Stories

The English Department is happy to announce that two outstanding English majors, Teresa Contino and Octavio (Tavi) De Leon, have received Fulbright English Teaching Assistant (ETA) awards to teach English abroad in the 2023-24 academic year.

By Julia von Gersdorff

Teresa will be serving as an English Teaching Assistant in Nachod, Czech Republic for 10 months. She explains that she is “hoping to work with [her] colleagues to run [her] own creative writing or literature club as an after-school program,” and is “looking forward to seeking out opportunities to develop cross-continental connections with students and integrate a creative pedagogical framework in the classroom.”

When speaking about what motivated her to apply for a Fulbright, Teresa greatly credits her English major as something which “inspired her understanding of writing as a reflective and metacognitive process that enacts conversation between people”. She reflects on her work with Dr. Lueck and Dr. Turner on various projects, experiences which she hopes to use to “preserve underrepresented writers’ work, including young Czech voices”, and that with their consent, she’d love to “anthologize students’ writing in a larger digital collection to foster self-expression and circulate their work to a global audience”. Teresa also accredits her position as Editor-in-Chief of the Santa Clara Review as having inspired her in this process, and she explains how she looks forward to “supporting students’ creative writing with an eye toward publication for global audiences and hopefully attending or hosting community literary events”. In terms of advice, Teresa urges future SCU Fulbright applicants to start their applications early — “it leaves enough space for the hefty but necessary revision process!”

Tavi will be going to Mexico, and while he’s still waiting to hear about which city he will be placed in (the Fulbright programs in different countries run on different schedules), he knows that his ETA training will be held in Mexico City in late August. He explains how he will be “trained in second language teaching and using [his] English skills… to assist in classrooms, ranging from Kindergarten to University and professional levels”.

Tavi was very eager to apply for a Fulbright, he says, thanks to strong relationships with his advisors and professors; he tells us how they encouraged him to explore teaching roles with Fullbright. Tavi’s personal interests in Latinx studies, including history, politics, and art, and the Spanish courses he’s taken at SCU also propelled him forward and inspired him in his application, as well as working at the HUB, which has prepared him for a teaching role- “as so many students [he] work[s] with are multilingual or international”. When it comes to advice he has to share with students considering Fulbright, he encourages them to “think about their positive experiences here at SCU and which courses or professors have motivated them to want to work hard”. He passes on his inspiration to future SCU Fulbright applicants in saying that “the best part of this Fulbright process for [him] has been the exciting search for a vocation and sense of identity in this role”.

Both Teresa and Tavi have done excellent work in their time as students here at Santa Clara University, and the English Department is proud to see them go off to their teaching positions with well wishes and certainty in the undeniable impact they will make in their respective locations.