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Upcycling My Fulbright Experience : Making Host Community Connections

May 11, 2018

Michael Saidani, 2017-2018 Fulbright Visiting Researcher from France, volunteering and teaching French language to students at a community church in downtown Davis, California

Although most of my time as a Fulbright Visiting Researcher at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) was dedicated to working on my research project focused on the circular economy, I have always believed that the Fulbright Program should be an exciting cultural exchange experience. During my award, I participated in some amazing outdoor activities such as hiking and traveling around the United States, particularly in California. But I’d like to share how I have been involved on my host campus and in my local community to contribute in return – no matter how small – to some of the benefits I’ve received by being a Fulbrighter in the United States.

A few weeks after my arrival at Davis, I proposed offering a French Language class to a downtown community church for adults who wanted not only to speak French, but also to learn more about French culture. As it was a beginner class, I taught my students how to introduce oneself, have a basic conversation, and about French geography. With no prior French language teaching experience, it was a great opportunity, and I received good feedback from my students, who were happy to work with an actual native French speaker.

During Fall Quarter, I volunteered as an Upcycling Intern at the UC Davis Aggie Reuse Store. Because the UC Davis campus is very green and engaged in sustainability activities, I wanted to find a way to be a part of those activities directly. Being an intern allowed me to promote reuse and upcycling on campus by demonstrating how to make new things out of old ones, an activity that aligned nicely with my PhD thesis related to the circular economy.

Michael Saidani, 2017-2018 Visiting Researcher to France, at the UC Davis Aggie Reuse Store

One month before returning to France, during the Fulbright Foreign Student Enrichment Seminar in St. Louis, Missouri, I engaged in a different kind of community service involving half a day of landscaping for the Great Rivers Pathways association, which is working to connect downtown St. Louis to the Gateway Arch and the Mississippi River via a new green path for pedestrians and bikers.

By sharing this small part of my Fulbright story, I would like to encourage other Fulbrighters – current and future – to embrace their entire Fulbright experience by connecting with their local host communities during their awards. By doing so, grantees can advance the Fulbright Program’s mission to meaningfully increase mutual understanding between the people of their own countries and the people of the United States.

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U.S. Fulbright

Getting in Tune with Teachers: Leveraging Hobbies to Connect

February 9, 2018

Samuel Fishman, 2017-2018, Fulbright English Teaching Assistant to Paraguay, performing at his host institution’s annual Teacher’s Day party (Photo: Martin Sanchez)

“You look like you play guitar.” I turned around and did a double take. Standing in front of me was a Paraguayan English teacher and an alumnus of a U.S. exchange program. I was in the U.S. Ambassador’s residence in Asuncion, Paraguay, at a formal reception for a visiting delegation of U.S. professors. What had given me away? Not only had I swapped my usual tattered Iron Maiden muscle tee for a shirt and tie, I’d even combed my hair for the evening. Maybe it was the Chuck Taylor’s, peeping out from beneath my wrinkled khakis.

I was one month into my Fulbright English Teaching Assistant (ETA) award in San Lorenzo, Paraguay, and I was still trying to find my footing. I was struggling to connect with one of my host institutions. It was no one’s fault, but try as I might, my English study groups and lessons weren’t connecting with a consistent audience.

Back at the Ambassador’s residence I tentatively responded yes, I do strum a few chords. As tends to happen when two musicians get to talking, a jumble of shared favorite bands began tumbling through the air. Our shared musical vocabulary took us across the globe as we bantered about classic bands, songs, and shows. Between The Beatles, Janis Joplin, Soda Stereo, AC/DC, and Mana, we covered thousands of miles in just a few minutes. Before I knew it, I was plugging in my guitar at my first rehearsal for a band composed entirely of Paraguayan English teachers. The Lost Tichers, as we would come to be known, fortunately all taught at the same host institution where I was struggling to integrate myself.

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FLTA Foreign Fulbright

Exchanging Cultures, Building Friendships: A Fulbright Thanksgiving Story

November 29, 2017

A candid moment from the Thanksgiving dinner at the home of Lecturer Thuy-Anh T. Nguyen (second from left) with fellow Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistants

Editor’s note: Did you celebrate Thanksgiving in the United States or abroad this year as a Fulbrighter? We’d love to hear your story! Send us a note or share it on social media with #Fulbright.

A Bangladeshi, an Italian, a Thai, an Indian, an elderly Filipino couple, and three Vietnamese people sat down for dinner at a Vietnamese-American house. This may sound like the start of a clichéd joke, but this was exactly what my first-ever Thanksgiving feast looked like.

