Saturday, January 26, 2019

Fulbright Application / Rejection

I received a rejection letter from the Fulbright Commission today. When I went back to graduate school in 2017, I promised myself that I would apply for a Fulbright Scholarship. It had always been a dream/goal of mine. I kept my promise, and from April 2018 to October 2018, I worked non-stop on writing a competitive application. I received a lot of support from professors at Marquette and Cardinal Stritch Universities. I'm proud of what I accomplished, even if it was not meant to be. I'm going to leave some of the application on this blog for posterity. Many of you probably don't know about my ambition to be a Fulbright Scholar, so for you, this will be entirely new! Enjoy. 

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Personal Statement:

I was the first born in a set of triplets. From birth we were treated as a unit. Strangers and family alike would refer to us as “the boys” or the “Ault brothers.” It was common for people to identify us by one physical feature or a specific character trait (I was deemed “the quiet one”). The only place where I felt treated as an individual was in school. However, the individual attention I received was a consequence of my own failures as a student rather than any unique traits or abilities inherent to me. While my brothers excelled in the classroom, I struggled. When I was in kindergarten my parents were told that I needed to be held back. In first grade, they heard the same thing. It appeared I had a learning disability. I was eventually separated into a special education classroom. My parents and a few of my teachers recognized that holding me back would be difficult due to the fact that I was a triplet--they were concerned about my future confidence and academic success when I got to middle and high school. Instead, the school and my parents worked together to institute an intensive intervention program replete with small group instruction, one-on-one tutors, reading specialists, and academic counselors. This intervention lasted five years. Their hard work paid off. 
In 2013, I graduated from Marquette University with a Master’s Degree in Global History. At the end of the ceremony, my father asked to hold my diploma. I was the first person in my extended family to achieve this level of education. When I put the diploma in his hands, he said that he regretted that the teachers and specialists who worked with me decades ago were not able to share in the moment. In that instance, I realized the lasting impact of special education: the belief in a student’s potential no matter the odds; the power of a future not built upon false hope, but one that is attainable. 
For ten years, I held various positions in an array of nonprofits. I was a teacher, an after-school program director, a youth counselor, and a development director. Through the course of my career in nonprofits, I have had the opportunity to  study and work in the Czech Republic, Moldova, Ukraine, and Nigeria. From 2011-2016, I served as the director and founder of a small nonprofit organization called Diaconia Connections, where I worked to raise over $78,000 for aid and development causes in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and parts of Eastern Africa. My experiences working internationally challenged me to be a better cross-cultural communicator, to have empathy and seek understanding. By learning languages (I speak Czech and Slovak) and befriending people very different than myself, I became more aware of my privileges, prejudices, and the way in which I represented western power and hegemony (an unsettling realization for an individual working in global relief and development). 
In 2014, I received an invitation to teach at Pater Noster Elementary School in Owerri, Nigeria. The understanding was that I would volunteer for two months, learn about Igbo culture and language, and develop lessons and programs for the students. Pater Noster is a private school with a reputation for international exchange and creativity. Founded in 2010 as a Pre-K through 6th grade elementary school, Pater Noster has since grown to 80 students with a full-time staff of 13 teachers. The school has welcomed three volunteers teachers from the United States (including myself), and has hosted three sets of FLAS fellows through Michigan State University’s African Studies Center for Igbo Language. It was an offer that I could not refuse. At the time,, words like “empowerment” and “agency” were common in my vocabulary. I was concerned about “micro-loans” and “sustainability.” But when I witnessed first-hand the dedication and care of my teacher colleagues at Pater Noster and the seriousness with which Nigerian families take their child’s education, my understanding of “agency” and “empowerment” began to change: a good education and a quality school are the single most important tools for community empowerment. 
In 2017, I accepted a teaching position with Rocketship Southside Community Prep as a Teach-for-America Corps Member and enrolled in a Master’s of Urban Education program at Cardinal Stritch University, with a focus in Special Education. I currently teach in one of the most-impoverished cities in the country (Milwaukee, WI) and work with predominantly Spanish-speaking students from immigrant families. As a special education teacher, I firmly believe that every student can learn. That every student can teach. And that they all have talents, ambitions, and dreams. If we are serious as a country and global community about poverty reduction and equality, then we must offer a quality education to all students regardless of their culture, location, or physical and mental ability. It’s why I’ve proposed this project. I want to work alongside Nigerian teachers to develop with them a training program that will give them the skills and knowledge necessary to provide more inclusive, research-based teaching practices into the classroom—practices that have been proven to enhance the learning of all students, including those with physical, cognitive, intellectual, and emotional disabilities. Simply put, all students should have an opportunity to succeed and pursue their dreams. They should be afforded the resources and support needed to be educated, to attain their career and life ambitions, and to live as independent, civic-minded individuals.  Through the hard work of my own teachers, I’ve been able to live the privilege first-hand. And I know there are students in Owerri, Nigeria, that deserve that chance as well.
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Statement of Grant Purpose

Graduate Application, Urban Special Education (Master’s Degree)

Research into whether professional development trainings around inclusion can influence teacher beliefs and practices would provide insight into how Nigeria can more effectively educate all learners, including those with special needs. As inclusion has become a focus of international educational policy, Nigeria has adopted inclusive tenents into its national educational policy statements. Policy makers around the world are beginning to understand inclusive education as central to human rights and development. Significant barriers, however, prohibit most Nigerian schools from implementing inclusive educational practices. The following are widely-cited problems: limited funding for special education training and resources; culturally-insensitive and ineffective assessment and placement evaluations; negative cultural perceptions; a dearth of assistive technologies; and a small number of properly-trained teachers.  This project proposes to use an Intervention Research method to investigate whether a low-tech, replicable professional development model can improve inclusive practices in Pater Noster Elementary School in Owerri, Nigeria, thus mitigating one of the barriers to Inclusion: teacher training. 

