Fulbright Teachers for Global Classrooms Fellowship program helps teachers foster global awareness within their schools, communities
Posted: September 28, 2023
Two Oʻahu teachers embarked on an unforgettable journey across the globe this past year, all to bring an international perspective back to their schools in Hawaiʻi as part of the Fulbright Teachers for Global Classrooms program.
Blade Shepherd-Jones, a K–8 STEM teacher at Waimānalo Elementary & Intermediate, and Laura Cummings, a science and math teacher at Sunset Beach Elementary, completed their program this summer, along with 60 other Fulbright Fellows nationwide.
The Fulbright program: ‘It’s professional development that’s ongoing and meaningful’
The Fulbright Teachers for Global Classrooms program is a year-long professional learning opportunity and short-term exchange for elementary, middle, and high school educators from the United States to develop skills to prepare students for a competitive global economy.
Fulbright Teachers for Global Classrooms equips educators to bring an international perspective to their schools through targeted training, experience abroad, and global collaboration.
The 2022–2023 cohort completed an intensive 10-week online course, collaborated on inter-school partner projects, attended a global symposium in Washington D.C., explored a guiding question through an international field experience, and completed a global education guide.
Both Shepherd-Jones and Cummings were in the same cohort, completing the online coursework simultaneously.
The two were acquainted, as both were former Lindblad Expeditions and National Geographic Grosvenor Teacher Fellows.
No stranger to traveling teacher opportunities, Cummings found out about the Fulbright Fellowship and was immediately intrigued.
Cummings said, “It (the fellowship) comes up a lot when you’re talking about what opportunities are out there for teachers. It’s professional development that’s ongoing and meaningful.”
Dispatches from Morocco: A ‘crazy whirlwind of activity’
Cummings completed her international field study in Morocco, a country she’d never visited before, in March 2023.
She described it as a “pretty incredible experience” complete with a “crazy whirlwind of activity.”
Read: Laura Cummings’ Morocco travel diary
During her two-and-half-week stay, she visited a combination of private and public schools, community events focused on education, an American language center, and more in the urban capital of Rabat.
“When you travel, it’s a different experience than when you’re invited into somebody’s home and you’re really in their culture and their education system. As a tourist, we can go anywhere, but we don’t really know what the education system is like in other countries. So having that experience to go into private schools, public schools, other community events or organizations that, you know, were focused on education… that was amazing.”
She taught English lessons to the students, and she noticed them getting excited and interested in American culture.
Cummings also was impressed with how they learned language: full immersion with many students speaking multiple languages fluently.
She noticed some differences between the public schools, where some didn’t have electricity, and private schools, where the students had “every resource necessary.” However, at the end of the day, she surmised that “the kids (from public schools) were happy, they were learning, some things they were learning better than kids with resources. They don’t know the difference. For us, it’s hard to imagine. For them, it is their reality, so it’s not quite as disparaging as you’d imagine. They were still happy, learning… kids being kids.”
Cummings also did some sightseeing and networking before heading home and sharing her experience with her colleagues.
“There’s a danger in only seeing something from one perspective,” she said. “And I think even as teachers we can be reminded of that. If you’re only looking at something from a small lens, or from a small perspective, then you’re missing the bigger picture. And that’s one of the things that we focused on.
“In Hawaiʻi, even if we don’t go anywhere else, even if it’s not interesting to visit another country, other countries are visiting us, so it’s important to be able to communicate and recognize their perspectives and not look at something from you know, such a small lens. It’s not all about us,” she added.
Colombia field study: ‘Team no sleep’
From the moment Shepherd-Jones stepped off the plane in Bogotá, Colombia’s capital city, he and his cohort were “go, go, go” and on “team no sleep.”
Read: Blade Shepherd-Jones’ travel diary
They visited different education programs and schools in Bogotá, where he learned that their goal is to give every kid a computer.
“Wi-Fi is not at all guaranteed at any of the schools and most of the classes were almost just bare, cement buildings,” he recalled.
However, he learned that when schools did have technology that inevitably became out of date, they would “take it, recycle it, try to reuse as much as they can to minimize their e-waste and then try to also take pieces out of it so they can do STEM or Makerspace kits, or make engineering robotics stuff out of it.”
His two-week trip, which he took over summer break, continued on to the rural, tropical farming town of Villavicencio.
During his stay there, Shepherd-Jones noted a lot of similarities with Waimānalo, where he teaches. The warm and humid climate paired with the town’s natural beauty reminded him of the community where he works.
Even though he doesn’t speak much Spanish, Shepherd-Jones enjoyed conversing with students and his host teacher and noticed that students were generally well-behaved with little to no teacher oversight. He also completed a lei-making activity with the students, which they particularly enjoyed.
He visited a variety of private, public, elementary, and high schools. Now that he’s back home, he’s looking at how to implement what he experienced with his students, and how to connect his kids and the kids in Colombia.
“I want my kids to think past Waimānalo and see other parts of the world even if they can’t travel there,” he said. “Travel isn’t a requirement to being a good global citizen. Empathy and appreciation are. We’re interconnected.”
The pair of Fulbright Fellowship educators from Hawaiʻi both share a love for exploring, but more importantly, want to help their schools, students, and community to become more globally aware.
“I definitely believe in global competency,” Shepherd-Jones said. “And we should have more empathy not just for our own neighbors, but for the world. And I think when we start seeing them more as humans and seeing all the similarities we have, it makes us better people.”
Become a Fulbrighter
Shepherd-Jones shared his reasons for seeking out experiences like the Fulbright Fellowship.
“It’s to gain experiences and knowledge to pass down to the students that we just won’t get naturally. I’m also going to be surrounded by other highly motivated, highly engaged teachers who will hopefully not only want to build and do some networking and get other good ideas to teach these kids, whether it be material or philosophy, but just to keep me motivated. They’ve helped push me to my next level of teaching,” he said.
Interested in becoming a Fulbright Fellow? Explore one of their many programs and apply today!