fulbright Taiwan online journal

fulbright Taiwan online journal

Month: May 2022

The importance of optimism

“I don’t know if you’re brave or if you’re crazy,” said a fellow Fulbrighter to me after our quarantines had ended, “coming to a country where you don’t know anyone and you don’t know the language.” The comment caught me off-guard, but she was right: What on earth had I been thinking? Why did I agree to take on this incredibly daunting challenge, and who was I to think I could overcome it?    I remember laughing before responding: “Maybe it’s a little bit of both.” Weirdly enough, this has become my mantra during my time in Taiwan, though I’ve never been too big a fan of the word “crazy” – instead, let’s call it “blindly optimistic.” Yeah, sure, that’s what I am. See, growing up in a small South Carolina town, I’d always had dreams of “making it,” though I was never quite sure what that meant. Did I want wealth, popularity, incomparable success? I thought so – after all, aren’t these the things that make people happy? Now, I believe that “making it” is actually just realizing you are more than all of the bad experiences you’ve had — and that you’re fully capable of making new memories

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Lessons from my Mini-UN: Teaching History in an International Classroom

While preparing for my teaching grant at Tunghai University, International College Dean, Dr. James Sims, asked me to design a world history course that introduced students to foundational concepts from history and geography. His request was particularly exciting to me because I have a passion for history, but don’t often get to pursue this interest as a Science, Engineering, Technology and Math (STEM) librarian at the Colorado School of Mines (Mines). As course development began, I knew that as a librarian, I also wanted to incorporate the opportunity to practice research and information evaluation skills in class. From these goals came my course, History and Geography for our Interconnected World. Fulbright scholars with Dr. Nadeau and Tunghai University President Me outside the Tunghai University Library Over 13 weeks, 43 students and I worked our way through approximately 800 years of world history. We utilized the SPICE framework to explore the social; political; environmental [interactions], cultural and economic aspects of history. Covering that amount of content in a single, shortened semester can be very difficult for students to follow. It can also be difficult to connect events, people and cultural developments throughout history to their lives in the 21st century. To mitigate these concerns, I

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Research & Reflections

fulbright taiwan online journal