Fulbright English Teaching Assistant Archives - Page 3 of 6

Taekwondo and More in Jordan

August 22, 2016

Hannah Rosenberg Jones, 2014-2015, Fulbright English Teaching Assistant to Jordan (left, front row, in red shirt), with her dojang partners at the Al Faris Taekwando Center in Amman, Jordan

When I first moved to Amman, Jordan as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant, I sought experiences that would take me away from the comfort of my expat community. Having participated in athletics my entire life, I chose to pick up taekwondo at a dojang near the University of Jordan, where I taught. Located in the basement of a popular hookah café, I remember feeling nervous that I was about to descend into a room full of only men. To my pleasant surprise, the hole-in-the-wall taekwondo club that I had chosen happened to also host a number of top female athletes.

During my day-to-day activities in Amman, I was confronted by numerous obstacles. Communicating in Arabic was difficult, navigating public transportation was tricky, and teaching a classroom of 60 students was a new challenge. In the evenings, I was a 30-year-old taekwondo beginner who spoke awkward textbook Arabic going up against black-belt, adolescent Olympic hopefuls who spoke Arabic a mile a minute.

0 Comments

U.S. Fulbright

Learning Side-by-Side

August 17, 2016

Joseph Todd La Torre, 2015-2016 Fulbright ETA to Nepal, teaching with his co-teacher, Ms. Maiya

My interest in culture and religious studies began during my early years of high school when I started exploring Eastern philosophies. Determined to find answers to my many questions, I went on to study psychology and religious studies in college. Once there, one of my favorite experiences took place in the spring of 2014, when I helped organize my campus’s first Holi celebration. Exposing students to traditional South Asian culture while having an overall great time, made it a huge success. Later that year, Professor Meetu Khosla from University of Delhi, a cultural psychologist on a Fulbright-Nehru grant in the United States, gave a lecture at my school. Fascinated by her research, it was at that moment that I decided to go to South Asia. Knowing Nepal as Siddhartha Gautama’s birthplace inspired me to begin here.

When I applied to be a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Nepal, I didn’t know what to expect. I wasn’t entirely sure about what my assignments would entail, but I was eager to live in Nepal. The eagerness was twofold: I was ready to feel my way around a proper classroom and was also excited to immerse myself in the country’s religious communities.

By early March, I had arrived. In hindsight, the first month in Nepal was a particularly special time for me. During this time, I was adjusting to my routine, and everything felt new. It also coincided with some of the most important religious holidays of the year in the region: Shivaratri (the Day of Lord Shiva), Holi (The Spring Festival of Color), and Nepali New Year.

0 Comments

U.S. Fulbright

Holding on to and Realizing a Dream

July 18, 2016

Davíd Morales, 2013-2014, Fulbright English Teaching Assistant to Ecuador

I was desperately trying to hold on to a dream when I decided to apply to the Fulbright Program. In high school, I became madly in love with my Mexican and Latin American heritage; I longed to live in Latin America, to travel through the different regions, to experience different cultures, and to hear people’s stories and struggles in order to better understand myself and better understand and help my own diverse migrant community in San Diego. In 2013, after being the first person in my family to graduate from a university, I was given an opportunity to fulfill this dream.

I was awarded a Fulbright U.S. Student grant to serve as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant (ETA) in Ecuador. For ten months, I lived in Guayaquil, the country’s largest city, and worked with university students at Universidad Laica Vicente Rocafuerte who were studying to become English teachers. I facilitated English classes, workshops, and seminars on topics such as U.S. history, culture, and academic writing, and my experiences as a person of color allowed me to combat stereotypes that students had about “Americans” and life in the United States. Fulbright was also an opportunity to gain practice as an educator. As an ETA, I gained valuable skills by working with university students and developing culturally appropriate activities. My experiences reinforced my belief in education as a powerful tool for promoting mutual understanding and social change.

