our favorite language arts teacher taught a mini lesson on descriptive writing. And our math teacher did a lesson on data collection and also designed a geometry lesson for a putt putt golf course.

Lastly, while writing our grant proposal, we reached out to our mayor. This connection built a relationship and we felt completely comfortable inviting him in to our class to have a forum with our students about environmental decisions in our town. How cool is that? We presented him with the winning photo from the photo competition and he took it to city hall where it was displayed for a month. All because of the connections made during the development of our grant proposal.”

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Sherry Grogan has taught high school biology for 20 years after spending 8 years as a police officer. Dr. Kelly Whitaker is a special education co-teacher in Biology and Physics. Her previous summer adventures include riding a motorcycle, solo, across thirty states and 16,000 miles; hiking 500 miles across Northern Spain on the Camino de Santiago and climbing Mt. Katahdin. To order the Galapagos Conservatory’s 2020 calendar featuring Sherry’s photographs from her fellowship, click here.

On this day in 1945, an atomic bomb flattened Hiroshima – one of two bombings that induced the Japanese to surrender and end World War II. FFT Fellow Kelly Loubier (Orville H. Platt High School-Meriden, CT) participated in the anniversary ceremonies at the Hiroshima Memorial Peace Park, where she also delivered to the Children’s Memorial paper cranes folded by her students in keeping with the novel Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes.

Kelly designed this fellowship to document the nuclear legacy in Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Osaka and Fukushima and demonstrate how these events continue to impact citizens and the greater world community in relation to policy decisions regarding war, nuclear weapons, nuclear energy, peace and disaster relief.

She continues to share experiences on her Instagram and we’re honored to include a portion of her learning below in recognition of this momentous day in history…

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[minti_dropcap style=”circle”]I[/minti_dropcap] headed to the memorial service this morning around 7:30 and I joined crowds of people who I thought were just going to work. I was so wrong about that. They were all headed to the cenotaph and the ceremony at 8 am. I read online afterwards that 70% of all citizens of Hiroshima have attended a memorial service for the atomic bomb victims. It’s not a recognized day off, so kids still have school, men and women still go to work. The ceremony took place from about 8-8:45 and it included adding names to the cenotaph, a moment of silence at 8:15, an address from the mayor renewing calls for peace and decrying nationalism and addresses from students. They also sang a song of peace and released doves. After, people lined up to deliver flowers and offer a prayer. It’s 2pm and there is still a line. There have been groups promoting peace and youth groups, high schools and universities teaching people about the atomic bombs and interviewing others about peace in the park. More cranes are being brought to various monuments and people are purchasing lanterns for later. The sense of community is unreal, even 74 years later.

[minti_dropcap style=”circle”]O[/minti_dropcap]ne of my major take aways from Hiroshima is that the knowledge about the atomic bomb is so ingrained in the fabric of the city that it isn’t something that just happened in the past and that’s it. It’s something that the people of Hiroshima must learn about and teach others about so that we as a global community don’t let it happen again. There were so many people in the park today, but what really amazed me was the amount of students involved. The Boy Scouts handed out programs and cold towels before the ceremony. Sixth graders gave the children’s address during the ceremony and other students sang or played music. A group of fourteen year old girls gave me a peace declaration their high school drafted. University students interviewed me about peace. Other kids were involved in music, tours, tea ceremonies, peace demonstrations, delivering cranes, reading Sadako’s story (in English and Japanese) and presenting their art. So many families were out with their young children tonight helping them to send out lanterns, color wax candles and present flowers and prayers to the cenotaph. My mind has constantly been thinking of the Margaret Mead quote, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” The people of Hiroshima are leading the charge to a more peaceful world.

[minti_dropcap style=”circle”]T[/minti_dropcap]he face you make when a small Japanese woman grips you by the hand, puts you in a line of other confused foreigners, and puts a necklace of paper cranes around your neck. Turns out, I was given a Croatian flag to wave and lead the crowd in a prayer for peace for Croatia. All countries were represented. The artwork pictured represents 193 countries, their flags and a message of peace in their language.

[minti_dropcap style=”circle”]I[/minti_dropcap]want to give thanks to Yuji @fellanandez_tokugiwa and Holly @hiroshimayasuko from @magicaltripcom for a wonderful tour of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and the pictures. I learned quite a bit during the Heiwa Walking Tour that I’m looking forward to bringing back to my classroom and the Meriden community. I learned a lot today and I’m still trying to process everything and put it into words. I did go to the Children’s Peace Monument this afternoon to drop off the cranes. They’re in the second cabinet at the monument and I filled out a sheet so they will be recorded.

