Picking My Independent Project and Meeting Staff!

After the weekend ended, the business of Fulbright began. I started my first weekday with a run around the lake, without getting lost! Lara, Bennie, and I took an uber to UEL, as to make sure we weren’t too late from trying to bus our first day. There we met Michele, our host professor! It was so exciting to have clarity on the University’s expectations and plan for us. It was frustrating that Fulbright never forwarded on the written outlined plans for us ETAs that Michele made, but we finally found out. It is an awesome balance between classroom Teaching assistant time and also developing a side project to collaborate with students and staff members. Immediately, I was drawn to the idea of working with the international education office, but Michele also mentioned the opportunity to volunteer in a local public school. You can imagine how happy I was. I did a little happy dance in my seat. To get to work with four of my loves- international education, postsecondary education, English, and secondary students…. My heart was ready to explode. There are four of us ETAs at UEL, and Michele cleverly thought to divide us up to each work with one grade level, and I claimed the freshman students. Working with lower level students during my student teaching made me realize how much I truly love the moments when students have breakthroughs. It might not be as often, and it might take longer, but their expression of making the connection to the material is what makes teaching one of the best careers.

In addition, Michele organized for us ETAs to meet the director for international education at UEL. I, of course, was in my glory listening to all of the opportunities I could get involved in to help welcome, track, and maintain a relationship with international students. I’m not sure if I will go the career route of working postsecondary in international education, but I definitely want to see the perspective from another school system abroad.

A quick side note- my host professor also told us that she wants to encourage us to participate in teaching and educational conferences across Brazil with her, meaning traveling to Belem and Salvador possibly!! I loved presenting at conferences while in University, but I’m a bit nervous for if I were to present in Brasil, and whether it would have to be in Portuguese. It’s a goal to work towards, and I very much hope that I can share my research on Educational Disparities in the USA to show that the USA isn’t always as “rainbows and butterflies” as some Brasilians think it is. It’s true that the phrase “the grass is always green on the other side” carries a lot of weight here, even around the world really.

OH! So, my campus has monkey on it around the Calcedon, main street through campus. My friends warned me not to try and cuddle the monkeys, which wasn’t a thought of mine to begin with, but they still told me to keep my distance. The ETA group plus Michele were walking between buildings and suddenly we were surrounded by monkeys! They started dropping from the trees, surrounding us, bared their teeth, and stood around us like a small monkey mafia. We got away without being touched by them, but I didn’t believe the stories that the monkeys make a menace around campus.