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U.S. Classrooms Celebrate International Education Week with Fulbrighters

November 13, 2018

In celebration of International Education Week 2018, six Fulbright Foreign Students, Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistants, and Fulbright Visiting Scholars will visit elementary, middle, and high schools in Kentucky, Nebraska, and New York. The visits will take place from November 13 to November 16, and are sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA), in partnership with Reach the World.

The Fulbrighters will share the culture of their home countries with the students and describe their Fulbright experiences. The visits will allow American students to increase their global understanding by meeting a foreign Fulbrighter. With a diverse group of participants and classrooms, these visits will help increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and people of other countries. The visits will build on another partnership between ECA and Reach the World, in which these same classrooms are holding virtual exchanges with U.S. exchange students who are studying overseas through Fulbright and other ECA exchange programs.

Follow along with the U.S. classrooms this week and meet a Fulbrighter, by tracking and using #Fulbright on social media.

Meet the Fulbright participants:

Pritesh Chakraborty
Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant from India
New York University

Hi, I’m Pritesh. I’m an assistant professor and research scholar at West Bengal State University in India. I’m a Foreign Language Teaching Assistant with Fulbright, but my area of interest is comic book studies. I love comic books because I love stories and I’m interested in the rich heritage of English literature. Right now, I teach Hindi to elementary level language learners as part of my Fulbright award, and I’ll begin teaching intermediate levels next semester.

Lei Chen
Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant from China
University of Nebraska – Lincoln

Hi, I’m Lei! I’m from China and I’m a lecturer. I received my B.A. and M.A. degrees in English Language and Literature from Liaoning University, China. I’ve been teaching at Liaoning University of Traditional Chinese Medicine for 8 years after getting my Master’s degree. Currently, I’m a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, teaching Chinese 101 and 201, and sharing Chinese culture with my students.

Abeer Khlaifat
Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant from Jordan
University of Kentucky

Hello, I’m Abeer Khlaifat from Jordan, and I grew up in the capital city, Amman. Arabic is my passion, and I decided that I would study it at the age of 12. I have both a B.A. and M.A. in Arabic and I’ve worked as a teacher for Americans and other international students who are studying abroad in Jordan. This was part of my motivation to come to the U.S., where I’m currently a Foreign Language Teaching Assistant at the University of Kentucky.

Anna Potapova
Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant from Russia
University of Nebraska – Lincoln

Hello, I’m Anna! I have a lot of experience teaching English to adults and I also received my CELTA (Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) certification from St. Giles College, Brighton, UK. I have a degree in Romance and Germanic philology from Ivanovo State University. I have a number of other certificates and qualifications, but my main professional interests are methods of teaching English and Russian as a foreign language, the lexical approach, and using authentic speaking as a speaking model. I’m currently teaching Russian 101 to college students at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and organize cultural events to promote Russian culture in America. I also have a fluffy cat, who is extremely cuddly.

Francesca Scafuto
Fulbright Visiting Scholar from Italy
Ramapo College of New Jersey

Hello! I’m Dr. Francesca Scafuto and I’m a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Ramapo College of New Jersey. I’m from Italy, and I’m an experienced Adolescent and Young Adult Psychotherapist. I’m interested in how people think as a community about the environment, and I’m studying social science and environmental health during my Fulbright. I’m also an artist and I like to paint in my free time.

Nina Siegfried
Fulbright Foreign Student from Germany
University of Louisville

I’m from Germany and I’m currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Sports Administration at the University of Louisville. I grew up a competitive athlete and decided to pursue sports management at an early age. I participated in an exchange year in high school and lived with a host family while attending Apollo High School in Owensboro, KY. I studied for my undergraduate degree in the Netherlands and received a B.A. in International Studies and Management from Arnhem Business School. I also studied abroad in Hong Kong to receive a minor in Marketing.

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U.S. Fulbright

Interview with Fulbright U.S. Student Alumna (2014-2015, China) and 2016 Rolex Awards Young Laureate Christine Keung

November 8, 2017

Christine Keung, 2014-2015, China

“It was New Year’s Eve, and my Central Asian dorm mates all chipped in to buy a whole sheep. It’s a common Central Asian tradition to sacrifice a sheep to celebrate a big event, and given the fact that many of my international dorm’s residents were Muslim, the sheep had to be prepared to Halal standards…”

Such was how 2014-2015 Fulbright U.S. Student to China, Christine Keung, celebrated holidays in Shaanxi province during her award in Environmental Studies, where she worked closely with local university students to improve the region’s urban and rural waste practices.

Since completing her Fulbright award, Christine Keung has been named a 2016 Young Laureate by the Rolex Awards for Enterprise, a 2017 Time Magazine Next Generation Leader, and gained admission to the MBA program at Harvard University.

We recently interviewed Christine to learn more about how her Fulbright experiences have had an impact on her career trajectory, what advice she has for prospective Fulbright applicants, and how she has maintained strong ties with the friends and professional contacts she established while in China.

How did you originally hear about the Fulbright Program and what/who inspired you to apply?

