The annual Jennings Fund for Teachers (FFT) program supports outstanding educators who think about their personal and professional improvement in big ways and are willing to take risks to pursue greatness. In 2019, as members of the second cohort of Jennings FFT Fellows, four educators from the Dayton Public Schools - Teresa Troyer, Susan Landis, Kathleen Murphy-Morales, and Monica Meyer - along with Derek Alvarado, Green County ESC, traveled to Honduras to study culturally responsive pedagogy for social emotional learning and English as a Second Language.

Teresa Troyer reflects on that experience below:

Why did you choose the particular location you went to?  Two of the team members had previously volunteered with Friends of Education Honduras to teach teens and train teachers in English Language teaching strategies. It was a natural connection to build on the community ties we had already established in the rural Santa Barbara area.

What were you most curious to learn about?  We were quite curious to see how Honduran teachers would react to and interact with social and emotional learning-based strategies for teaching English across the K-12 spectrum. We already had experience in building excitement among students in many countries and contexts (K-12) in using interactive approaches that asked them to step outside their comfort zone at times and productively struggle, but we had not yet asked teachers to actually design and teach lessons in public and for feedback.

How did you hope your experience would impact your teaching or personal growth? We were hopeful that we would challenge ourselves and our teaching by delving into a community-building, social and emotional learning approach in classrooms - and implementing our plans and building connections in a very short time.

What was the trip highlight?  We had great experiences in working with teachers, in building connections with teens, and in learning more about the larger program of Friends of Education Honduras. 

Though different from the current global need to stay home, it was amazing to be able to continue our work in Honduras in the summer of 2019 despite ongoing political protests and strikes (including among teachers), and threats of a national coup. The Honduran teachers and students were always professional and dedicated and invested in learning together.

Is there anything you took away from your FFT experience that has been applicable to your teaching experience these past few weeks as school buildings closed due to the pandemic?

Derek and I are teaching from home (the same home since we are married), and we are in touch often with Jane, Kathleen, and Monica and with several of the teachers we worked with in Honduras.  Most of us work in communities (or have worked in communities for many years) where in the best of times there are many challenges, similar to the situation in Honduras. So now, with physical interaction broken, it is even more difficult to engage students and families - but this remains the foundational part of the work. We are looking to the future by continuing to build communities in new ways. Our work in Honduras through FFT was focused on building social and emotional learning foundations - so now the challenge is what structures can we build on those foundations as we are distanced physically.