In July of 2018, the U.S. Department of State and the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board announced that Debra Covey, an Intervention Specialist at Dennis Elementary, was offered a Fulbright Teachers for Global Classrooms grant.
Deb Covey, as well as Heather Kogler from Dennis Elementary, worked to put a curriculum plan in place for this past school year (2018-2019) that supported teacher fluency in global education. As part of this curriculum, students from Dennis Elementary participated in “Go Global Week.” During “Go Global Week,” students watched short films about nine (9) different countries, read folktales, created crafts, played games from around the world, learned about children's lives in other countries, and wrote postcards to students from around the world.
Deb Covey took these postcards, written by Dennis Elementary students, to Peru this summer to share with the students Deb taught, as part of the Fulbright Teachers for Global Classrooms grant. Covey was one of approximately seventy-six (76) U.S. citizens who were selected to travel abroad through the Fulbright Teachers for Global Classrooms Program. Recipients of Fulbright grants are selected on the basis of academic and professional achievement, as well as demonstrated leadership potential.
Covey said, “Global education is all about encouraging students to see and understand that people from other countries and cultures are more similar to us than different. When children exhibit global competence they have learned the attitudes, skills and knowledge needed to understand the perspectives of people in other parts of the world.”
Ms. Covey has been with Springboro Schools since the 2012-2013 school year, where she served as a 6th Grade Teacher at Springboro Intermediate. Beginning with the 2016-2017 school year, Deb began as an Intervention Specialist at Dennis Elementary. Ms. Covey has also served as a Spelling Bee Advisor, Reading Intervention Specialist, and Title I Summer School Reading Teacher.
The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government and is designed to build relations between the people of the United States and the people of other countries that are needed to solve global challenges. The Fulbright Program is funded through an annual appropriation made by the U.S. Congress to the U.S. Department of State. Participating governments and host institutions, corporations, and foundations around the world also provide direct and indirect support to the Program, which operates in over 160 countries worldwide.
Since its establishment in 1946 under legislation introduced by the late U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, the Fulbright Program has given more than 370,000 students, scholars, teachers, artists, and scientists the opportunity to study, teach and conduct research, exchange ideas, and contribute to finding solutions to shared international concerns.