I first learned about the Fulbright Program during my freshman year at Wellesley College. I had a Teaching Assistant who had been a Fulbrighter in Spain who encouraged me to apply before I graduated. As a first-year student who had not yet selected her major, who had never worked as a research assistant, and who had never studied abroad, I really couldn’t imagine myself as a Fulbright Student. It wasn’t until my junior year that I seriously considered applying for opportunities to live and work abroad after graduation. I had spent the summer after my sophomore year on a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant that allowed me to conduct independent research on China’s Loess Plateau. That trip allowed me to visit Western China for the first time and to form many of the relationships that helped make my Fulbright project a reality.

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U.S. Fulbright

Fulbright U.S. Student Alumna and Author Deanna Fei (2003-2004, China) Shares How Her Book Girl in Glass Evolved and Offers Advice for Prospective Applicants

November 11, 2016

Deanna Fei, 2003-2004, China

Can you tell us about Girl in Glass, and how that book came about?

GIRL IN GLASS is the story of my daughter’s birth, nearly four months premature–and how I learned to be the mother of a child I knew I could lose at any moment. The book also explores, in a larger societal context, what it means to sustain a life: from the front lines of neonatal intensive care units to the perils of the American health care system to the force of a child’s will to live.

For a long time, I was so steeped in the trauma surrounding my daughter’s arrival that I couldn’t imagine ever telling this story. Then, a year after I brought her home from the hospital, the CEO of my husband’s company publicly blamed her for being a drag on the bottom line and slapped a price tag on her life, setting off a national firestorm. It was only then, as the circumstances of her birth became the subject of countless headlines, that I realized I needed to speak out to defend the basic worth of her life.

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U.S. Fulbright

Art and Understanding

May 24, 2016

Alex Anderson, 2014-2015, China, working on one of his ceramic sculptures in the studio

During my Fulbright U.S. Student Program grant, I spent 10-months at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, where I studied ink painting and was an artist-in-residence in the ceramics department. Considering art as a reflection of the interior world of its maker, it allowed for a clear and genuine lens into the specific interests, psychologies, and motivations of the people in my studio during this period. Prior to my time in China, I had not considered art as a tool for cultural exchange, but the questions that sourced from discussions of each person’s work often moved from the work itself to considerations of its place in contemporary art in China, America, and beyond.

People seemed to view my work and me as equally viable specimens for inspection of what it means to be an American and what American art looks like. There was an interest in the way work was rendered, comments surrounding its content, and discussions of its aesthetic that ultimately led to dialogues about what it means to be an American and the fact that there is no universal definition, as America is an immigrant, hybrid nation. In this respect, art became my primary means of creating mutual understanding and serving as a cultural ambassador. The first question people would ask when they walked through the studio was, “Who made this?” followed by “Where is he from?” These questions opened up spaces for further dialogue around the intersection of Chinese and American art, and sometimes led to discussions of the intersection of China and America.

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U.S. Fulbright

Does it Pass the Test? Math Education Research in China

November 16, 2015

Allie Surina, 2012-2013, China

I researched math achievement in Xi’an, China as part of the Fulbright U.S. Student Program, and I was in for a surprise. I discovered a student learning style that called into question the negative stereotypes Americans often have about ‘memorization’ in Asian countries. The use of test scores as a measure of human potential is a controversial topic in our national news. I was definitely curious how Chinese students ace their tests so easily. Maybe, I thought, classrooms in China really are like student factories, pumping out perfect calculators. I could not have been more wrong.

Since my grant ended in 2013, I have excitedly told everyone within earshot that math education in China is much more than the ‘test culture’ we often hear it is. In China, I found a culture of participation inside classrooms and I watched young children work through failure with courage and persistence. By all my tests of good learning, Chinese classrooms were performing well.

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U.S. Fulbright

Spectrums of Development: Developmental Disabilities and Mutual Understanding in China

July 3, 2013

Rachel Reetzke, 2011-2012, China, works with a father and son at the YangAi Parent Club for families of children with developmental disabilities

The impetus for me to begin my Fulbright U.S. Student Program application came during the summer of 2010, as a U.S. Department of State Critical Language Scholar. That summer, I tested my intermediate Mandarin skills by independently organizing a month-long service project at Beijing Stars and Rain Autism Education and Research Center. Through volunteer work at Stars and Rain, I was exposed to a new method of parent training, which provided insight into the diagnosis, and treatment intervention methods for autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in China. Ultimately, the experience revealed to me a dire need for evidence-based practice (EBP) research in the field. I aimed to return to China as a Fulbright student to further explore and develop my place within the networks of doctors, teachers, students, and clinicians serving individuals with ASD in China.

As a Fulbrighter, I became part of an interdisciplinary research team and contributed to the validation of the Chinese Autism Diagnostic Scale (CADS). Currently, there is no autism diagnostic scale based on Chinese linguistic and cultural differences. Therefore, once published, CADS will be a vital tool for current and future diagnosis of ASD in China.

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