0 Comments

Unknown

World Refugee Day 2016: Revisiting Sharief El-Gabri’s Story and Community Engagement

June 20, 2016

Sharief El-Gabri, 2010-2011, Fulbright English Teaching Assistant to Jordan, with Ahmed, one of the refugee high school students who helped run the sports facility in the Gaza Refugee Camp

In honor of World Refugee Day, we are re-posting Fulbright Alumni Ambassador and alumnus Sharief El-Gabri’s article describing his Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship responsibilities in Jordan as well as his involvement with the Gaza Refugee Camp.

Are you a current Fulbrighter who has worked with or is currently working with refugees? Want to share your story? We’d love to hear from you! Contact us here.

If you are thinking about applying for a Fulbright grant, you need to consider how you plan to interact with your host community. After all, Fulbright’s core tenet is cultural exchange. Of course, show off your impressive research proposal or your comprehensive English teaching playbook, but your time as a Fulbrighter will likely be memorialized by serendipitous interactions with your community. Embrace those opportunities because you are prepared and have considered how you would like to carve out your Fulbright experience.

Looking back on my Fulbright experience in Amman, Jordan in 2010-2011, I really cherish my time outside of my primary English Teaching Assistantship (ETA) responsibilities. I had sufficient free time to engage in a substantive community engagement project. Outside of my ETA obligations and studying Arabic, I helped build a sports facility in the Gaza Refugee Camp.

0 Comments

U.S. Fulbright

Thracian Borderlands: A Year on Europe’s Doorstep

May 30, 2016

Theodore Charles, 2014-2015, Fulbright English Teaching Assistant to Turkey, doing some market shopping in Sinop

Tucked in the far Northwest corner of Turkey lies Edirne, a city that was once the capital of the Ottoman Empire. Thrace, a geographic area in southeastern Europe, has been fought over for thousands of years, changing hands as frequently as the meandering paths of the Meriç and Tunca rivers. In the early morning, mist rises off of the rivers at the city’s base, clambers over the worn stones of Ottoman bridges, and coats the wooden facades of centuries’ old homes with beads of water. Late into the evening, the rustle of broom makers working by lantern light can be heard, their meticulous weaving and binding ceaseless as the sun sets over the flowing water.

If you take the opportunity to wander the walking thoroughfares and streets that sit in the shadow of the majestic Selimiye Mosque, you will catch whiffs of savory meat cooking in sunflower oil. Edirne is Turkey’s unofficial capital of tava ciğer, or traditionally prepared fried liver. Every morning, dynasties of liver chefs carefully prepare the meat to maximize flavor and texture for the dozens of people that will line the streets around lunchtime, waiting up to an hour for the piping hot meat.

0 Comments

U.S. Fulbright

Farewell!

May 26, 2016

Shannon Foss, 2015-2015, Fulbright English Teaching Assistant to Romania

In partnership with Reach the World (RTW), the Fulbright U.S. Student Program is publishing a series of articles written by Fulbright English Teaching Assistants participating in Reach the World’s Traveler correspondents program, which through its interactive website, enriches the curriculum of elementary and secondary classrooms (primarily located in New York City but also nationwide) by connecting them to the experiences of volunteer Fulbright English Teaching Assistants (ETAs) and other world travelers who are currently studying and living abroad.

The end of March marked the end of my sixth month as a Fulbright grantee in Romania, which means that I still have one month left to go. The funny thing is that even though I’ve been here six months, I still feel in many ways like I’m just starting to adjust. It constantly surprises me how many new things I learn, experience or realize every day. I meet new people, hear new stories and even find new things in the grocery store!

This experience so far has been more challenging and rewarding that I ever could have imagined. My classes are nothing like I thought they would be, and a lot of that is because I learned how to adapt to the environment. I tried certain things with my students, learned what worked and what didn’t, and made changes. My teaching is still not perfect. A lot of times I expect things to go one way and then something completely different happens. I have also faced problems I never would have expected, like having issues with my health. However, having to deal with them has made me a more confident person.

0 Comments

Older Posts

Newer Posts