The Plan

Fund for Teachers is an organization that provides teachers with funding for summer fellowships. FFT asks teachers to design their own professional development and then backs them in making it happen. I don't remember exactly how we found out about this exciting organization, but as soon as we did Aaron and I began planning our dream summers.

In 2008 Aaron won a fellowship and we spent a month last summer kayaking over 1000 miles of the lower Mississippi River while Aaron conducted water quality research. It was great experience and Aaron has created a fantastic unit for his students in which they analyze his data and gather their own during trips to the Chicago River.

This year it was my turn to create a proposal that would support my teaching. I have always been interested in the creation and evolution of culture and national identity and proposed that I go to France to conduct qualitative research on the way the country's growing Islamic minority is changing French culture. Fund for Teachers gave grants to 29 individuals/groups of teachers in Chicago and I am fortunate to be one of them.

I will be leaving June 23 for France where I will spend two weeks in Paris and two weeks in Lille conducting interviews and recording oral narratives on French culture. I am very excited about all I am going to see and learn.

The Background of the Plan

When I began my senior year at Southern Illinois University in 2000, I was a month away from turning 21, four months away from getting married and two semesters from graduating with a degree in History and a teaching certificate. That fall I took a class with the late Sen. Paul Simon and I expressed to him that I longed for broader world experience before entering the classroom as a teacher. At that point I'd had done little beyond school work and waitressing to pay for that school work. I'd never traveled outside the US and very much wanted to. He strongly encouraged me to join the Peace Corps, which turned out to be the best "push" anyone has ever given me.

Aaron and I, married less than 10 months, packed our bags and went, literally, half way around the world to the tiny archipelago of Vanuatu. We spent two years teaching in a vocational school, hosted by a small, wonderful community in one of the least developed areas in the world. We were offered the chance to stay for a third year to work with an NGO in the country's capital, which gave us extensive opportunity for travel within Vanuatu and its neighbors Australia, New Zealand and Fiji.

We left Vanuatu in December 2004 and spent 9 weeks traveling from Costa Rica to Mexico before settling in Chicago and into classrooms. I was always aware of how much I benefited from my travels, but was surprised by how well my students respond to them. To them, my pictures and stories are more interesting than anything out of National Geographic. I think this is largely because they feel that my stories, no matter how topical, are not actually educational. They aren't work, so they are fun. But more than that, I think that my travels make the world seem more real and travel more possible to them and they like to imagine the places they might go someday.

Although I have traveled enough to impress my students, I feel I have a huge gap in my resume. I have never been to Europe. I turn 30 at the end of the summer and feel strongly that I need to get to Europe before then, so in June I am heading for France.