“The Magic Wand of Immersion”

Last week in Chicago, a group of 1,400 international educators listened to the words of Dr. Lilli Engle on “What do we know now, and where do we go from here?” I’ll admit my mind wandered to the meetings I had coming up, the emails I had to get to. But several phrases and buzzwords stuck in my mind. One of these?

Sounds ominous, right? It is. This is not your fairy godmother sent from beyond the veil to turn your pumpkin into a coach. Neither is it the genie in a bottle, which you first rubbed in your office of study abroad, promising you untold fame, fortune and a spouse overseas.

The word immersion is a throw-away term used in brochures, next to skydiving photos and a white student hugging non-white local children. Is that immersion? Many schools and their students struggle to identify the proper definition, and continuing research is showing that some students never do. As educators, we cannot promise that your 6 weeks or 6 months in a foreign country will immerse you in a new culture. Immersion is not osmosis. You cannot achieve immersion by just being there.

In December 2012, at the culmination of a study conducted by myself and my American Institute of Foreign Study colleagues, we shared with a group in Dublin the following findings: Based on a survey with 170 respondents, 100 in Europe and 70 in the U.S., we found that access and use of technology remains almost entirely the same whether a student is at home, or abroad. That made me want to use my magic wand to bop them over the head and turn them into cobblestones. And so we continue to study both tools and roadblocks that assist and deter our students from this mythical immersion experience.

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How many times I have wished for a casual swish & flick to turn the tides of a travel experience, or that of my students. I am often found saying to my students, “study abroad is not a singular event.” Well here’s another gem for you: “study abroad is not a one-way street.” We drop that one in pre-departure orientation meetings, most often at the beginning of the session when my staff and I are talking about being an ambassador for the U.S., for our university, and for themselves. Here, I’ll set the stage:

Imagine yourself in a rural area. It’s hot, you’re tired, you’re probably lost and if you have to speak one more word of Spanish you’re going to freak. Then comes a barista, talkative, gracious. It takes a second or two in this god awful heat but you realize – he’s not pandering for tips or blowing you off as the dumb American. He has questions. Where are you from? How is your home? Do you like it here? Your one word answers blossom into longer explanations. He excuses himself to get your Fanta and ice, and upon return, peppers you with more questions: is your city very crowded? do you live with your parents? have you been to university? You’re charmed, even through your exhaustion. Several minutes later when you make your excuses to leave, he offers to take a photo of you in this place. You say, let’s take a photo of YOU in this place, so I can remember it. He is delighted and happy to oblige. When you tuck your chair back into the table and readjust your bag on your shoulder, he puts his hand on your arm and says, “do you know, I’ve never met an American before. I will tell my friends that they are wrong about you. Que dios te bendiga.”

The magic wand of immersion never could have touched that scene. The distance between two people changes in every foreign country, where the bubble of personal space expands and contracts. So what’s immersion? Reaching outside of that bubble and impacting another person. Sharing your culture. Sharing yourself. An active approach that calls on you, the traveler, to initiate the experience.

Our advice to our students, and my advice to you: Don’t sit back and wait for this to happen. Create these opportunities for yourself. It will make your experience far richer, and your purpose even clearer. Keep your magic wand for physics class, and use your own magic to find this elusive “immersion,” where others may never think to look.

Anything for scholarship

So, the day after this godforsaken election, I will head to one of the reddest states in the Union: TEXAS.

What for? Benjamin A. Gilman. Specifically, his scholarship. The Benjamin A. Gilman International scholarship program “provides awards for U.S. undergraduate students who are receiving Federal Pell Grant funding at a two-year or four-year college or university to participate in study abroad programs worldwide.”

So what does that mean? Pell Grants “provides need-based grants to low-income undergraduate and certain postbaccalaureate students to promote access to postsecondary education.” These are students who simply cannot afford an education, as determined by their financial aid status with the federal government. The Gilman is the government’s way of saying, let us help you go abroad.

The Gilman is funded through the International Academic Opportunity Act of 2000 and is sponsored by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of State. So this is real. So real, in fact, that since 2001: 31,462 applications have been received and 9,796 scholarships have been awarded to students participating in study abroad programs around the world.*

I volunteered to be a “reader” or more formally “selection panelist.” I just read 68 applicants from all over the U.S. with students headed to destinations all over the world. I scored them based on a rating system, and will fly to Houston to meet with a co-panelist to deliberate over the group. Literally thousands of students apply in each term, so although my 68 took 2 solid days to read, it’s only a small batch!

So off to Houston, the International Institute for Education offices and the heat.

All in the name of scholarship.

 

* http://www.iie.org/en/Programs/Gilman-Scholarship-Program/About-the-Program

Volver: To Return, to Go Back

[Friday, June 15]: Catching up on posts from last week!
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Tienes hermanos, Kelly? Yo no. Soy la unica. Eres hija unica?!
Do you have brothers or sisters? Nope, I’m an only child. The only child??

