This website is not an official U.S. Department of State website. The views and information presented are the grantee's own and do not represent the Fulbright Program or the U.S. Department of State.
Okay, here goes! My first time blogging! I've never even read a blog, let alone written one. I've read memoirs. I've written journals. I've taught kids to journal. Never thought I'd "blog" . . . until now, because I am about to embark on a life-changing adventure that is so amazing to think about that I want to write about it and share it. I am going to be teaching for a semester in England! A teacher in the West Midlands and I are going to be switching classrooms. We are going to be living in each other's home. We are going to be invited into each other's friends' homes for coffee or tea. We are going to be shopping in each other's community and exploring in each other's world. Our new young students are going to be enamored of us with our funny accents and strange lingo (I must remember to have them line up in the corridor, not the hall since a hall is a large room). And then the newness will soon wear off of that and we'll have to pull out all our regular teacher tricks to keep them enamored--or at least paying attention. My exchange partner and I email often and have become fast friends (even though she's considerably younger than me). We've already met our students via Skype--her (soon-to-be-my) charming British students in their crisp school uniforms, and my (soon-to-be-her) wiggly American students in blue jeans and tee shirts.
How did this all begin? With an application to the Fulbright Teacher Exchange Program. After getting to go to England for the first time last summer with my daughter, I knew I had to have more of it. A friend suggested I apply for a teacher exchange, and without a moment's hesitation, I did. It was a long and arduous process (you don't even want to know!) followed by a long and agonizing wait with the understanding that it is rare to be selected on the first try, but I was! I believe in signs--you know, the universe's way of pointing you in the right direction--and there have been a plethora of signs this past year. In my application essay I had written that one of the reasons I wanted to do this was to step outside of my comfort zone. One day I saw a refrigerator magnet in a store that read: Life begins at the end of your comfort zone. The magnet lives on my refrigerator now. Maybe one of my blog posts will be all the signs that have come to me--there have been that many. Anyway, I am doing this! Me! At 58 years old, it's finally my time to step out of my comfort zone and shake up my life and my career. It's never too late, right?
In another week Rachael and I will finally meet in Washington D.C. where all the Fulbright teachers from all over the world will come together for a week of workshops and excursions and presentations, afterwhich we will all disperse to our assigned part of the globe and begin our journeys of cultural awareness and personal and professional growth. My purpose in wrting this blog is to document this extraordinary opportunity--knowing full well that there will be ups and downs--and to bring some people along for the ride. This will not be a "fancy" blog--yet. Another goal is to become more proficient at this technology. We'll see how it goes.
