Embassy Work: PAS

Another aspect of my Fulbright is working with the Public Affairs Section (PAS) of the US Embassy and the RELO (Regional English Language Office(r)), assisting them in their efforts to support English programs and teachers in the area. So here are a few things I’ve gotten to participate in connected to the PAS:

Language Resource Center (LRC): Every Wednesday I host a conversation club in the multi-purpose room of the US Embassy. This is for Senegalese members of the LRC, which is basically a library where they can access materials in English. Based on the theme of the month (Such as Women’s or Black History month) an article is chosen for discussion. At the beginning I would have about 10 people for conversation, but the number is growing, so now it’s more like 20+ participants.

Brainstorming about Activism

We have some interesting conversations. It’s not really an English class, it’s just for conversation, but being the teacher that I am, I usually approach the reading like I would in an English class because I know how much pre-reading and while-reading activities can help with comprehension.

A lot of times we do a brainstorming or discussion before we read, then compare what we already talked about to what we read. It’s usually a pretty good discussion and they don’t want it to end. But it has to end, because right after that we have the Meet Me in the USA film screening. A film or documentary that is usually connected to what we were discussing is screened and then discussed. We did a lot about Martin Luther King Jr. in January & February, along with women in politics, girl’s education, etc. We did one discussion recently about Misty Copeland and basically talked about how awesome she is, ha ha!

Sometimes the LRC organizes other events instead of the conversation/film clubs, such as a speech competition they hosted in February for the end of Black History Month. They had a bunch of speeches by notable Black Americans that the participants could choose from. Some of the speeches included sections of President Obama’s 2009 inauguration speech, some of Maya Angelou’s poetry, Martin Luther King Jr’s I Have a Dream, Langston Hughes’ “I Too” and “Let America be America Again”, as well as Jesse Jackson’s “Keep Hope Alive.” It was pretty cool!  The embassy compiled a video, which you can see here if you’re interested.

ILEP Orientation

I was asked to take part in an orientation for the ILEP program. ILEP stands for International Leaders in Education Program, another US State Department program that is for teachers. Teachers from the Near East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Western Hemisphere, who specialize in English, Math, Science, or Social Studies are eligible to participate in the program. They’re invited to spend 5 months studying at the Graduate level in an Education department at a university in the US. They continue to develop their expertise not only in their subject matter, but in teaching and knowledge about the US. They take courses as well as guest-teach at a local high school. (Learn more about that program here). There were 5 Senegalese teachers chosen this year and I was helping them with their pre-departure orientation. This was back in December and they were going to be leaving mid-January. A few were going to Ohio and others to northern Pennsylvania.

I was there for a general Q&A session about campus life and living abroad in general. One thing they asked about and that we talked about a lot was how cold it was going to be.  Some said they'd bought some sweaters, so they were set... In the end I realized that there’s really no way to explain how cold it really gets, it’s just one of those things they’ll have to figure out when they get there! Reminded me of when my Delaware Dad Tunde, who is from Nigeria, tells the story about the very first time he arrived in Wisconsin directly from Nigeria… it was January. Nothing anyone says can prepare someone for that, ha ha! All part of the experience I guess!

YALI MWF Applications

Most of you know that I worked with the Young African Leadership Initiative’s flagship program, the Mandela Washington Fellowship, for the last two summers at the University of Delaware’s Institute for Civic Leadership. I was able to continue my involvement with MWF here in Dakar by being part of the group that screened applications. Senegal is allotted 30 slots for the fellowship, ten for each track (Civic Leadership, Business and Entrepreneurship, and Public Management), and the Embassy received somewhere around 600 applications (which was the number after the initial weeding out done by an office in New York that, if I remember correctly, received over 1,000 applications). A group of us read applications and rated them so the committee could choose about 100 for interviewing. Then they did interviews every day for a week. I wanted to be part of the interview committee, but unfortunately it conflicted with my teaching schedule. I do get to meet those who were chosen soon, so I’m looking forward to that!