Workshops in Washington DC (Capital Hilton)

Cultural Differences between Different countries 

We had a really wonderful sharing by Craig Storti, Director of Communicating Across Cultures, about well, crossing cultures. He helped us realise that a lot of misunderstanding arise when a person of one culture interpret another's behavior through his own culture. If you take a look at the picture, you will see how the different cultures deal with issues like control, face, management style, rank and status, and communication. (Incidentally, the Finnish culture is like the complete opposite of Indian culture) The key take-away for me is that when we start getting frustrated and upset about certain behaviors, we should take a step back and assume that the person did not purposely do it to upset us but that the behavior is probably perfectly normal in their own cultures. We should come with low or even no expectations. Craig mentioned something interesting about "expectations". He said the funny thing about expectations is that they concern the future but they come from the past.

We had representatives from the Department of Education Mr Clay Pell, the Deputy Assistant Secretary and Ms Meghann Curtis, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Academic Programs. It was encouraging to hear their support of the Fulbright program and that they are open to suggestions by the Fulbright teachers. One of the key quotes from Mr Clay Pell was "You are going to be transformed... take time to be transformed."

We also had Ms Karin Chenoweth from The Education Trust to come talk to us about academic success in unexpected schools. One of the learning I gathered from hearing her sharing on schools that perform despite challenging environments, is the concept of using data or evidence to inform our pedagogy and classroom practice. Data can be a powerful tool to help teachers reflect on their current practice and to serve as a common platform to talk to other teachers about these practices in their classrooms. I really hope that data and evidence will play a larger role in my classrooms.