Regardless of the language being spoken, after my admission of a solo childhood, there usually follows an expression of surprise. Some people ask if I enjoyed my only childhood, did I wish I had siblings. I usually tell the story that my parents told me: when I was 2 and people starting pestering me about my sibling status (“are you ready for a baby brother?”), I shook my head definitively and declared, “No, I’m quite enough.” Sometimes I crack a joke about not being able to blame the dog for any household wrongdoing, or refer to my common practice of borrowing other people’s siblings.

For those that know me, my parents and I are quite close. My friends also think of my parents as an extension of me; likewise, my parents adopt my friends. There are emails, letters, gifts, hospitality. What a compliment to have these two people that accept everyone I love, and automatically love them, too.

When I went abroad for the first time – age 20, hija unica – it was terrifying for my parents. They were pretty good about hiding it under a veil of excitement, only confessing to me upon my return that it was deeply and profoundly scary. Their only daughter spending six months overseas in a place they didn’t know, a language I kind of knew… I can understand the anxiety. But one small comfort, a silver lining – there would be a family.

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Six months later, I would be sobbing hysterically in my Spanish apartment, clinging to my señora, torn between going home and leaving a place that had also become home. The cab driver telling me I would come back, “they always come back.”

Juan, Josefina, Kelly, Esther, Juani: 2010

Six years later, I prove him right, returning to the same apartment, visiting during my year teaching English abroad. As if no time had passed at all, the family sits down for lunch together and the sound of Castellano bounces around the room, bouyant, full of the joy of return. With every mouthful of paella, I am grinning, telling stories and recounting the last few years.

Eight years later, I will direct my taxi driver to the same apartment. I recall a train ride in from Sevilla two years earlier. Americans, gathering like they do, exchanging plans and stories. A girl several years younger than I, referring to her semester in Granada a few years back. I ask immediately about her living situation, and she mentions that she stayed with a host family. I ask where she lived, and she shakes her head – she can’t remember – and she returns the question. Startled, I repeat my host family’s address and explain the general direction. She shrugs and nods. This is my first true recognition that not all host family experiences are created equal.

Josefina & Esther: 2004

For me, a señora who loved to cook. Who always had “her face” on, who made me special meals when I was sick. She let me cook in her kitchen, and she comforted me when my grandmother died. Host to more than two decades of American girls, a most generous soul. A father, who worked hard on the family property and loved jokes and sweets. Extraordinarily shorter than his American daughter, and equally proud to escort me to the plaza on my first day in town. Two siblings already moving on with their lives: a handsome older son working in Madrid, a kind woman with a five year old princess who let me plan an Easter egg hunt for her.

Most notably, a sister. Gorgeous, model thin, incredibly Spanish. She quizzed me about my days at university, shuffled around in silly slippers, taught me Sevillanas (kind of) in the marble hallway. Inquired about boys, America and my future plans. Entertained my friends, praised the cultivation of an Andaluza accent and baked a birthday cake for my roommate. Quick to laugh, an expert at an American-Spanish accent and so animated, so Granadina.

And so tomorrow, a wedding. Her wedding. Tradition, fun, finery and .. family. A triumphant return to a beautiful city that I think about all the time. A seat at the table with a family not my own, a series of American sisters celebrating a sister not mine, or theirs. Olé.

Immersion: 8 girls, 2 volcanoes, 1 week

When you hear the word immersion what comes to mind? A dip in the pool of culture? A cannonball in the lake of language? A chance to “go native?” Immersion is one of many buzzwords in education abroad today. It wiggled its way into the rhetoric, and even debuted in Sh*t Study Abroad Students say. So what does it mean?

In a workshop last spring Michael Vande Berg, Vice President for Academic Affairs at the Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE), made an obvious statement and a true one, immersion is interactive. More buzz words, right? Wrong.

Immersion, like tango, takes two.

Both student and host culture are involved, working toward a common goal – be it language acquisition, cultural awareness or a better understanding of one another.

I have a strong dislike for the phrase “go native.” For me it conjures up images of ornery expats holding court in a local restaurant or Jersey Shore deviants buying grass skirts at the market. Don’t “go native.” Just go. Go with an open mind, a good attitude and a flexible agenda. Go with your eyes open, and respect as your guide. Go with questions in mind, camera in hand and come home with new knowledge. Plan to share all three when you return.

map courtesy of Lonely Planet

Next Sunday I will not only spring forward, I will head south to Central America into 90 degree heat, sunshine, and Spanish. I am leading a group of 8 female students to Granada, Nicaragua for spring break. These women are challenging themselves to improve their Spanish outside of the classroom.

As a customized faculty-led program, it boasts many of the comfort factors which make this and programs like it the #1 study abroad choice at my university. Four reasons stand out: 1) short-term program, 2) group travel, 3) scheduled activities, 4) leader familiarity. Our students consistently choose programs that are short (2 to 4 weeks), led by a faculty or staff member they know, with an itinerary followed by the entire group. They will travel together, lodge together and often complete coursework together at each stage of the program.

