Fulbright: Step 2

When I returned home from a wonderful Thanksgiving at Cori's parent's house, I found a hand-addressed envelope awaiting me in the mail. Thinking it would be the hyper-inflated Weimar Republic banknote I recently purchased on Ebay, I excitedly tore it open. Inside, I found a letter from the Fulbright Iowa Chairperson.

It turns out my application has been forwarded to the regional interview team and I have been granted an interview by telephone this Saturday! In past years these interviews were conducted in person, but this year Fulbright is trying a new method for screening applicants (perhaps they are going "green?").

So, this week the chairperson and I will arrange a time at which I will interview with a screening panel. From what I understand, the group will use the interview to evaluate my candidacy. The panel will then provide a recommendation to the Fulbright Academy for Educational Development (AED) in Washington, DC. The AED will ultimately decide if I will be selected to teach abroad.

If I make it that far (and I have guarded confidence that I will), I will face what I anticipate will be my biggest hurdle: finding a viable matching teacher abroad. I teach world history and economics, and I have a feeling the economics class will be the difficult one to align with foreign teaching candidates. This week I plan to ask my principal if my school can be flexible about allowing my potential match to teach only world history, and have a domestic teacher pick up my sections of economics. We'll see.

However, at this point, I'm glad to have made it to the second step in this process. Before I completed the application I had tempered my emotions as they relate to this opportunity. But since that time, I have had a difficult time keeping my mind off the exciting possibilities that might lie ahead!