Fulbright TGC Participants 2022

Anne Boyette teaches Honors Language Arts and English I and serves as the Academically/Intellectually Gifted Specialist at Hendersonville Middle School in the mountains of North Carolina. In her twenty-two years of teaching in the same school system (and schools) where she was once a student, she has taught every grade from 6-12 as well as college freshmen. Boyette also has a soft spot for history: she is a former NC National History Day teacher of the year, and she loves nothing better than coaching over fifty students annually through the development of their projects. Her interests include gardening, hiking and reading historical fiction since it allows her to learn about other cultures and time periods. Though she hasn't traveled nearly as much as she'd like, she's committed to helping her students learn about life beyond their small mountain town and hopes her participation in the TGC program will expose her to opportunities to share the lives and experiences of world citizens with her school and community with greater immediacy and impact than she does now.

Blog: Welcoming the World to Western North Carolina

Guiding Questions:

• How does the Finnish education system’s promotion of equity and cooperation over achievement and competition and its shorter school days lead to better results academically, physically and emotionally for students and teachers?
• How do they “loop” teachers with students and what is the impact of an ongoing teacher-student relationship over several years?

Jermaine A. Ellerbe, Ph.D. has twenty-four years of experience in the field of education as a teacher, professor, workshop leader, instructional coach, consultant, and content specialist. He earned National Board Certification in Early Adolescence Social Studies/History and National Geographic Educator Certification. Currently Dr. Ellerbe teaches Global Humanities and World Studies at a public urban magnet middle school. Additionally, he is an adjunct faculty member at the Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Dr. Ellerbe enjoys attending and facilitating professional development, world cultures, and international travel. He hopes that by participating in the Fulbright TGC program that he will gain greater insights into various cultural aspects of the host country to enhance his curriculum thereby fostering a heightened global competency among his adolescent learners.

Blog: Global Ed Guide

Guiding Questions:

• What does the history curriculum teach Finnish students about US History?
• How is Social Studies/History taught in Finland in the areas of national history, international history, multicultural education and African American history?
• In teacher education programs, how is Social Studies taught?
   

Isaac Farhadian teaches AP U.S. Government and Politics, U.S. Government, and Economics at John H. Pitman High School in Turlock, California. He is the advisor to the Pitman Junior State of America (JSA), which is the largest nonpartisan student run civics organization in the country. He serves as the Department Chair for Social Studies and as the Professional Learning Community (PLC) Lead for U.S. Government and Economics at Pitman. He las led multiple voter registration drives, student mock elections, after school debates, and congressional simulations. He has a B.A. in History, a B.A. in Political Science, a M.A. in History, a Teaching Credential in Social Studies, and he is currently pursuing an M.A. in Political Science as a James Madison Fellow. His professional goals with this exchange program are to engage and learn about other cultures and to learn and implement best practices concerning those multicultural experiences into his curriculum. He wants to take this international experience and share it with his students and colleagues, so they can directly benefit from it.

Blog: Farhadian Global Classroom

Guiding Questions:

• What best practices for teaching from my international site experience can I take back and incorporate into my teaching, my PLC team, and my school site?
• In terms of inter-cultural learning and experiential interaction, what can I do to help better educate my students about the Finnish culture, history, and politics and how can I incorporate this into my U.S. Government and Economics courses?
   

For over a decade, Sarah has taught Special Education in New York City public schools, serving students with varying levels of academic and language needs across multiple class settings. Currently, she works at M.S. 324 - Patria Mirabal Middle School in the Washington Heights neighborhood, where she uses her Spanish skills to collaborate with students and families. Sarah also serves as her school's Equity Coordinator, implementing restorative practices and designing professional development to help her colleagues uplift student voices. She was named a 2014 LearnZillion Dream Team teacher and a 2018 NEA Foundation Global Learning Fellow to South Africa. Sarah holds a bachelor’s degree from Sarah Lawrence College, a master’s degree from The City College of New York, and is currently pursuing National Board Certification in Young Adult ELA. When not at school, you can find Sarah reading on the couch with her dog or running along the Hudson River with her husband.

Blog: Global Learning with Sarah Kuhner

Guiding Questions:

• First, how do the following considerations that student may have directly impact their K-12 teachers' instruction?
  • Neurodiversity/Special Needs
  • Linguistic Background
  • Cultural/Racial/Religious Background
  • Socioeconomic Status
• As a follow up question what systems and structures are available to ensure that teachers can effectively plan, revise, and implement their curricula to address the considerations above?
   

Ryan Lewis is a 13 year social studies teacher and chair of the social studies department at Woodford County High School in central Kentucky. For the past 5 years, Ryan has been pursuing a doctorate in curriculum and instruction through the University of Kentucky's Pro Teach Cadre. Most of his studies and research center on argumentation in the classroom and inquiry-based curriculum design. He currently lives in Lexington, KY with his wife and two young children. With an undergraduate background in anthropology, Ryan is hoping the Fulbright TGC program will bring him into contact with teachers and teaching experiences from a diverse set of backgrounds. He has a tremendous passion for working with and learning from other teachers. This program presents a unique opportunity to pursue both teacher connections and multicultural education.

