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Fulbright Program: U.S. Applicant Podcast

Transcript For: Jody Dudderar, Teachings Assistants

Jody Dudderar, Assistant Director, discusses Teachings Assistantships available in the Western Hemisphere

Tony:                Alright, welcome to the Fulbright US Student podcast, applicant podcast. I’m your host, Tony Claudino with—

Schuyler:          Schuyler Allen and today we are joined by the Assistant Director of the US Student Fulbright Program, Jody Dudderar, who is going to—

Jody:                Talk to you about the English Teaching Assistantships in the Western Hemisphere.

Tony:                Now, it’s a hot topic. I mean, basically, we’re getting lots of people- lots of interest and lots of applicants—

Schuyler:          Very popular component of the program.

Tony:                Yeah, absolutely.

Schuyler:          Growing year to year.

Tony:                And some new ones have been in Africa recently. We launched some new-

Schuyler:          We did, we did indeed. And are there new ones in the Western Hemisphere that we’d like to talk about today?

Tony:                Yes. So give us an update, recent developments.

Jody:                I’d like to talk about- the Western Hemisphere is new to the English Teaching Assistantship. We came in in 2004 with grants to Chile and Argentina. We now have ETA grants in seven countries in the region. The newest programs for 2009-2010 are in Mexico and Colombia. I’m very excited about both programs. There’s information on the website on both, but briefly the ETA program in Colombia is going to be based at Colombian universities in cities throughout the country. And the ETA program in Mexico is going to be based both at universities throughout Mexico, outside of the capital city, by the way, but also we have a few special opportunities for ETA grants at secondary schools in the capital region. So, we’ve got a couple of options for you in Mexico. I think these are going to be excellent opportunities to add to our standard program of four countries, Chile, Argentina, Venezuela, Brazil and Uruguay- that’s five countries.

Tony:                I’m a big fan of the Brazil English Teaching Assistant program. Going back to an earlier podcast, we’re big fans of Brazil.

Schuyler:          We are. And on average, how many grants are offered?

Jody:                I think we have over 50 grants in the Western Hemisphere region, and again that’s up from 15 the first year.

Schuyler:          Wow!

Jody:                That’s pretty exciting. But it also happens to be well applied to. For those 50 grants we’ll probably receive about 500 applications.

Schuyler:          My goodness. My goodness. And do you need to speak Portuguese or Spanish to apply?

Jody:                You do need to have proficient levels of Spanish to apply for all of the grants. In Brazil, just as with the regular grant program, if you don’t have Portuguese, you should at least have a good working knowledge of a similar language, a similar Romance language such as Spanish or French. Proficiency means 2 years of college level study.

Schuyler:          Right. And one of the big distinctions between English Teaching Assistant component of the Fulbright Program and the Study and Research grants is that an affiliation is not required.

Jody:                It’s not only not required, it’s not desired whatsoever. The commissions or the US Embassy in these countries do make decisions on where applicants are placed. Having said that, if there are a variety of different options in a particular country, as I mentioned with Mexico there’s a couple of options, in Brazil they have different options, you can certainly request a particular option if your strength is teaching young children or teaching teenagers, you may wish to request working with teenagers. If you prefer working in a university setting, and that’s the option offered in that country, you certainly may request that. But the actual location?

Tony:                Yeah, can you pick location?

Jody:                The actual location is up to the commission. You may request a location if you absolutely really, really want it but we don’t recommend it because it might limit your chances because the commission might not feel you’re a good fit for it. So you’re better off keeping your location options open, but certainly it’s ok to make your programmatic option noted in your application.

Tony:                OK, great. That’s great advice.

Schuyler:          So, I think people have this perception that Fulbright is strictly an academic program and I think the ETA program is a good example of how we’re not strictly academic and there is a community engagement component of this grant built in. What are some of the projects that somebody might undertake in that component of the ETA? Just some things that people do.

Jody:                Projects can be anything and they really are very broad. We’ll have students… it really depends on what the applicant’s interests and skills are. So if athletics, sports are your passion, you might do something around that. We’ve had students who’ve gotten involved in sports leagues. If education is your action, working with parent groups, they’ve talked about developing parent groups sorts of things. It really depends on what your interests are.

Tony:                Now, going on that, I have a quick question related to references. So let’s say I’m a soccer player in college and then I want to go teach English, obviously in Brazil, would my soccer coach be a good reference, especially if we dealt with kids?

