All of a sudden, it's starting to get real. The calendar turned over to 2017, a year that seemed still far away until very recently, and a year that will provide a watershed experience for me. I've been thinking about Morocco since October 2015 when I saw an advertisement in a listserv I belong to announcing that the applications for the Fulbright Distinguished Teaching Award were open. (Thank you Lisa Adeli!) The application was long and a bit daunting since I thought I had a very small chance of being accepted, but filling out the application led me to think about my teaching practices and goals in ways that I hadn't considered in a long time. Completing the application was great professional development! I got some wonderful support for my application from my curriculum supervisor (Thank you DeWayne Cash!); I worked incessantly on the application until I hit the submit button, and the waiting began. When the approval email eventually came, I was completely floored-- and grateful for the support of my husband (Thank you Paul Stutzman!) so that I could actually accept the opportunity. And now, here I am less than 30 days away from stepping foot in Rabat and finding out where my curiosity will take me.
I have had a little preparation. Last August, I met with the other Fulbright DAT recipients for an orientation in Washington DC, and I learned a lot more about the program and what to expect (thank you Holly Emert!). I was able to meet the two Fulbright teachers from Morocco who were embarking on their experience in the US, and I spent some invaluable time with a 2015 DAT recipient in Morroco (Thank you Cynthia Reedy!), who was a font of experiential knowledge. The community of Fulbrighters is pretty impressive! And now, I am beginning to work through my final checklist of things to do before I go: figure out appropriate clothing for an Arabic country where I will clearly be a western woman; where to live; how to access funds, the internet, and teacher colleagues; which classes to sign up for at Mohammed V University; how to ensure systems to keep things running smoothly here at home and in my classroom; and make sure my parents know how to use Face Time. So here I am, on the cusp of the adventure of a lifetime, not at all sure how this is all going to work out, but confident that it will be something special. And I invite you to follow on this blog as I document whatever it is that Morocco brings to me.
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Marcie StutzmanTeacher, Researcher, Adventurer, Explorer; Maybe crazy; Possibly too old for this Archives
October 2018
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