Blog: Woodford Goes Global

Guiding Questions:

• Personal: How do Finnish teachers continually challenge themselves as professionals to continuously improve?
• Social Studies: From the Finnish perspective, what is the purpose of social studies education? How do Finnish teachers approach difficult/controversial topics in their classrooms?
• School: How do Finnish schools build a culture of learning that teachers and students can both buy into?
• Teacher Training: What sets Finnish teacher training apart from other programs in other countries? 
   

Kendall is a passionate and energic teacher entering her 13th year in the Hillsborough County School District in Florida. She is proud to teach in her native Plant City, in the IB Department of Strawberry Crest High School, teaching both AP European History and AP American Government. With three kids and three pets at home she also finds joy in academia especially encouraging her high schools to volunteer and work with the neighboring elementary school that is in a predominately low-socio economic area. She sponsors both Teen Trendsetters a literacy tutoring club and STEAM a math/science and engineering tutoring club where her high schoolers are partnered with struggling elementary schoolers to create a bond and develop new skills together. Through Fulbright TGC she hopes to gain new knowledge and tools to support children in her school, community and through the vast network of teachers she engages with on social media.

Blog: Nickerson Global Education

Guiding Questions:

• How do Finnish schools create a sense of global community and prove the necessity of global competence for their students?
• Do Finnish schools encourage students to work and serve in their community and what does that look like if so? 
• How do Finnish schools prep students for a global world?

Sophia is a reading specialist at a one school district on the Northern California coast, near the giant redwood forests. In addition to many years as a reading specialist, she has also taught Kindergarten, second and fourth grades. She support teachers' professional development through instructional coaching and literacy collaboratives. She is an arts advocate and is currently part of an arts integration initiative which strives to achieve the goal of improving student academic performance, reasoning skills, creative thinking and engagement. She is especially interested in exploring how social emotional learning can be reinforced through arts integration. In her free time, she enjoys spending time in the wilderness, backpacking and lounging lakeside. She also loves to garden, spending time at the beach with her family and her newly adopted dog, Brownie.

Blog: Global Literacy

Katrina Pogue teaches high school World History and American History at St. Joseph High School in Victoria, Texas. She is a certified National Geographic teacher who loves to teach about different cultures and destinations around the world. Katrina is also the school's outdoor education coordinator. She plans multi-day outdoor trips for fourth through eighth graders. When not teaching, Katrina loves to go camping and hiking with her family. Every summer she applies for different scholarship opportunities to better her understanding about the content she teaches. Katrina is extremely grateful and ecstatic about this opportunity to travel to another country and learn about their culture and environment.

Blog: On the Road with Pogue

Guiding Question:

• How can we as students of the world, better understand our new friend’s half way across the world, and teach others about them too?

Micheal Posey has taught World and Classical Languages in several schools throughout the US. In his teaching tenure, Posey has been recognized three times as a National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH) grant recipient. In 2017, Posey received the Mason A. Steward for teacher training award by the Classical Association of the Middle West and South (CAMWS). In 2020, The College Board selected Posey to attend an Advanced Placement (AP) and WE Summit held on Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, WA — he was the only AP Latin delegate! Posey holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Dartmouth College (Hanover, NH) in Romance Languages: Spanish and French, coupled with equal coursework in Classics: Latin and Ancient Greek; and a Master’s Degree from Middlebury College (Middlebury, VT) along with post-graduate work at other institutions. He considers himself a lifetime learner! On the technology front, Posey is a certified Google Educator (Level 2) and was selected as a recipient of a National Security Agency (NSA) fellowship to explore cybersecurity (2017). Additionally, Posey has been a featured presenter at several local, regional, and national professional conferences on utilizing online formative assessments in the classroom and incorporating current educational technology in the world language classroom. He is a newly-minted member of the National Latin Exam Writing Committee, Chair of the National Mythology Exam: Pegasus and has served twice as President of the Louisiana Classical Association. A crock-pot slow-cooker, neighborhood jogger and enthusiast of a panoply of world languages and cultures, Posey has traveled extensively in the Americas and Europe and is most passionate about introducing students to meaningful global opportunities and world-connected learning. 

Blog: Alabama Global Classroom

Jill began her career as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in France and has been teaching ever since. In addition to teaching French and Spanish at Essex High School in Vermont, Jill founded the Global Leadership Program, a four-year honors program at the high school. The Global Leadership Program focuses on three core competencies: global studies, cross-cultural competency, and leadership development. The program is augmented with a robust exchange program that is both virtual and face-to-face with five high schools around the world. Students also hear from ambassadors, politicians and authors in the GLP Speaker Series, while learning about critical languages and cultures in the Language and Culture Series. This year in the Fulbright TGC program, her goal is to combine educational philosophy, pedagogy, and technology to foster global awareness and cross-cultural competency, give students and teachers virtual and face-to-face mobility in the world, and increase the global effectiveness of Vermont high school students at a time when international cooperation and collaboration are increasingly crucial. She hopes to expand and incorporate a new network of learners and learning providers by investigating multicultural and multilingual France and Morocco, and including these regions in a new interdisciplinary curriculum and in a series of international exchanges that are both virtual and in person. In her spare time, Jill enjoys spending time with family who live on opposite coasts in the U.S., as well as biking in Vermont.