Jody:                You know, actually, that’s a very good point. And where I’ve seen that come up is just in that context, is that a person that coached might know your skills in terms of a teaching situation. And if you’ve got good teaching skills

Schuyler:          leadership sports

Jody:                leadership skills through a sports activity, then it certainly could be relevant. What we don’t want that coach to talk about is your skill as a soccer player.

Tony:                Cause then you would be playing the major league soccer federation, obviously.

Jody:                Yeah, right. That could be a deal breaker, but if it’s talking about your skill as a teacher or as a coach and how that might reflect and be translated into an ETA or a teaching assistantship kind of role, then yes, that would be appropriate.

Tony:                Great. I’m going to apply right now, obviously! [laughing]

Jody:                You’ve been looking, thinking-

Tony:                I’ve been looking, I’ve been looking. What are some qualities you’re looking for in an application? Did we ask that already, or no?

Jody:                No… actually the ETA applications, they’re looking at a variety of factors. There’s not one specific quality that would either make or break an application but it’s the whole applicant that we’re looking at. A good guide, and I do suggest that students do this, if you go online to the “apply now” section, you’re going to find that you can pull up a copy of the reference form 9b. For ETA applicants we ask the referees to answer 5 very specific questions and these kind of get at the kind of qualities that we’re looking for in applicants. So you might want to take look at those questions, think about those questions as you fill out your application, in terms of understanding what we’re looking for. But to kind of give you a brief idea of what they are, we’re looking for candidates who have excellent English language skills: speaking, writing, and the ability to use that language effectively in those two formats. We’re looking at students who have a good record of extracurricular achievement; we’re looking at the student’s academic record, how well you do, to a certain extent, is an indication of how well you might be in a classroom. It doesn’t mean you have to be a 4.0 student, but you do need to have a good academic record. That can’t be overlooked. You have to have good Spanish skills, or for Brazil good language skills, good second language skills.

Tony:                You can say Portuguese, I don’t mind.

Jody:                Good Portuguese skills. There’s so many of you… there actually are quite a few students now who have Portuguese when they apply for this program. And finally we mention the project, what I call supplementary activity, because I don’t want you to think about it in the same context as a study/research grant. Reviewers look at how creative some of these projects are. It’s not just enough to say, oh I want to take a course at a local university. If you’re going to do that, talk about why you want to take that course or two. What is your passion about learning about that subject in this particular country? So be creative in talking about your supplementary activity. Don’t make it a full blown research project, but make it real. I think it tells us a little bit more about you as an individual when you tell us what your passion is, what makes you tick.

Tony:                I have one more question.

Schuyler:          Go right ahead.

Tony:                I’m on fire today for some reason. The question I have is—we meet a lot of students out when we do campus visits and stuff and many students probably around this time of year when we publish the podcasts they probably don’t have enough time to fill in the application for a full grant, and then they decide, oh why don’t I apply for English Teaching. And so, you might see the application that they apply for English teaching but what they really want to do is probably my research or something. What advice would you give applicants?

Jody:                That is a, that’s a very good question because that person won’t get selected for an ETA grant. To apply for an ETA grant you really need to have a clear idea of why you want to be in a classroom for 20 hours a week, why you want to talk about English, about the United States. The type of person who does an ETA, who is selected for an ETA grant is the type of person who can go out into the community and really, really engage in that community. As I mentioned you have to have these good language skills, you have to have a little bit of a background that shows that you’ve been engaged in teaching and learning, whether it’s through tutoring, whether it’s through coaching, or working with young people as you mentioned. Some of our candidates have very specific educational skills, but if you come at it where you’re project seems to be more important than the teaching aspect of the grant, they will not select you and I have seen every year excellent candidates come back from the commission, saying, “Tell this person to apply for the full grant next year because they’ve got a great project but they’re not an ETA candidate.”

Tony:                So they should really sit down and figure out which of the two they want to apply to.

Jody:                And what really they want to do with this academic year that they’re abroad. The successful ETA candidate has a passion for the type of work that ETAs will be doing, and that is talking with people, working with people, whether it’s young people, whether it’s peers, or whether it’s adults, depending on the program. They want to be out there in front. And that comes through in the application. It comes through in the references, and they have a remarkably wonderful experience.

Tony:                And then the last piece of advice is they can only win one Fulbright award and so-

Schuyler:          So choose carefully.

Tony:                Exactly. Great. Well, Jody, thank you very much.

Jody:                You’re welcome.

Schuyler:          Thank you.

Tony:                And, we’ll look forward to hearing you soon from another podcast.

Jody:                Yeah, maybe.

                        [laughter]

                        Thank you, thank you very much.