Launched in 2015, the Globalizing the Classroom Fellowship Program brings together secondary and community college educators from across the country who have distinguished themselves through their work and passion for integrating global content into their classrooms. While Harvard’s regional study centers have long engaged with educators through professional development programming and resource building, the fellowship presents an opportunity to extend and deepen this working relationship, supporting rigorous teaching on world regions at multiple grade levels.
The 2017-2018 fellowship program will allow a select group of educators to take part in ongoing conversations and resource development that was begun during the 2017 summer teacher’s workshop devoted to “Cities and Our Urbanizing World.” Each fellow is expected to develop classroom materials for use in their own classrooms but with potential value to classrooms throughout the country. The trainings, drawing on Harvard resources, will be devoted to both area studies content and pedagogical approaches, and will primarily take place through online connective technology. The fellowship continues the partnership between Harvard area studies centers (two of which are considered National Resource Centers) and the educational research group Project Zero.
Gustavo Carrera
Gustavo Carrera was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Child and Grandchild of immigrants, Gustavo was fascinated by migration and history; he moved to New York where he researched migration issues and worked with newly arrived immigrants. He earned a B.A. in History from Columbia University and an M.A. with a specialization in Teaching History From Ashland. He has done additional graduate work in Latin American and Latino History. Over the course of his career, he has worked at three independent schools in a variety of capacities including diversity, middle school history, and admissions. Currently, chairs the History and Social Sciences Department at Buckingham Browne and Nichols an independent school in Cambridge, MA, where he has led the development of Global and American History materials and curriculum. In addition, he is responsible for co-leading the new faculty program.
Cynthia Garza
Cynthia M. Garza is a middle school History and Geography teacher at Ecole Bilingue de la Nouvelle-Orléans, a French-American school in New Orleans, Louisiana. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Spanish, a master’s degree in Latin American Studies from Tulane University, and she is currently completing her dissertation for a PhD in the same department. Before teaching at Ecole Bilingue, Cynthia taught Latin American Studies and Cultural Anthropology at Loyola University where she also led a study abroad program to Mexico City. Additionally, she taught Latin American Studies at Warren Easton High School and raised money to take her students to Peru, Brazil, and the Dominican Republic, where they completed home stays and studied at local language programs. Cynthia is originally from the Texas-Mexico borderlands, but she has lived in New Orleans for over twenty years. She considers Peru her second home, as she worked as a teacher and child advocate there after college and later returned to live and conduct dissertation research. She has also lived abroad in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil; Cochabamba, Bolivia; and St. Petersburg, Russia.
Andrew Kerr
Andrew Kerr grew up in the desert and mountains of western Colorado, and he completed his undergraduate degree at Haverford College. After he graduated, Andrew headed down to Honduras and worked on building water systems and on watershed protection as a Peace Corps volunteer. More recently, Andrew earned a PhD in History from the University of California, Davis and then followed along as his wife's career took them SE Asia. In Asia, Andrew lived in Thailand for nearly two years teaching community development and program management to refugees and migrants from Burma. After that he helped start and taught at a new secondary school for urban refugees in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In 2016, Andrew returned to the USA, and he currently teaches AP World History to the dynamic 10th graders at Roxbury Prep High School in Jamaica Plain, MA.
Florent Lacroix
Florent Lacroix was born in Rennes, France. After obtaining his Master's degree in Contemporary History, he then moved to Paris to take the National Education competitive exam. In 2003, he earned his teaching degree in History and Geography and taught at a Parisian high school for two years. He then moved to New York in 2006 and currently teaches History and Geography to middle and high school students, both in French and in English. A trained historian, he enjoys teaching the rigorous French Geography curriculum, which centers on the topics of cities and sustainability. Departing from physical geography to focus mostly on social and human geography, his teaching borrows from environmental studies, economics and sociology, and revolves around the notions of globalization, development and sustainability. His curiosity led him to teach film studies, create a student short film festival as well as become the school newspaper as a faculty advisor. Outside the classroom, he also nurtures interests in media, graphic design, and running. He resides in New York City with his wife and three young children, who also keep him very busy.
Cynthia Marland
Videographer, producer, volunteer and community leader, “Cyndi” is a professor in the Communication Department of Bristol Community College. Her passion is infusing service learning into her classroom curriculum. She is also employed as the Director of Media for the town of Dartmouth where she produces programming for both state and local government and education. Cyndi began her career in education by teaching television production at New Bedford High School where she worked with underserved student population. Outside of the classroom, she enjoys traveling abroad, following the visual and performing arts, and is an avid dog owner and watcher.