But WAIT, you may argue … I thought the point of study abroad was to get outside of your comfort zone?

courtesy of wikipedia

Yes, I agree. But some people prefer to test the water before jumping right in. Can you blame them?

I point to psychologist Abraham Maslow for research on this. He is well known for his work on human motivation, and the “Hierachy of Needs.” Although his theory was first penned in 1943, his points hold true today. Maslow believes that in order for individuals to truly gain from their experiences, they must first have basic physiological needs satisfied. Can you breathe? Do you have access to food, water and shelter? The next step is safety, a key factor in study abroad: security of body, mind, health, resources, finances, etc. It is here students must confirm their feelings of safety (and comfort) before moving up the pyramid to self-actualization. This is what comfort looks like, and it doesn’t look the same for everyone.

Does this one week program qualify as an immersion experience? Yes. My students will be living with host families while we’re on the ground, a huge bonus for their language acquisition. Not only will they be tested in the classroom, but also in the home, where communicating for those basic human needs like food and water will be necessary. We will also be spending our afternoons zip-lining through the rainforest, climbing volcanoes, exploring bat caves and attending a local festival. Our last day will be spent on the beach, where we will focus on immersion in the Pacific Ocean.

Much of our data shows that students returning from a short-term experience will often come back for more. This continuous travel broadens their perspective, and helps them establish their place in the world. They become ambassadors and travelaholics, like so many of their advisors (myself included).

It is not a trip. It is not a tour. It is an experience. And I think we’re going to have a damn good time!

How Facebook changed the face of Study Abroad

At the risk of sounding like an old biddy, “Back in my day.. (2004) there was no internet.” That’s a lie of course. The world wide web had the globe in its silky grasp, but had yet to slip into every home. I left for Spain without a laptop and went to live in a flat with no internet connection. Not even the whirring, beeping cacophony of dial-up.

I don’t remember this being a life-altering detail at the time. The computer lab at the Center for Modern Language was the size of a bedroom, with three old dinosaur PCs. The hard plastic chairs in front of them were consistently full with a rotation of students, basking in the monitor’s blue glow. I settled for a nearby Internet cafe for my online needs -  which back then were 75% uploading photos and the other 25% sending emails.

Yes, emails. No status updates or tweets or instagram photos of my every waking minute overseas. Just long awaited hellos to friends and family, and the sending of photos to share my travels.

Last year when I visited with my former Resident Director she told me, over a plate of churros, that every host family now had wifi. This blew me away. Every house? What a terrible idea! It reportedly stemmed from a significant list of parents who demanded that their children be awarded the necessity (not the luxury) of connectivity at home. No more walks down to the Internet cafe, and you can forget going online at school. Sit in your señora’s flat with your earbuds in, chattering away on Skype from your bedroom. Almost like you’d never been gone at all.

And you haven’t.

courtesy of gadgetsteria.com

If you spend the majority of your time overseas plugged into your American life, you are missing out. On everything.

Picture yourself a giant: standing tall, straddling the Atlantic. One foot is cushioned in the US – with news of home, drama from school, TV shows and local sports crawling up your leg. Your other foot is perched carefully on the Rock of Gibraltar, scaring away the tourists, not speaking the language and slowly crushing the immersion out of your study abroad experience.

We teach our students about culture shock. Up with the honeymoon stage – joy and bliss abound. Down with the rejection stage – depression and homesickness lie in wait. Then you adjust, adapt, and re-enter. When do you think students are inclined to log on the most? Think of it as a budding relationship. You will gush to your friends about the new and wonderful in fits and starts – you are so consumed by your love that you hardly have the time. Then when it starts to fade, your friends hear countless sad tales and horror stories, so that they soon echo your sentiments: “its awful” .. “how terrible” .. “you must hate it.”

Do you? I didn’t. But living abroad last year there were times when it was just easier to crack the open the mac and Gchat with my mom, or Facebook my best friend about my woes. No longer was it about getting news from home, but a lifeline. I’m in crisis – hang on to me, via this internet connection. Instead of seeking support from those around you in times of need, it is so much easier to reach back to where you came from, and the comforts of home.

Social media is not the downfall of study abroad. If you know me at all, you know its one of my major platforms. I will tweet, post and blog to my heart’s content in an effort to share study abroad with anyone that cares to listen.

Social media is not the downfall of study abroad, but it has changed the way we do things. For the better? Perhaps. But the next big challenge is in the balance – teaching students to be socially responsible with their media (and fiscally, if they tend toward that $700 iPhone bill).

So put your phone down, and close your mac. My blog will be here when you get back. So will your parents, and your cousin’s new house, and your friend’s engagement ring. Disconnect yourself for a while, and you’ll see just what you’re missing.