Teaching knows no bounds

Explaining to a new employer that you’ll be leaving in six months to teach English in a foreign country isn’t a position many of us find ourselves in — but that was the case recently for Mountain Brook High School graduate Rick Lewis.

“I had studied English in school, so it was something I had a nerdy passion for it, and I was looking for something to do post-college,” Lewis said, who graduated from the University of Alabama in May 2018. “I wanted to do something completely different than I had done before.”

In late June, Lewis received word from the Fulbright U.S. Student Program —  after being named a semifinalist in January and waiting eight months to be named a finalist — and finally found out he is headed to Malaysia in January 2019 for a 10-month stint teaching English.

His first job out of college and new employer, BTC Media based in Nashville, has been “really great about it,” he said, and understands it’s an opportunity of a lifetime. As long as everything goes well, Lewis said he’ll be back at work after he gets back. 

The Fulbright U.S. Student Program, which according to its website is the largest U.S. exchange program, offers research and teaching opportunities in more than 140 countries to recent graduate and current graduate students. 

“You sort of have to think about it holistically at the outset about,” he said. “What you’re doing, it’s essentially going to do a difficult job but in a really great place.” 

The biggest component he’s nervous about, he said, is the challenging but “wonderful” responsibility of being a teacher. He will be teaching elementary Malaysian students how to read, write and speak in English for the school year. 

“I think it is going to be about trying to establish the trust bond between other teachers, other people that have been working in the school and have dedicated their life to this,” he said. “I think getting past that and building that amount of trust in the community, that’s the thing I’m most nervous about but also really looking forward to doing.”

Lewis said he had many friends who completed Fulbright programs over the years, several of whom encouraged him to apply.  

“You have to remember the two big components of it — being a teacher’s assistant, and really wanting or having a passion for teaching and the things that come along with that, and wanting to be an effective communicator and someone who is happy to share not only their expertise but their love of the language and other cultures.”

In his own words, Lewis describes the upcoming chapter of his life as a “teaching cultural exchange program,” where he will represent the U.S. and build relationships in his new community in Southeast Asia. 

“[Part of it] is being able to serve as a cultural ambassador of the U.S., which is something I really didn't put into context as much when I was applying,” he said. “But being able to talk to program administration now, post-acceptance, I know that’s such a huge part of it.”

This includes being able to live in a completely unfamiliar community while building meaningful relationships within it. Fulbright scholars are usually placed in rural communities without many other U.S. citizens or outsiders, unlike capital cities, Lewis said.

Another aspect to the Fulbright experience, he said, is to be able to “bridge cultural, ideological and even political gaps of learning,” while teaching English, which he fully expects to have its challenges. 

Lewis said he previously only knew a little bit about Malaysia when he applied to teach in the country. 

In his sophomore year of college, he did a farm exchange program in Japan over the summer, Working Weekends on Organic Farms, or commonly known as “WWOOF-ing,” where he volunteered for a small family on a farm while they fed and housed him. This experience, he said, allowed him to get a feel for what cultural ambassadorship would be like, in addition to overcoming some of the fears tied to traveling alone to a new country, knowing no one and standing out as an outsider.  

“But once you get comfortable with [standing out] and once you speak to people and learn a little bit more about their experience, there’s a lot more in common than we have in difference,” Lewis said. “So I think [WWOOF-ing] definitely allowed me the mental freedom of wanting to even apply for the Fulbright.”

One of the other farmers that was part of the program was from Malaysia, which sparked his initial interest of the country. 

Since he recently was chosen as a finalist, he has been learning a little bit of the native language, Malay, talking to other Fulbright scholars who studied in Malaysia and reading several novels based in the country. 

In the following months, Lewis said he’ll be learning more information about his trip and getting ready for his three-week orientation. Eventually, he will take a survey that will focus on additional interests aside from English so he can also help lead after-school programs. Depending on his answers, they will try to place him accordingly, he said.

As part of the Fulbright experience, he has to be ready to “totally embrace a new way of life,” he said.

“I’m not totally prepared for it, but I’m looking forward to it all,” he said. 

To learn more about the Fulbright U.S. Program, go to us.fulbrightonline.org.