Creating and delivering meaningful cross-cultural contributions to communities abroad and at home is the purpose of the prestigious Fulbright Scholar Program, and Lowell High School teacher Sarah Ellis has the honor of being a participant in 2024.
In what is mainly a cultural and educational exchange program, Ellis is one of 64 educators chosen for this year’s program after an extensive application process. She will be sent with a group of educators to Uruguay on June 8.
Ellis, who teaches Spanish and art, has been at Lowell High School since 2006. She has an extensive background not only teaching Spanish but living in Spain. She completed a study abroad program during her undergraduate days and also spent a sabbatical year in Murcia, Spain.
Being chosen to be a Fulbright Scholar is a thrill for Ellis, who called the rigorous application a “good reflective process.” She said it was LHS Principal Steve Gough who first encouraged her to apply, and she was also inspired by a friend who had received the award.
The process includes writing essays, acquiring letters of recommendation, and submitting a resume, but Ellis also said the main component is showing the selection committee how you use your leadership skills in your community. Once she was able to convey her work as an educator and her dedication to diversity and inclusion in the Lowell community, she was accepted into the program this past summer.
Ellis will be in Uruguay for two weeks in June 2024. She doesn’t yet know many details of what exactly her group will be doing while overseas. She will find out more during a Fulbright symposium in Washington, D.C. in February. There, she will meet with her team, leaders in global education, and hear more details.
With her many experiences in Spain, Ellis is happy that Uruguay is her destination. In order to broaden her experiences, she had requested a Spanish-speaking assignment that was not in Europe.
“I was pleasantly surprised to hear that it was Uruguay. I was crossing my fingers that I would get to go to a South American Spanish-speaking country,” she said. “It could have been anywhere in the world.”
As part of her pre-trip process, Ellis and her group participated in a 10-week Fulbright online course to prepare them for their time abroad. The course focused on goal setting and how to teach “global competency” during her assignment and when she returns home. Ellis has created a unit plan that encompasses what she learned in the course and a presentation for the Lowell district on global competency. She will be submitting a capstone project after her field experience in Uruguay, but that has yet to be created.
“I’ve learned from previous Fulbright awardees that whatever preconceived ideas I come in with on what I want to create or share will change dramatically after the field experience. So for now, I’m open to learning,” she said.
Ellis said she is excited to meet and learn from new people and their lived experiences and cultures. Her past travels opened her eyes to understanding that people live differently, and she looks forward to broadening her experiences further.
“My passion is learning, entering a new environment, speaking the language… There’s always so much to learn,” she said. “There are 21 different Spanish-speaking countries. You have within those locations so many cultures and ways of speaking… tons of phrases and silly idioms and expressions that are hilarious.”
“Still after so many years of learning Spanish and being immersed in it, I make mistakes,” she noted. “That humbling experience is really essential to be able to bring to my students, too, and say, ‘I am not going to say everything perfectly, but I’m going to try.’”
Sharing this experience with her students is what Ellis hopes for the most.
“I hope that I bring back something that is useful and relevant for our community and district to help integrate more classrooms into this idea of elevating the global competency of our district from emerging to advanced,” she explained. “So I hope that maybe through this process and in a couple of years we could be more of a beacon for global competency.”
Ellis defined “global competency” as an understanding that our everyday lives are intertwined with everybody’s around the world. Effective communication and recognizing and accepting similarities and differences also plays a part.
“I hope to elevate the community’s ideals surrounding global competency and bring more of a nuanced and researched-backed approach to what it means to be globally competent and to have an understanding of the importance of celebrating diversity.”
Leave a Reply