Western senior Alice Bremner will teach English in a secondary school in Delhi, India, for eight to 12 months on a prestigious Fulbright Scholarship.
Bremner, a Fairhaven major in medicine and social justice, will embark on her journey July 18. While in Delhi, Bremner plans on volunteering at a clinic during her spare time.
The Fulbright Program is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and is the largest international exchange program in the country. In 2008, Fulbright awarded approximately 6,000 grants to students, teachers, professionals and scholars.
Q: What inspired you to apply for the scholarship?
A: I’ve always been interested in the opportunity to go to another country to study and teach. I was interested in a program that specifically promoted fellowship, and I wanted to work with the government of the place I was going to. I think the Fulbright is a really effective way to do that. I didn’t want to go somewhere and teach English to people who were paying to have a private English teacher, and I didn’t want to go somewhere where I was working only with people who had money to pay me. I wanted to work with real people. I think this is a really good way of doing that. I’ll be teaching in a public school with regular students.
Q: What did applying for the scholarship entail? What criteria was Fulbright looking for?
A: I think Fulbright specifically looks for a strong academic record, and they look for a history of public service and for strong personal recommendations. Another component of it is putting together a good project proposal and putting together a really solid personal statement. It’s a two-page project proposal and a one-page personal statement.
Q: Did you think winning the scholarship was a long-shot?
A: You know, I don’t know. They have really detailed statistics about how many people apply in each position, and how many of them get it, but I was applying for a totally new position. So I didn’t know how many people would apply for it, but I thought it was worth a shot. I was really pleasantly surprised even just to make that first round of cuts, because it is relatively competitive.
Q: Will there be other Fulbright scholars in Delhi with you?
A: There will be four of us total, but we’re all teaching in different schools around Delhi, and Delhi is huge. We’re not even [going to be] in the same region of the city.
Q: Is this your first experience abroad?
A: I went to Mexico in high school for a couple of months to work on a community health project. I didn’t speak Spanish before I went there, and I left speaking Spanish quite well. And, I actually worked as a ski guide in Chile, based in Santiago, for a little while. But, I’ve never even [been gone] close to this long before. The longest I’ve been gone is five months.
Q: Do you have any experience in education?
A: Yes, I do. I worked as an outdoor educator for a nonprofit in West Virginia and ran a watershed education program in a West Virginia middle school.
I was also a crew leader for an AmeriCorps program in Southern Utah that had a strong educational component. It was a high school credit program for young people.
Q: Do you think this will be different from your past teaching experiences?
A: It will be really different. I’m excited about it. I haven’t ever taught in a classroom like this before – I’ve really taught mostly outdoors and I think that environment is so different.
Q: What are some of the challenges you might encounter during your stay?
A: The easy things that come to mind are just the infrastructural challenges – finding a place to live, finding a house that has a water supply and sewage, because that’s a big challenge that Indians face all the time. I think the other challenges will be feeling comfortable, starting to feel at home and making friends; just getting settled generally.
Q: How do you think your experience in India will help you in the future?
A: I think understanding the way other people live on our planet will give me a foundation for understanding humanity in general. I think teaching will be a big part of everything that I do. I think [the trip] will just give me a real understanding of how people actually live in the rest of the world, outside of [the U.S.].
Q: Is it common for students in India to learn English?
A: I think so. Each state has its own language that’s the designated language, and Hindi is the most commonly spoken language in Delhi. But, English is second and quite a lot of people speak English. I think some people probably have less spoken English experience [than written English experience], maybe because of the emphasis on writing in school. But my guess is that everyone speaks a little bit of English.
Q: What sorts of health problems does India face?
A: There’s a widening gap between rich and poor in India, like there is in a lot of countries in the world. But there’s a huge, huge amount of malnutrition there, still. There are still people who don’t get enough food. Actually, the New York Times did a really great feature on it, maybe two months ago, of these tiny babies who look like they are seven years old, and they are four months old. They just don’t have any fat – they don’t have chubby little legs, they don’t have chubby faces. Malnutrition is surprisingly a huge problem. I think the basic access to healthcare is not universal. People don’t have even the basic things like clean water and there’s not necessarily a sanitation system in each town. But, then again, major cities like Delhi have first-class, world-class hospitals and excellently trained doctors.
Q: How long have you been passionate about social justice issues?
A: I think I was raised to be aware of them. I feel like it’s our responsibility as members of our society to care about people. We learn in kindergarten that we should share what we have, and that’s the foundation of how I feel. It’s the same kind of thing, I’m just older now. It’s not like sharing my milk and cookies, it’s like sharing the access to resources I have here.
Q: Will you have time to travel while in India?
A: I do think so. I get some vacation and there are national holidays, so I’ll take that time to travel.
Only registered users can post comments.
Please login or register.
Be first to comment on this article