[minti_dropcap style=”circle”]I[/minti_dropcap]n Japan, the atomic bomb is taught with the stories of the people who were affected through their clothing, their pictures, their art and their stories. I learned that many of the victims were school aged children between the ages of 12-14. They had been reporting to school on August 6 at 8:15 am to clear buildings to create buffer zones in case of an air raid to prevent fires from spreading. Many of their stories are told in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, allowing visitors to bear witness and connect with the human aspect of this terrible tragedy. It is not until the end of the museum when you learn about the science of the atomic bomb, the reason it was used and what the global community did with nuclear weapons after World War 2. We need to teach these stories in the United States.

[minti_dropcap style=”circle”]T[/minti_dropcap]here is a rumor that persists that claims nothing would grow in Hiroshima for 75 years after the atomic bomb. I heard the rumor as a student and I still hear it from my students today. Hiroshima is actually very green and there are trees everywhere. This is because during the recovery period, citizens and organizations from Japan and the global community and governments around the world donated trees. There are also 170 Hibakujumoku (survivor trees) in various locations around Hiroshima that are marked with plaques. The organization, Green Legacy Hiroshima works to spread saplings from these trees around the world. I’d love to talk to @ctca19 in September more about this organization.

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Thank you, Katie, for the exemplary job you’ve done in designing, pursuing and sharing your learning with us. You can follow her entire fellowship on Instagram @kcloubier. Katie teaches 9th grade world history and 11 and 12th grade human rights at O.H. Platt High School in Meriden, Connecticut. As a third year teacher, she believes that students should walk away from her classroom with a greater understanding of the world around them. She has worked with exchange students from around the world and traveled to places such as Egypt, El Salvador and Iceland, bringing her experiences with her into the classroom.

Fund for Teachers invites PreK-12 educators to design learning adventures wherever their imaginations can take them, which is the same thing author Mary Pope Osborne does for young readers through her Magic Tree House series. These award-winning books transport main characters Jack and Annie on quests that pursue people and topics they previously only read about.

This summer, librarian Riley Grant (Pelzer, SC) is writing her own learning adventure and is bringing Jack and Annie along.  We caught up with her (and Jack and Annie) as she’s investigating European settings found in the book series to produce springboard book trailers and book talks for project-based learning that helps students identify ways to explore and improve their community…

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So, I am half way through with the travel part of my Fund for Teachers Fellowship…it has been nothing short of incredible!!

It truly is all about relationships —

Planning her itinerary this spring

I have spent my adult life building relationships in my personal and professional life and I claim to know some of the best people in the world…honestly!! But, most of my relationships are contained in my small southern state. And, while that is very wonderful, I’m so glad to have this opportunity to build relationships around the world! It is through these relationships that I learn history, geography, cultural similarities and differences and most of all, how to be a good and kind friend.

I am a librarian in a rather rural elementary school but it is close to an up and coming large city. My dream is that by using literature, Project-Based/International Baccalaureate Learning projects, and videos from this fellowship, I can inspire my young students to build meaningful relationships in their small community, our large city, our beautiful state and the world!

To be honest, I’ve also learned a lot about myself. Last fall my principal asked to think of a word for our school year and I chose “execute”… as in “to make things happen.” I had heard about the Fund for Teachers program and decided I wanted to make that fellowship happen. I was nervous and after I pushed the submit button, I did nothing put doubt myself. And, the day the grants were announced, it was late in the afternoon before I received my acceptance email. But getting the fellowship was only the beginning! I overcame my anxiety about going to a country where I did not speak the language, getting lost in a foreign country, meeting total strangers, riding trains between countries and generally “executing” this project. I am truly humbled and proud to be a part of the Fund for Teachers Fellowship program.

Meanwhile I am living my dream of exploring Europe and meeting amazing people from Paris, London, and look forward to building relationships in Edinburgh, Belfast and Dublin.

Thank you, FFT!!

“I love teaching,” said Mary Pope Osborne. “It’s a job that lasts forever. Whatever you teach children today travels with them far into the future.” We agree and can’t wait to see where Riley, Jack and Annie take the students of Fork Shoals Elementary!

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Follow the rest of Riley’s Magical Mystery Tour on Instagram @graceorileysreadingclubhouse.

Alexander Graham Bell’s most well-known accomplishment is the invention of the telephone; however, his first job was as a teacher. In fact, he was teaching at the Boston School for Deaf Mutes when he began creating a machine that changed the way we communicate forever.