Blog: Global Leadership Program

Guiding Questions:

• What is the greatest challenge facing educational leaders in Finland today?
• What is the greatest challenge facing classroom teachers in Finland today?
• Finland's educational system has a worldwide reputation for innovation and excellence. What are the factors that you believe contribute to this reputation for superior instruction and learning?
• Are there schools and teachers in Finland that would like to connect with an American public school (in my case, in Vermont) to engage in a robust and sustainable virtual exchange, as well as explore and refine ways to create profundity in the relationship between our schools even when virtual?

Charlotte Quigley is teaching third grade at Helen M. Knight Elementary School in Moab, Utah. Previously, she taught fourth grade and sixth grade at HMK, and fifth grade in New Mexico. She is also an artist working in pastel and watercolor and exhibits her work at a cooperative gallery called Gallery Moab. She spends much of her free time hiking in the beautiful area of Moab, rafting, and paddle boarding. Her objective for participating in the Fulbright TGC is to incorporate cultural and artistic programs into her classroom and to support other teachers in incorporating similar programs into their classrooms as well.

Blog: Ms. Quigley's Global Classroom

Guiding Question:

• What different resources and creative means of teaching is Finland using to incorporate global competency into its elementary curriculum?

Conrad Ulpindo teaches at Columbus Medical Sciences Magnet School and also serves as a Parent Coordinator. He loves to travel, enjoys the California beaches and volunteers quite often at a Senior Center near his home. As an educator lead, he would like to raise the bar and connect all students with others beyond the seas; share their ideas and thoughts with the world and allow everyone to develop friendship amidst our differences. I cannot think of teaching and learning, more than participating on such lofty goals than daring myself to be one of the Fulbright TGC participants. 

Blog: The World Connected

Guiding Questions:

• How can the US and Finland empower future generations to share science learning and teaching, in order to develop more profound relationships and bridge lasting friendships with other countries?
• How can the Fulbright TGC build a more sustainable exchange of ideas and resources to facilitate a better life of future generations?
• What can US educators learn from Finland’s experiences on equity, diversity, sustainable food sources, international peace and goodwill and the advancing role of women in leadership and empowerment?
• As an educator, what changes do I need to make in my classroom, in order for my students to be better learners and more engaged in sciences and Math?

Veronica Fuentes Verzosa is an educator for the Oakland Unified School District in California. She began her career teaching adult English Language Learners within Oakland’s refugee and migrant communities and is currently a 3rd grade teacher at Cleveland Elementary, a Title One school. Having seen firsthand that academic success of a child creates a ripple effect that can lift their family out of poverty, Veronica is committed to understanding and promoting college and career readiness for the children of underserved communities. Her interests include writing, photography and urban sketching.

Blog: Local to Global

Guiding Questions:

• What are the best practices in the way Mathematics is introduced in the Finnish primary grades? 
• How can those practices then be applied to children in the same age range to close the achievement gap in my urban, high-needs school district?

Mrs. Christy Wingard is a 22-year veteran teacher at Airport High School in West Columbia, South Carolina. A National Board Certified Teacher and graduate of the University of South Carolina, Mrs. Wingard teaches World History, AP Human Geography, and Teacher Cadets. Over the course of her tenure at Airport, Mrs. Wingard has served as History Department Chair, participated in curriculum development, assisted the Student Activities Director, class sponsor, and Senior Activities Director. Mrs. Wingard is active in her church and community, volunteering for church and civic activities. In her spare time, Mrs. Wingard enjoys spending time with her husband of 26 years and her two sons. They often travel to the coast of South Carolina to enjoy the beautiful scenery. Mrs. Wingard looks forward to learning more about other cultures and bringing this knowledge back to her students.

Blog: Going to Places: A Guide to Global Education

Guiding Questions:

• How does Finnish history impact Europe and the United States in the 20th & 21st century? 
• How does the geography of Finland impact its global trade network with Europe and international partners?
• Are there any Russian legacies in Finland?

Allison currently teaches 4th grade Gifted Education at Ocean Springs Upper Elementary in Ocean Springs, MS. She has been teaching for 25 years across grades 1-5, regular education and gifted education. She has presented at many local and state educational conferences, was selected as a Phil Mickelson Exxon Mobil participant, a MS Writing Initiative participant and has been involved in or is head of many school organizations such as stem camp, gifted camp, PBIS, Leadership and grade chairs. Allison loves to challenge herself to try new things. She plans on gaining knowledge and connections that will help her establish networks within her community to help promote global learning.

Blog: Growing up Global

Guiding Question:

• What opportunities are there for above average students in Finland and what do they look like?