This year, thanks to the Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant Program (FLTA), I had the opportunity to be in the United States for this one-of-a-kind celebration. I had heard and learned about Thanksgiving through the Internet over the years, and I grew up looking at sumptuous Thanksgiving meal illustrations in Archie comics; where the biggest, juiciest turkey and other mouthwatering foods were served.

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U.S. Fulbright

Leveraging Fulbrighters’ Insights for American Classrooms: The Fulbright English Teaching Assistant Program and Reach the World

November 21, 2017

Katherine Long, 2016-2017, Tajikistan (right), playing a game with two young Tajik girls.

For nearly ten years, Fulbright English Teaching Assistants (ETAs) have had the opportunity to volunteer with Reach the World (RTW) to share their experiences abroad with pre-kindergarten through 12^th grade classrooms back home in the United States.

RTW utilizes the power of virtual exchange to enable Fulbright ETAs, who apply to volunteer with RTW, to bring their host country into an engaged classroom of American students. Fulbright ETAs share many aspects of life in another country with their student audiences in the United States, from grilled meats in Argentina to the unique plant life in the Maltese archipelago. These talented, passionate recent college graduates and early career professionals also capture rare, extraordinary experiences, like visiting the remote Caño Cristales river in Colombia. As young learners from throughout the United States interact with Fulbright ETAs, they are building vital global competencies that will serve them for years to come while challenging their perspectives about the world and their role as citizens. These global competencies include such things as increased geographic literacy and a greater desire to travel, changes in empathetic thinking when encountering difference, and pursuing higher education opportunities.

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U.S. Fulbright

Teaching in the ‘Silicon Valley’ of Mexico

October 13, 2017

Melissa Montalvo, 2015-2016, Fulbright English Teaching Assistant to Mexico (far right), with Universidad Tecnológica de Jalisco’s English Language Conversation Club students after a great discussion on American culture

A year has passed since I completed my Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship (ETA) in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. As I reflect on this anniversary, I recognize that my Fulbright year had an immense impact on my personal and professional direction. I thought I knew what to expect from my Fulbright year. After all, I was a former student of International Relations, a USC Global Scholar. I had already lived abroad as an exchange student in Paris, France, and had spent weeks volunteering in Mexico and Peru. I knew what to anticipate from a year abroad, right? It turns out that I was very wrong. Every single day of my Fulbright award brought something new and unexpected. Never did I expect to have such an eye-opening experience. From the first day at orientation meeting my fellow Fulbrighters, to forming friendships with my mentors at the Universidad Tecnológica de Jalisco, to meeting local tapatíos (a word to describe the people from Guadalajara), I created lasting memories.

In Guadalajara, also considered “the Silicon Valley of Mexico,” I encountered a forward-thinking city buzzing with technology and innovation. This is not exactly the vision I had of Mexico before arriving. All I knew of Mexico was folklore, border towns, and tourist resorts. I was surprised that so many young Mexicans I met were engineers, techies, and self-described ñoños (nerds). They worked at HP, Intel, Oracle, or a slew of Mexican startups like VoxFeed and CityDrive. It also seemed that everyone I met pursued passion projects outside of their 9 to 5 jobs, such as running Airbnbs and online businesses. I wanted to emulate these intelligent, proactive, and hardworking people in my life.

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U.S. Fulbright

Plants, People, and the Mother City

October 9, 2017

Tanisha Williams, 2015-2016, South Africa, at Boulders Beach visiting the iconic beach penguins

Welcome to the Mother City. These are the first words you read walking out of the airport in Cape Town, South Africa. No one could have prepared me for that feeling, stepping onto the soil of the Motherland for the first time. My emotions were complex and overwhelming, but the feeling of excitement and sense of belonging stood out.

My Fulbright grant was two-fold, conducting research for my doctoral dissertation and giving back through outreach and other STEM-based initiatives. I spent my Fulbright year researching the impacts of climate change on indigenous flora throughout South Africa. The first half of my research was used to collect seed and propagate over 1,500 Pelargoniums, a highly-diverse genus of flowering plants, at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (Wellington, Bellville and Cape Town campuses). These plants are now growing in reciprocal transplant gardens at the Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden in Cape Town, Western Cape and at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, Eastern Cape. Growth and development data will help me understand the effects of genetics, the environment, and the interaction between these two processes that aid in Pelargonium adaptation to different environments. Understanding plant adaptations to their environment sheds light on how plants will respond to the unprecedented rates of climate change.

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