This project developed from discussions with school administrators and teachers in Owerri during the summer of 2014 when I served as a teacher at Pater Noster Elementary School. Fellow teachers and school leaders spoke openly about their need for training in educational strategies to enable them to more effectively educate students who were exhibiting academic and social delays. To meet this need, I was asked to organize and develop a series of three teacher trainings for an all-staff professional development. While the trainings were received positively, I was left wondering whether that form of professional development could be reimagined to make it more culturally-competent, teacher-led, and replicable. Since that time, I have received a Master’s Degree in Global History from Marquette University and pursued a career in nonprofit administration and education. At present, I am working as an elementary special education teacher in the city of Milwaukee, WI, where I teach low-income, Spanish-speaking students from migrant families. Further, I am currently enrolled in an Educational Master’s Degree Program at Cardinal Stritch University, where I am pursuing a degree in Urban Education with a focus in Special Education. 

My research project will be designed to measure the effectiveness of professional development in enhancing the practices and beliefs of teachers around inclusion. To do so, the research will consist of three components: 1) a Pre-Assessment of teacher beliefs and practices; 2) a systemic intervention that will consist of the development and facilitation of a professional development module; 3) a Post-Assessment that will evaluate the effectiveness of the professional development module through observations, teacher belief inventories, and a survey of student perceptions about school connectedness and learning. 

To initiate the first component of the research, I will work with Pater Noster school leaders and regional educational experts to develop a culturally-appropriate Beliefs Inventory tool to obtain baseline information on the knowledge, skills, attitudes and dispositions of Pater Noster teachers towards inclusive practices. The beliefs inventory will be modeled off of the Options Relative to the Integration of Students with Disabilities Mainstreaming (ORI), developed by Antonak and Larivee (1995), along with the Scale of Teachers’ Attitudes Toward Inclusive Classrooms Instruments (STATIC). In addition to the development and use of a beliefs inventory, I will observe the teaching practices of educators in the classroom, evaluating the frequency and use of inclusive practices prior to intervention. Observational protocols will be modeled off of the Teaching Dimensions Observation Protocol (TDOP) and the University of Michigan’s Inventory of Inclusive Teaching Strategies.  Through interviews with teachers and through observations,  I will gather the necessary background information needed to construct an overall inclusive profile of the school, which will be published in a report to the head of school. The duration of this component will be 2 months. 

The second component involves the intervention. To do so, I will synthesize the information gathered from the belief inventories and observations to develop a professional development module that will train teachers in inclusive practices. I will work with Pater Noster school leaders and regional educational experts to formulate a culturally-appropriate professional development curriculum that will incorporate best-practices in adult education, including but not limited to, Universal Design for Learning frameworks that imbed multiple means of learning alongside low-tech elements that incorporate action, expression, and engagement. The professional development module will be designed to be low-tech and easily replicable so that teachers can be trained as facilitators and offer the professional development to both rural and urban schools. Once the professional development module is written, I will then model its facilitation through a series of 5 monthly installments at Pater Noster. Each session will last between 3-5 hours, with targeted practice, coaching, and follow-up, during the weeks between sessions. The duration of this component will be 5-6 months and will begin at the termination of the first.  

The final component of the research will consist of a post-intervention assessment of the effectiveness of the professional development in improving inclusive practices at Pater Noster, whether the training has enhanced the knowledge and skills of teachers around inclusion, and whether the intervention has positively influenced student perceptions and attitudes about school connectedness and learning. To gather the information, I will again model the beliefs inventory off of the Options Relative to the Integration of Students with Disabilities Mainstreaming (ORI), developed by Antonak and Larivee (1995), along with the Scale of Teachers’ Attitudes Toward Inclusive Classrooms Instruments (STATIC); and develop my observational protocol off of the Teaching Dimensions Observation Protocol (TDOP) and the University of Michigan’s Inventory of Inclusive Teaching Strategies. The duration of this component will be 1 month. 

After concluding the research components, I will synthesize my data and findings into a report so that the research can be distributed and presented to educational leaders and government officials in Imo State, Nigeria. I will also work with Pater Noster staff, regional educational experts, and Nigerian Universities to publish the professional development module into a curriculum book so that it can be distributed to other schools in the region. Further, I will work with Pater Noster teachers and school leaders to train them as professional development facilitators and offer the training to other schools in Owerri and Imo State. In the United States, I will seek opportunities to adapt the professional development to offer it to rural and urban schools who are in need of training and guidance around inclusion. I will also seek opportunities to publish my research in academic journals. 

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