This blog is far out of date and now that the new 2024 Fund for Teachers Fellows have been announced, I feel like I need to update everything that has happened since October.
I presented to all of the 9th grade social studies classes about my fellowship to share with them the artifacts I returned with. I bought some fruits and vegetables with which they weren’t familiar and some coffee beans since most had never seen them. There was a lot of interest and lots of questions, and it was fun to share my experience with them.
My students also completed their Where I’m From posters and they’ve been hanging in our school for months now for students, staff, and visitors to admire and learn from. So much work went into these, and I’m glad that they wanted to share a little bit of their hometowns. We’ve received several new students since then, and we continue to do a welcome circle with each student saying their name, their town, their state, and their country along with one other piece of information. The most recent controversy was whether or not chocolate counts as a favorite “food.” Since it’s mine, I say, “yes,” but some of them felt like a favorite “food” had to be something that wasn’t sweet.
Last month I had the pleasure of presenting to the Carroll County Community Development Corporation, which is a group of business people in our community, everything from small business owners to VPs at industries to university partners. It also includes our school district’s superintendent who was my connection to the group; when I had asked back in October 2022 if I could present to the school district if I was lucky enough to be awarded the fellowship, he had indicated he would also get me in front of the CCCDC. I modified the presentation I had done for the district because I wanted to tailor the information to people who may not have daily contact with our immigrant families. I was warmly welcomed and the information was well-received. I offered ways that we might be able to be more inclusive of the immigrants in our community such as making our flyers for events bilingual and I was told that they have been working on that. And that a Hispanic Fiesta is in the works for May! (When the event was published about a week later on Facebook, my families were overjoyed. We’re hopeful that there will be a large turnout and that the entire community can celebrate with Latin food, music, and dancing.)
After the presentation several of us stood around talking and I was able to share even more information about the struggles that our immigrant families face as they come here and the struggles to acclimate. All of them were eager to learn more and help in this process. I later received an email from one of the members who said that I opened his eyes; that has formed a new partnership that I’ll write about in a few weeks.
As the new 2024 FFT Fellows are processing the news that they have been selected and are busily planning to implement their fellowships, I am excited for them. Participating in the application review process a couple of months ago was interesting–being on the other side of the table, so to speak. I anxiously awaited the announcements to see if the fellowship ideas I had been so impressed with (and envious of) would come to fruition. At least one of them is. I’ve already been in communication with another 2024 Fellow who will be traveling to Guatemala to offer up any assistance I can. Teachers’ lives will be impacted this summer and it will ripple outward to their students, their schools, their communities–just like it has with mine.