The Prelude to Distinguished Fulbright Award in Teaching Programs: Application

Sometime in August 2012, I saw an email calling for application to the Distinguished Fulbright Award in Teaching (DFAT).

I remembered a similar email in my inbox a year earlier and I even deleted it without reading. I was busy with the starting up of the Niche Program in Visual Art in my school and did not want to be distracted. But in 2012, I opened the email and I got interested. I downloaded the form then totally forgot about it amidst the busy schedules. A reminder email came and I decided to give it a try. I had some idea on the required Capstone Project proposal. It grew from an idea I had on school-based art curriculum design based on two books I have read during my masters studies at the University of British Columbia. The books are Communities of Practice (Wenger, 1998) and Art Practice As Research: Inquiry in Visual Arts (Sullivan, 2010, 2nd Ed.)

When I filled in the application, I had really thought that it would be a writing exercise. I thought it would be good to concretise some ideas from the two books when I crafted the write up for the Capstone Project proposal. In all honesty, I never thought it would be of interest to the selection panel of the DFAT.

I was pleasantly surprised to be called for a "tea-session", a kind of informal group interview. I thought I had made sense in that session and did hope to progress further. Then I was called to go for a 2nd tea session but was not sure what to expect. We were asked on a topic in education that I really only had partial knowledge. In my career, I have taught different profiles of students and done various types of work at the school, zonal and national platforms but none of my work experience was related to the question asked. Every candidate spoke well in that session and although I did respond (which I was expected to), I could only base my response using Howard Garner's Multiple Intelligence theory and projecting a potential approach to designing pedagogy in a hypothetical situation rather than drawing from real ground experience. I left the tea session not expecting to be chosen for the final selection by US State Department. I felt I came up short this round but I did not feel defeated as being in the final group interview was itself beyond what I had expected. It was a great privilege to be amidst a bunch of brilliant educators in a group chat!

A phone call came sometime in May (I think it was late afternoon before the school shut its gates) and I recalled I was really tied down with Mid-year examination committee work, that when I was told I got the DFAT, I did not really register what had just I heard (well, I know I am not an audio-digital learner). After the phone call, I asked myself "Did I hear it right?" I sat there for a few minutes and thought to myself "Wow! You mean this is real?". I went to the school principal and all I could say was "If I heard it correctly, I have been given the Fulbright Award and awaiting final approval by US State Department". I believed I had a more puzzled expression than elation and my principal did not know what to make of it!