I’m back in Southeast Asia on another Fulbright. This time, it’s only for two weeks, but those two weeks will be packed with activities. I attended an event on Friday – the day before the official start date of the program – at the Fulbright office in Manila. More on the new Fulbright and that event later. First, a recap of what’s happened since last July.

It’s been almost a year since I have blogged about my Fulbright experience and Inquiry Project. In fact, my last entry was in the middle of implementing the project at Northside last summer. I wrote that we had 22 students in our Summer Algebra program. The last two weeks of the class were just as much fun as the first two. The students definitely got more comfortable with each other, with us teachers and with the material they were learning. Of those 22 students in the program, 21 went on to Geometry (or another class) this past school year and most of those students thrived in their classes. I think we still need to do follow up with them throughout this next year to see how they fare in Advanced Algebra with Trigonometry. We may need to continue to support them as they make their way to AP Calculus in their senior year.

Early in the regular school year, I connected with a Math Specialist in the STEM Office of CPS and pitched the idea of expanding the summer Algebra class to other CPS schools – schools like Northside who have incoming 9^th grade students who don’t need a full year of Algebra and either didn’t have access to Algebra in 8^th grade or didn’t have access to a high quality Algebra program. Chris was a *great* listener. I talked his ear off for about an hour – trying to convince him of the equity problem that underlies this issue and how a program like Summer of Algebra addresses it. He was very receptive to the idea and pitched it to his bosses and other higher-ups. I found out this past spring that it was a go. I’ve been working on the revamping of the curriculum, and Chris has been turning it into a presentable package that other teachers will be able to follow, while serving as my thought partner and giving me feedback as a teacher who doesn’t have experience with this kind of teaching and learning. It’s great that he pushes me to provide more clarity in the resources for teachers. I didn’t have to do that last year as I was one of two teachers implementing the curriculum. Chris and I conducted Spring Learning Institutes with lead teachers from four other schools. Those four other schools will be implementing (and augmenting for their own students) the curriculum that started out as kernel of an idea for my Fulbright application in the fall of 2015. Chris and those teachers will also conduct two day-long institutes for the co-teachers in the program. Unfortunately, I cannot attend those two institute days on July 2 and July 3 because I’ll still be here in Manila…which brings me to the redux portion of this blog post…finally.

This past winter the short term Fulbright proposals were posted on the Fulbright website. I was thrilled when I saw that the Philippines was one of the partner countries this year. The dates were perfect, too: June 23 – July 7. These two weeks would fit between the end of the regular school year and the start of the Summer of Algebra program. The partner organization Jose Rizal University asked for proposals that addressed the need of their “neophytes in teaching.” They were looking for master teachers who could lead professional development in integrating technology into learning and who could help teachers enhance their 21^st century teaching skills. Both my husband, Johan, and I applied, hoping that one of us would get it. Turns out that both of us (plus a teacher from the Boston area) got it! After a couple months of emails among IIE staff, Philippine-American Education Foundation staff, Jose Rizal U staff and us, we got it coordinated, and our flights booked 5 days before we left. The past week has been a whirlwind, to say the least.

We attended a farewell event at the Fulbright office on Friday and met several people who work on Fulbright and other exchanges, as well as staff from the US Embassy who are involved in educational development projects. On Saturday, day one of our program, we will meet with Rufo De Leon, a teacher at JRU and our liaison there. We will have a tour of the campus and discuss logistics and the agenda for the next two weeks. I hope I have time to blog about my experience this time around. I am, once again, eager to learn and share with my colleagues at JRU. This blog serves as a tool to help me reflect on my experiences, but it’s also hard to carve out a time to write it. I’ll close now to rest up for our tour. I’m not over my jetlag yet…that’s feeling a lot like a redux, too.