More exciting new this week!
My contact at the US Embassy in Tashkent emailed me again. This time she wanted to let me know that just as she was getting ready to submit a request for me to be placed at the teacher’s college in Tashkent, she received a request from the Ministry of Education to have someone help them create an anti-bullying program in their schools. She didn’t have any details but was wondering if I would be interested in something like this. Given my background in school psychology this certainly does fall within my skill set, but it has been a long time since I’ve done any work in a K-12 setting.
As has been my way with everything Fulbright so far, I said, “Of Course!” and asked to be put in contact with the Ministry of Education. To my surprise I received an email the very next day from a person at the Ministry, who was herself a Fulbright scholar in the US. We exchanged contact information and arranged a phone call via the Telegram app I’m told everyone in Uzbekistan is on Telegram.
The app worked great for a voice call. It really is remarkable how easy it is now to make phone calls pretty much anywhere in the world, for free! We had a great conversation today. So if you want to stay in touch with me while I am in Uzbekistan I suggest that you download Telegram.
The Ministry of Education is looking for help supporting their school psychologists and developing some crisis intervention tools. This is a really exciting project because it is just getting starting and there is so much to contribute to this effort. This week I need to write-up a general overview of what I think I might be able to accomplish in my five months there. While I am working on that, the person I will be working with at the Ministry of Education is going to contact a few of the school psychologists and ask them to provide more information to me about what type of support they would find most useful.
If this project works out I will be based out of the Ministry of Education in Tashkent rather than at one of the Universities. This is different from what I had originally thought I’d be doing but it will allow me to opportunity to go into a variety of primary and secondary schools and learn about the Uzbek education system. Perhaps I will also be able to arrange a few guest lectures at the University just to have that experience as well. We will see.
All in all this was an exciting week.
Experience Fulbright 