HOW DOES URUGUAY tell its story?

On one of our last nights in Montevideo, our group of Fulbrighters visited the Africania Civil Association, a social and historical club under the direction of Tomas Olivera Chirimini, whose mission it is to spread both the dark legacy of Afro-Latin enslavement and the joy of candombe and dance. It was a fitting capstone for our two week tour through Uruguay, both somber and joyful in equal measure.

After all, we were the unlikeliest of cohorts - 17 of the best teachers from across America - on an international exchange of cultural diplomacy in a time when the capricious maliciousness of our President and his small-minded thinking had made enemies throughout the world, never knowing until the very end whether our trip would even be allowed to continue. Over 80 years there have been thousands of Fulbright exchanges - maybe, someday, in a brighter world thousands more - but only ours will ever see the entire Fulbright board quit in protest right in the middle of a trip.

Inspired by my own work in narrative writing, including my unit plan for the Fulbright on We Were Strangers Once, Too, I was curious while traveling around Uruguay to see how international educators inspired, cultivated, and elevated the stories of their students. Indeed, before we even left the United States, this became my "guiding question" for the trip - the foundational curiosity I was to take with me that would underpin and guide my journey.

As teachers caught in politics, our story became one of liminal experiences - foreigners in a country when our own country was waging war against their own immigrants. For almost three weeks I stood in awe of my group mates as they refused to let this dampen their light. We made connections. We visited schools. We talked with children. We held their hands.

As we toured Montevideo and Salto and rural and urban Uruguay, I grew frustrated with my own facility with Spanish. Much of what I heard was through translation. That night at the Africania Civil Club was all in Spanish too. Tomas gave a lecture and I listened, like I had listened to the children, in translation. It wasn’t until the end that he said his first words in English. I was helping him up with a giant bear hug - lifting him from the ground because of a group photo we were taking. He pulled me in so his mouth was right against my ear.

“Don’t forget our story,” he said in perfect English. “Don’t you ever forget.”

But for two and a half weeks I had heard and understood the message already.

FULBRIGHT TRIP TO

URUGUAY

JUNE 2025

Instituto de Alta Especialización Montevideo

Our first school visit was to the Instituto de Alta Especialización Montevideo, where we saw students demonstrate project based learning in STEM, including a short experiment where students used strawberries to “see” DNA under a microscope and an outdoor rocket launch. Schools in Uruguay operate with a preference for and facility with PBL that struck me as an American educator - indeed, so much of what we would witness over the next few weeks was some form of student-led project based learning. At I.A.E. and other buildings, students are encouraged to take ownership of their STEM educations by taking ownership of their classroom experiences. As an English teacher, I left South America more inspired to find additional places to implement this type of learning in my own classroom.

Old Friends You've Just Met

“It’s all him,” a parent told me. “Everything that starts at this school, he is at the center of.” I met Dario Victor Greni Olivieri at his school Alfred Nobel - his students took to me when they found out I could juggle, and Dario wanted to share some pictures he had taken of my routine. He asked for my number when we realized to our surprise that we were ALREADY in a group chat together as former nominees for the Global Teacher Prize. With the GTP, my experience was that, while the travel was a joy (my particular group met in Paris), it was the experience of collaboration AFTER the event that I held most dear - and has been most instrumental in benefiting my students. My GTP cohort has regular online meetings in which we discuss bold projects we can do together to change the face of education in our countries - we actually had one when I was in Montevideo. I told Dario that now that we had met in person that this was our shared destiny as well - and that I believed it was our fate to bounce off each other forever. I was proud to gift him a copy of “We Were Strangers Once, Too” and look forward to ways we can join forces to collaborate on elevating student narratives.

Golden Hour in Montevideo

I believe the same thing for our cohort of Fulbrighters - that we will bounce off each other, sometimes individually, sometimes in groups - but like pinballs always find our way back together. This spirit of collaboration and shared purpose was one we talked about often - particularly as we traveled in smaller groups to more remote locations throughout Uruguay. My cohort to Salto included Chad, a teacher from Hawaii, Sherry, a gifted teacher from Ohio, and Katie from Chicago. Over and over again I watched as they brought their unique experiences and skills to students. I thought long on how I could utilize these talents in my own classrooms - places where music or math or geography could slip in through collaboration. One project we have discussed is a book, in which we will get-together to tell the personal stories of our journeys. T.S. Eliot writes that “We shall not cease from exploration/And the end of all our exploring/Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.” But truly this is the joy and the privilege of traveling - meeting people with whom you can make HOME a little better.

Rural Number 19

The Salto Crew split from the main group to explore rural schools in the north of Uruguay. At Rural School 19, we saw how innovative teachers like our colleague Pablo were integrating technology into their classrooms - Katie, in particular, showed out here, working with a group of dedicated students to code a lighting system. (I think. Despite being a project for elementary school students, it was somewhat far above my head). So many of the places we traveled to had functionally zero resources with which to teach - books, in particular, seemed in short supply. As a teacher in a Title One School in a major urban district, I was used to “city poverty.” But visiting Uruguay was my first real opportunity to get up close with “rural poverty.” After visiting this school, the question of how to do more with less sat with me in my heart for a while.

Liceo San Antonio

At Liceo San Antonio, we participated in a fair with student demonstrations, including a conversation showcasing student narratives. One of the major reservations I have about education in America is the focus on STEM and so-called “career” based learning - what has been elsewhere termed the consumer model of education. It’s an idea that learning should be project based around a core group of skills (often computer or science based) so as to “best prepare them for the real world,’ or more accurately, the working world. I saw this firsthand in Uruguay, as government officials seemed most focused on gearing their students towards an education which could help them in the global marketplace. But at what cost? What is lost when there are no common texts? When there is no music or poetry? The Liceo San Antonio was the first school in two weeks where I saw any reference to narrative storytelling. It was a drink of water in a dry desert. Here, as elsewhere, I was inspired to reflect on ways in which I can fight for liberal arts educations.

Alfred Nobel

At Dario's school near Montevideo, Fulbrighters watched as elementary school students took charge of STEM learning, including through the creation of a butterfly garden. In this classroom, students had catalogued local frog populations and then used this knowledge to craft stories. At this school, I reflected on ways in which I could further collaborate with science teachers to create co-curricular opportunities for learning.

ENGLISH SPEAKING UNION

SCHOLARSHIP

OXFORD

In 2024, I was awarded a summer scholarship to study at Oxford University thanks to the generosity of the English Speaking Union Princeton Branch. For more information about the ESU, or to learn how to apply for their scholarships, click the button below.

ESU

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LONDON, PARIS, OXFORD, AMSTERDAMN, LILLE, BIRMINGHAM, UTRECHT

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