Deborah Tubbs and Dana Smith share a lot in common with Bell: They are deaf education teachers and are also intent on changing the way their second- and third-graders not only communicate, but also integrate and socialize with their hearing peers. Ostensibly our most excited grant recipients judging from this video, Deborah and Dana designed their fellowship to attend the AG Bell Association for the Deaf‘s Global Listening and Spoken Language Symposium in Madrid.

In advance of the symposium, Dana and Deborah toured London schools with programs similar to theirs and with whom their students interact via a pen pal program. En route to Spain, they visited the National Institute for Young Deaf in Paris, established in 1760 as the first public school in the world for deaf students.

We caught up with Dana and Deborah in Madrid as their fellowship is drawing to a close…

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What are your main takeaways so far?

“Deaf Awareness. Not just for a select few but for the entire staff and student body, including our students who are deaf. Everyone needs to understand and appreciate the potential challenges that can arise when communicating with individuals who are deaf. And it is up to all parties to anticipate and recognize when they occur in order to overcome them. For our students who are deaf, they must learn to advocate for themselves.”

How will this impact your students?

“As we come back to Davis Elementary School in Plano, TX and apply what we have seen and learned, our students who are deaf will become more confident in who they are and how they communicate. Our short term plan for our own learning goals can be summed up in two words: learn and connect. Each leg of our fellowship is providing us with both of these opportunities. We are learning from and and connecting with our historical predecessors, our British colleagues and our global professional mentors. Long term, we’ll use these unique experiences to help students become more confident in challenging listening situations, develop skills necessary to repair communication breakdowns, and evolve from a fixed mindset, where they are too intimidated to speak up for their communication needs, to a growth mindset, where they recognize the challenges they face and have the tools and strategies they need to become successful and effective communicators.”

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Follow the remainder of this fellowship on the teachers’ Instagram feed @deborah_dana_fft.

Monday begins World Refugee Awareness Week, an extension of the United Nation’s annual World Refugee Day on Wednesday, June 20th. In solidarity with those forced to flee as a result of resettlement, poverty, unemployment, stigmatization, and bias, we share one day in the fellowship of two teachers from Naperville, IL. Christine Halblander and Jenn Nekolny are currently exploring physical and societal divisions in historical and contemporary Poland, Czechia, Austria and Germany.

They designed this experience to supplement Social Studies and Language Arts curricula that enhances junior high students’ interest in human rights, migration and refugees. In order to strengthen their teaching practices, their fellowship goals are to:

1. Explore causes and effects of forced migration;
2. Investigate the treatment of human rights in varying government systems, countries, and time periods; and
3. Gather evidence of “what next” in the life of refugees who have arrived in a new country in order to show students how struggles can be overcome.

Below is a day in the life of their fellowship, after visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau but before helping teach refugees English in a Berlin cafe…

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“Do you remember the floor of your childhood home? Can you recall playing outside with your siblings? Rushing up the stairs with good news? Your grandmother’s “good plates” pattern?

As we were checking in to our Air BnB flat in Krakow, our host asked if we wanted a little history of the place. Of course. . .we’re teachers and learners and, to be honest, the outside of the building left a bit to be desired with all its graffiti and crumbling exterior walls. It would be nice to hear some history of this building that had clearly seen better days.

He told us that just as they were finishing the interior renovations of the flat last year, he came to check on the progress. As he was walking in, he noticed “an old grandma” at the entrance with someone who appeared to be her daughter. He asked if they needed to be let in, but the woman’s Polish was weak and she responded in English that this used to be her building. Switching to English, he asked her which flat was theirs, as there had been many changes and divisions over the years. As they turned onto the first landing, tears began to well in her eyes as she recognized the tile floors in the hallway.

It turned out that the apartment he hosts was her family’s home for years before the Nazis took power and forced them out. The walls are re-plastered, the interior courtyard is filled in with the back sides of restaurants, the stairs have lost their shine (and have a pleasant rounded edge where thousands and thousands of footfalls have happened), but the heart of the place is the same. He unlocked the door to her old apartment and she began to cry when she saw the preserved floor. This beautiful wood herringbone-patterned floor where she played as a seven year old girl. This floor where she would help her mother clean up crumbs that fell from the table. This floor where she would place her shoes after coming up the flight of stairs at the end of the school day. This floor where her suitcase lay waiting next to the door in case they had to flee. This floor opened the gates of memory. This woman was 94 years old and wanted to first see her family’s home and then find the families that gave her refuge when she was forced to flee to thank them. For 87 years, she’d imagined these floors, these stairs, this place. She’s imagined the faces and clothing and sweet smells of dinner in this kitchen where I’m sitting typing this now.

