Fulbright winner Jennifer Day travels to Columbia to bring new perspectives to students and teachers at Huntington High School.
By Katherine Pyles
HQ 106 | SUMMER 2019
Jennifer Day, librarian at Huntington High School, jokes that her entire educational journey has taken place within a 1-mile radius, from preschool to high school to college and her master’s program, all the way to her nearly 20-year career at Huntington High School.
“I’m a good ol’ Huntington gal,” she laughed. “My granddaddy graduated from Huntington High in 1933. My aunt and father graduated from Huntington High in the ’60s. My mother taught at both the old and new Huntington High, and my sister and I both graduated from Huntington High. My nephew, Grant Beckett, just graduated from Huntington High last June.”
But recently, when Day was named one of 76 Fulbright award winners for the Teachers for Global Classrooms Program, that 1-mile radius expanded across thousands of miles, an ocean, a time zone and a language barrier. Last month, Day spent two weeks in Bucaramanga, Colombia, a city with a metro population of 1.1 million, collaborating with a Colombian educator not only to teach, but to learn, too.
“I may be done with my formal education, but I’m not done learning,” said Day, whose passion for place-based learning has expanded her horizons both figuratively and literally. She has completed a Kurt Vonnegut study in Indianapolis, participated in the Marine Corps Educators Workshop at Parris Island in Beaufort, South Carolina, and worked in the Library of Congress for a week. In 2018 she was named a National Endowment for the Humanities fellow, spending time in both New York City and the Adirondacks to study the differences between the city and the wilderness during the Gilded Age. Still, the Fulbright experience is different, she said, and not just because it involved international travel.
“Fulbright is the crème de la crème,” she said. “When I found out I had received the Fulbright award, I was honored and excited and, to be honest, a little bit scared. But mostly, I was thrilled. I couldn’t wait to bring my experiences back to my students and my colleagues.”
The Fulbright program seeks to address global challenges ranging from gender equality to clean drinking water to infrastructure and health care, she explained. Thus, learning new teaching techniques wasn’t the only focus of her trip to Colombia.
“The Fulbright program isn’t just about teaching and learning,” she said.
“It’s about finding solutions to global problems. My hope is to bring some empathy back to my students. I want to help them see that we’re all on this globe together.”
Day completed rigorous online coursework with other Fulbright winners and prepared a detailed lesson plan for her time in Colombia. The plan covered human geography and social responsibility, topics she co-taught with a secondary school teacher in Bucaramanga. She said she looks forward to bringing those same lessons back to Huntington High students in the coming school year.
“Before I became a teacher I sold educational supplies. I would go into schools and think, ‘Wow, I really need to be in the classroom teaching,’” she said. “This trip has reaffirmed that I’m where I’m supposed to be. Children are the same everywhere. They just need someone to care about them and show them the joy of learning. I’m ready to start school and share what I’ve learned.”
As Huntington High’s librarian, Day works closely with teachers in every department and students of varying backgrounds and abilities.
“Living here all my life, I’ve seen it all, and I understand what my students go through — both their advantages and disadvantages, their privileges and their deficits,” said Day, who taught English at Huntington High for seven years before becoming the school’s librarian. “I want my students to see that, like me, they can make a great life here in Huntington. Nobody says you have to leave. But if you want to leave, there’s a great big world out there to explore, and you can do that, too. Part of my job is pointing my students in the right direction to follow their dreams, whether that’s here or away.”
This year, she’ll collaborate with geography teachers and other educators throughout the state to share what she learned in Colombia. Traveling the world may be her passion, but teaching in West Virginia is her purpose.
“I’ve worked with teachers from all over the country, and our teachers are on par with the best of the best,” she said.
According to her colleagues, the admiration is mutual. Kelly Kauffer, a social studies teacher at Huntington High, said Day’s authentic love for learning made her a perfect fit for the Fulbright program. This school year, Day will lead a study for Kauffer’s AP geography students about the global water shortage on a local, national and international level.
“The Fulbright award was a great fit for Jenny,” Kauffer said. “She is dedicated to lifelong learning, and she is inquisitive. I can’t wait for her to share with my students what she learned and experienced in Colombia.”
