…but after attending the National Council for the Social Studies conference this past weekend in Washington D.C., I’m going to apply for a 10 day study tour to Japan for next summer.
I hadn’t planned to apply for any international trips. I was looking at one or two week long trips within the U.S. I’ll have to finish the revisions to my thesis over the summer, and I think it will be due in July, so I figured I’d need to stick around and make sure everything is finished. But how perfect would this be? By July of next year I’ll have spent about a year working on my thesis. A trip to the country I am discussing seems appropriate I think.
They only select 10 teachers from the US and Canada for this trip each year. I think I could have a pretty strong application, and I already have an idea for lesson plans, which I would have to create and submit after I returned. And I’ve got a contact at the MacArthur Memorial, and she’s already offered to help in any way she can. So I will certainly be able to disseminate my information to a larger audience than my school district, which is something they encourage. So I’m hopeful that I can put together a good proposal and get selected as one of the participants. What a great way to end my thesis.
Other than info about this trip, the conference was ok. The best part was seeing friends that I’ve traveled with the past couple of years. I saw Laura, who was in Poland with me for a month back in 2009, and from my trip to Germany last year I saw Scott, Jinny, and Jen. We all attended the Goethe reception and are already planning our next trip together. Scott may actually apply for the trip to Japan as well, although I don’t know if we’d be lucky enough to travel together again. I guess we’ll find out in March.
And hopefully by the time March rolls around and I find out whether or not I’m going to Japan, my thesis will be almost done. The rough draft anyway, all the ideas down, and I’m just revising. Getting to that point may actually be more exciting than being selected for the trip…
