Though my time at McCutcheon helped me acquire licensure to teach in Indiana, I first plan to attend graduate school to pursue a Master's or PhD. I'm still waiting to hear back from some schools, but I have been accepted into the master's program in Sociology and Education at Columbia University (Columbia with a "u", not an "o" like the country), so I might end up in the Big Apple when I return from Colombia!
And that brings me to the present. Before I start my graduate studies, I chose to take the 2024-2025 school year "off" to carry out a Fulbright grant as an English Teaching Assistant (ETA) in Bogotá, the capital city of Colombia. The Fulbright program is an international educational exchange program that aims to increase mutual understanding between the United States and other countries. My Fulbright specifically is a collaboration between the U.S. and Colombia, and I’ve been placed here for 10 months to assist university students in their acquisition of English as a new language (ENL), just like I did at McCutcheon. Now, however, instead of in the secondary school context, I work alongside professors and instructors to teach English to undergraduate and graduate students pursuing their own degrees in Bilingual Education at a university called Institución Universitaria Colombo Americana (ÚNICA).
When I’m not teaching at the university, I’m out exploring Bogotá and traveling to see as much of Colombia as possible. I’ve been in Bogotá since July 28, 2024, so for just over five months, and I’ve had a blast exploring the country.
