Pursuing a New Opportunity to Enrich Teaching and Learning

It’s an exciting year for Ms. Deanna Tomasetti from Schurz High School! She recently received a Fulbright Teacher Exchange award. Early next summer, she will travel abroad as part of a fellowship that will expand her perspective as an educator. Right now, she is planning for this experience through an online course about bringing global education practices and topics into your classroom. 

This opportunity is building on some of the work she has already been leading at Schurz! About two years ago, she was an instrumental part of piloting a colloquium program that allows students to learn topics beyond their typical curriculum. This allowed them to build relationships with teachers in new ways. It highlights how you build school culture by trying new experiences! 

We caught up with Ms. Tomasetti to learn more about her goals for her exciting year ahead. Learn more about that below. 

Why is this opportunity something that you wanted to pursue? 

I teach in the IB program at Schurz, so international mindedness is very relevant to my role and how I see education. We have a heavily Latino student population here, and one of my goals is to be fully bilingual in English and Spanish. I don’t have my placement yet, but I prioritized countries in South America and Latin America where there will be cultural context that relates to my school. 

How do you envision this experience enriching your instruction? 

Part of this program is building a capstone, which includes a unit plan that we bring back to our school. I have a few different areas of interest. I coach tennis and soccer here at Schurz, so I’m interested in how sports are leveraged as part of education globally. Empowerment through sports is very interesting to me, so I would love to see what that looks like in a country like Brazil. 

I am also interested in literature that acts as a window versus literature that acts as a mirror. Windows allow us to see parts of life that we are more unfamiliar with, while mirrors allow us to see ourselves reflected in the text. I feel like the books students read are almost all mirrors right now because teachers are encouraged to give them books they can relate to. I would love to see how other countries are navigating this idea so I can find a good balance for my own instruction. 

How does this opportunity connect with your overall goals? 

I’m actually having a student teacher for the first time this year! I’ve always been nervous to do this, but I see it as a great responsibility. My goal is to broaden my instructional coaching experience because I would love to see my career evolve toward an IB coordinator or instructional coach position. I very strongly believe in depth over breadth and going into topics deeply, versus feeling like you have to survey everything. 

What advice would you give to other educators who want to pursue unfamiliar experiences to help them grow? 

Try, and do not be discouraged if you are not accepted right away! Fulbright actually shared with me that applying more than once is seen as a positive. I feel like gathering international perspectives in education is more important now than ever before. Having said that, make sure not to overburden yourself. Pick a good year for you to pursue something like this. When the right time comes, you will feel it, and you should just go for it.