Interactive map at the Woody Guthrie Museum

The primary distinction of Fund for Teachers grants is the freedom we give teachers to design fellowships THEY consider most vital to students’ learning. That can be across the world or across the state, which is the case for Nathalie Lee and Janet DeMarco, teachers at Cedar Ridge Elementary School in Tulsa, OK. They are currently embarking on day trips (collecting video, pictures, and artifacts at historic and cultural sites) to re-prioritize the intellectual art of social studies and help students understand and analyze the state’s history and government. We checked in with them on the road…

On Why They Designed This Fellowship

Social Studies provides a context in which to fit all other learning, but we believe the intellectual art of social studies has been de-prioritized in the wake of No Child Left Behind and its great emphasis on reading and math. Because Social Studies isn’t an academic priority, teachers don’t receive
as much professional development on the subject — so we used a Fund for Teachers grant to create our own.

Together, we represent generations of native Oklahomans, and one of us is a member of two Native American tribes. We are proud of the people and the history of Oklahoma and want our students to be as well. For two weeks, we’re acquiring resources and insight that will give students a chance to identify with their history as Oklahomans and also provide opportunities to analyze what good citizenship looks like.

What’s On the Itinerary?

The Oklahoma Standards direct us to “Describe the connection between the historic significance of past events and people and the symbols of Oklahoma’s history” and “Describe relationships between people and events of the past.”  To do that, we’re experiencing:

• The Great Salt Plains
  The Great Salt Plains is one of Oklahoma’s major land forms that students need to be able to identify on a physical map. We will teach that, in the early 1800s, whichever tribe controlled the Great Salt Plains knew that it would have to fight to protect this valuable resource (salt).
• Pioneer Woman Museum & Conoco Museum
  The former will help demonstrate to how pioneers  adapted to and modified their environment including sod houses, windmills, and crops.  The latter displays the growth of a company from the “early days of a kerosene distributor and the wildcat days of the Cherokee Outlet, to an international energy empire.”
• Nellie Johnstone No. 1 and The Woolaroc Museum
  Nellie Johnstone No. 1 was the first commercially productive oil well in Oklahoma, opening oil exploration and development in Oklahoma.  The Woolaroc Museum relates the story of Oklahoman’s cultural development in the New World.
• Tahlequah’s Cherokee Heritage Centerand Muskogee’s Five Tribes Museum
  The Cherokee Heritage Center is a historical society and museum that has preserved the historical and cultural artifacts, language, and traditional crafts of the Cherokee.  The Five Civilized Tribes Museum  houses the art, history and culture of the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee, and Seminole tribes.
• Oklahoma City’s History Center, Oklahoma City Memorial, National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum & State Capitol
• The Woody Guthrie Museum – for learning about the Dust Bowl, Woody Guthrie, and the meaning of song lyrics such as “This Land is My Land.”
• The Creek Council Oak Tree – the landmark that showed the Creek Indians where to stop after a journey to their new home along the Arkansas River). We will also visit the Muscogee (Creek Nation) Cultural Center in Okmulgee where we will learn from a Creek tribe member to hear tales of the tree’s significance and stories from Creek heritage.
• Tulsa’s Gilcrease Museum (which houses authentic Oklahoman art, artifacts from the American West, and collections of Native American art and materials); Philbrook Museum and, finally,
• The Will Rogers Museum to learn about Oklahoma’s favorite son.

What Hasn’t Been on the Itinerary?

Nathalie and Janet at the Philbrook Museum

While the Great Salt Plains used to be an ocean millions of years ago, it’s now a five-mile, sandy ocean bed in the middle of Oklahoma. Except when it rains! The area received 10 inches of rain in the past 30 days, making one of the state’s most valuable natural resources unreachable by car. After learning to maneuver a drone, we captured footage of the area that historically was an important asset — not only for salt’s preservation purposes, but also as a hunting ground for animals. We also learned that the salt bed is the only place in the world where selenite crystals with an embedded hourglass formation are found.”

“I know we’re not pursuing fellowships in Italy or France, but we love Oklahoma and our educational standards are based here,” Janet and Nathalie said during their phone call. “We really get excited about teaching our students who our people are! We are all Oklahomans — with wonders of nature, the beauty of architecture, and profound culture history and heritage all around us. We want students to realize they don’t have to travel across an ocean or even across the country to learn rich history about the people and places that came before us. It’s right under our feet in what we Okies like to call ‘our stomping grounds.'”