Susanna McConnell
Susanna Pierce McConnell is an AP Social Studies teacher at Westlake High School in Austin and a consultant for the IB Global Centre in The Netherlands who works to creatively implement interdisciplinary and globally relevant classroom learning. Within her decade in education, she has been a secondary teacher in the US and abroad, an educational consultant, a curriculum writer, and clinical faculty at Trinity University. Her publications on building global competence have been featured in Educating for Global Competence and the Education Week’s Global Learning Blog. Her curriculum has supported pre-service teachers, secondary teachers within schools of the ISSN Network, and IB teachers in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. Susanna was awarded the Keizai Koho Center Teacher Fellowship to Japan and the National Council for Economic Education Teacher Fellowship to South Africa for her work as an educator, writer, and activist. Susanna holds degrees in International Economics and Spanish, and a Master of Arts in Teaching from Trinity University in San Antonio. In her free time, she loves traveling, speaking Spanish, spending time with her family, and learning more about cultures.
Jess Meyer
Jess Meyer teaches World History and World History AP to sophomores at San Marcos High School in San Marcos, Tx. She holds a B.A. in History from the University of Texas at Austin. In 2004 she traveled with UT Austin’s Fulbright-Hays study seminar to Salvador, Brazil. She has also traveled with the EU Centers of Excellence to Brussels, Cuba with Tulane University and with the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia to South Korea and China. All of her travels have translated into curriculum for her district. Jess has presented on curricular resources and document analysis activities at both state and national conferences. She also currently serves on the South Asian Book Award committee.
Beatrice Y. Motamedi
Beatrice is a teacher, writer and youth media advocate who turns classrooms into newsrooms. She is executive director of Global Student Square, an international student journalism network, and co-director of Newsroom by the Bay, a high school journalism camp at Stanford University. Beatrice was a 2015 John S. Knight Fellow in Journalism at Stanford. She is also a Dow Jones News Fund Distinguished Adviser. Beatrice spent 10 years teaching in public and private high schools and has helped students launch publications in Oakland, Los Angeles, Washington, Paris, Seoul and Ha Noi, Vietnam. Prior to teaching, Beatrice was a staff writer and contributor to Newsweek, the San Francisco Chronicle, United Press International and WebMD. She is part of a recently announced initiative by the Carey Institute for Global Good to develop resources for teachers of refugees.
Nitzan Resnick
Nitzan earned her BSc, MSc and PhD at the Hebrew university in Jerusalem, in the areas of virology, molecular genetics and cell biology. She spent 2 years as a postdoctoral fellow and as an instructor at Harvard and MIT, was an Ass. professor at the Faculty of Medicine and the Bruce Rappaport Research Inst (Technion, Israel) and a visiting professor at Caltech and Harvard.
For the past 13 years, Nitzan turned her energy to k-12 STEM, STEAM and interdisciplinary education. She founded an initiative (The New Science and Math Initiative) that partnered with Jewish Day Schools nationwide, offering curriculum, professional development, coaching and consultation services. During these years she has taught k-12 students, chaired a STEM initiative at KSA (Norwood, MA) and served as the co-head of KSA, bringing her STEM educational principles to other disciplines in the school. In the past 3 years, in she served as the chair of the STEAM initiative and the Academic Dean at Sage, a school for gifted student in Foxboro MA. Nitzan won multiple awards and funding for her teaching, her research and her STEAM initiatives. She is also holding a US patent in biotechnology.
Kelly Saunders
Kelly Saunders is an English instructor at Nicolet High School in Glendale, Wisconsin, a suburb of Milwaukee. Over her past twenty years in public education, she has taught a host of Language Arts classes from American Studies to Media and Film. After an initial degree in integrated liberal studies and journalism from the University of Wisconsin, she received her Masters in Education from the University of Washington, then boarded a plane to teach in Johannesburg, South Africa. Kelly returned to the Midwest for her teaching career yet many summers she travels to learn more about her world, having visited dozens of countries in Africa, Asia, and Europe. An advocate for literacy and a lover of poetry and art, Kelly is eager to learn the stories of new people and places this year.
Support for this program comes, in part, from the US Department of Education’s Title VI/National Resource Center (NRC) Grant.Two of the centers involved in the Global Studies Outreach Committee, the Center for African Studies and the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, are Title VI/NRC grantees.