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You can follow the remainder of Nathalie and Janet’s fellowship on Instagram @okiesteachfft.

Today marks the 76th anniversary of D-Day, when 156,000 American, British and Canadian forces landed on five beaches along a 50-mile stretch of the heavily fortified coast of France’s Normandy region. We share below the remarkable experience of FFT Fellow Dan Lundak. He designed an experience to retrace the steps of the US soldiers (specifically his grandfather’s) from England to the shores of France during the invasion to lead students’ debate of the essential question, “At what point does the United States become involved in another country’s affairs?” The American History teacher planned to use his research to help eighth graders at Chicago’s Sauganash Elementary School personally connect with World War II. The pilgrimage grew more personal than expected, however, upon discovering his grandfather’s photograph hanging in a wartime museum.

“When applying for the Fund for Teachers grant, I researched my grandfather’s military service and his path from Nebraska to Normandy,” said Dan. “On D-Day, he flew the Boeing B-17 with the USAF 94th squadron from the RAF base in Bury St. Edmonds, England — so that was my first stop. Townspeople converted his squadron’s control tower into a museum, which was dark and locked when I arrived.

A museum volunteer repairing the roof saw me walking away and offered to let me in. As I made my way around the artifacts, I suddenly came face-to-face with a framed, yellowed photograph of Lt. Col. E.E. Lundak – my grandfather.”

The volunteer explained that displays included “random photos of pilots” found when creating the museum. He could offer no definitive explanation why the photo of Dan’s grandfather, never seen by his family, hung there to greet Dan 70 years after the war.

Lt. Col. Lundak flew 47 missions while stationed at Bury St. Edmonds. He crash landed twice (once, the only surviving crew member) and again escaped death after trading places with a co-pilot subsequently shot by enemy fire. The night before D-Day, Lundak bombed the beaches of Normandy; the day after the invasion, he delivered gasoline to Allied forces and returned US casualties to England. Lundak remained in the Air Force for years before becoming a US diplomat in China and the US liaison with President Chiang Kai-shek. Upon retirement, he returned to Nebraska to teach school, serve as a superintendent and, eventually, Dean of Admissions for the University of Nebraska.

Inspired by the discovery, Dan continued his WWII odyssey at London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral and American Memorial Chapel, seeing the honor roll of more than 28,000 Americans who died in WWII while stationed in England. He also followed the London Blitz Bomb Site Interactive Map to visit areas affected by bombings and, afterwards, the Imperial War Museum. Before taking a ferry across the English Channel, Dan stopped at General Eisenhower’s headquarters in Porstmouth to research the planning and preparation of Operation Overlord, the final meeting that resulted in the D-Day command, “Let’s go!”

Bayeux served as home base for Lundak in France, where Dan toured Omaha and Utah beaches, visited the D-Day Museum and experienced the flag lowering ceremony at the American Cemetery. His ten-day fellowship concluded in Paris, where he followed the movement of General Patton’s Third Army and its role in the Liberation of Paris.

Armed with fellowship experiences and research, Dan now encourages his students to “dive deeper” in their study of World War II – a requirement of the new Common Core State Standards. Lt. Col. Lundak serves as a case study for students’ exploration of the questions, “At what point do people get involved with the affairs of others?” and “What makes someone brave?” Dan believes these questions are particularly relevant as students prepare to face diverse socio-economics, cultures and traditions represented in a large public high school. Students also write letters of appreciation to veterans, which Dan delivers to the local American Legion post.

“Retracing my grandfather’s service during the D-Day invasion gave me personal insight into what each person has to ask themselves in a time a crisis; the experience also gives my students a personal story they can relate to when facing similar decisions about personal sacrifice,” said Dan. “Understanding history through the close examination of my grandfather’s service – rather than a textbook – interjects real-life perspective into the curriculum and helps students arrive at their own conclusions.”

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Two 2020 Fellows will pursue experiential learning around the European theatre of World War II:

Patrick McCarney (Stonington High School – Stonington, CT) will experience World War II landmarks, museums, and monuments, gathering the stories of those on the battlefront and home front–young soldiers, women and minorities–to make the diversity of the American war experience more visible for students; and,

Bret Godfrey (American Indian Magnet – Saint Paul, MN) will research and document in France, Belgium and Luxembourg contributions made by American Indians during World War II to create engaging lessons that incorporate these contributions for preK-8 students sharing this heritage.