But How Did Study Abroad Help Me In My Career?

Puzzled Confused Lost Signpost Showing Puzzling Problem

Static

When I arrived in Barajas Airport in Madrid, I was greeted by Cristina Blanco, the (fabulous) director of the program. My mouth felt sticky, I was terribly jet-lagged, and still left-over anxious over having had my visa inspected. When I saw Cristina holding the sign that said CIEE (just like the literature said she would be), and wearing a big smile, I was relieved. At least, I was relieved until she said “sshhhrrrrshhsshhrrr.”

This was what castellano sounded like to me.

I smiled emptily at her. “¿Cómo?” I asked.  “What?”

“Sshhhrrrrsshrr,” she repeated kindly, pointing over to a growing group of young people about my age.

Over there. She wanted me to go over there and join the rest of the group. I nodded and moved in the direction she indicated, but I had understood nothing. I was terrified.

It all felt so unfair. I had studied Spanish in school for eight years. I knew words! I knew a lot of words! I listened to Juanes all the time! I liked Pedro Almodóvar films! And instead of feeling confident, the entire world turned into static.

At first I cried a lot. I was exhausted after having a five minute conversation with my host family. I fell asleep watching my English language DVDs every night. But after two weeks or so the static began to clear out. The shhhhrrrrshhhhhh sounds distilled into words that I recognized and could soon use. Two months in, I was able to joke with my host family, and on the airplane home I was able to discuss Spanish politics in Spanish.

editors note: You can read the full program review on Abroad101!

But how did this help me in my career?

I teach American Literature and ESL (English as a Second Language) in a high school in Queens, New York. Approximately 70% of my students are former English Language Learners, and of these 55% speak Spanish at home. Speaking Spanish is obviously useful. Anywhere you work in the world, speaking Spanish can only be an asset. But you probably already knew that.

Those two weeks I spent lost in static taught me more about second language acquisition than I could learn from a textbook. The strategies I used are strategies that I encourage my students to use.

  • Sit in the front of the classroom and minimize distractions.
  • Read for the gist of paragraphs rather than trying to understand every word on the page.
  • Use context clues when you can and a dictionary when you can’t.
  • Use physical and facial cues to help construct meaning.
  • Ask people to slow down or say it again.
  • Ask for help and ask questions.
  • Speak your native language when you need to. It’s totally fine.

I strongly believe that I have a better understanding of how to teach literature to ELLs and former ELLs because of my experience abroad. Teachers of ELLs are encouraged to discuss strategies for learning, as well as concepts to be learned. I had to learn these strategies for myself, so when I present these ideas, I am speaking as someone with experience, not someone who only read about these strategies in Chapter 2. Because we have all braved the static, we know we can trust each other to get to the point where the words come freely.

 

– Elizabeth Tanzer-Ritter
For StudyAbroad101.com

 

Elizabeth Tanzer-RitterElizabeth Tanzer-Ritter

I am in my eighth year of teaching English and ESL in the highly diverse New York City Public Schools. I graduated from Brandeis University in 2007 with a major in English Language and Literature and a double minor in Secondary Education and Spanish Language and Literature. I studied abroad during my junior year of college. I studied in Alcalá de Henares, Spain in 2006 (and it was awesome). I earned a graduate degree from Queens College in English Education in 2011 and a certificate in TESOL from St. John’s University in 2013. I love what I do and I am so grateful to be able to apply my experiences abroad to my experience in the workplace.

Your Future Career: Describing Leadership Qualities Gained from Education Abroad

Businesswoman over flags background

Higher education has become increasingly about career paths and landing a flashy job. While I don’t always agree that this is the primary goal of education (I think it is to practice the life skill of learning and reflecting), we all do need a job. Hopefully, we want a career that is fulfilling and allows for us to be a catalyst of positive change in this world. Students who have been abroad for study, volunteer, internship, teaching or some other endeavor, have a much better understanding of the impact that can be made on the world and how important it is to reflect on the skills that were gained as a direct result of going abroad.

The challenge is how to step away from the ubiquitous buzzwords we hear every day when we talk about education abroad and to dig much deeper than that. Today, I’m going to offer up some tasty ideas about how to link your experiences abroad with something much powerful to a potential employer than what we often hear – “it was transformational.”

I recently came across “4 C’s of Leadership,” in describing the mission of Columbia College in South Carolina. These four Cs intrigued me because they are critical to leadership (and therefore a meaningful career), but they are also the skills that often emerge for those who have gone abroad – whether they be realized after days, months or even years of reflection on the overseas jaunt. However, the C words are typically not what a study abroad alumni communicates upon returning home.

Allow me to link these 4C career boosting leadership qualities to adjectives that are often shared by sojourners:

  • Courage: “Though often associated with fearlessness, courage is more of a willingness to take action despite fear.” Let’s face it, it takes guts to leave your country, campus and identity for a period of time to step out of your comfort zone. Going home during spring break and partying with friends and sleeping in is the easy path. Those who go abroad do exhibit courage, which they often illustrate by sharing how “life changing” it was when they return home. Like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, education abroad morphs us from being a tad fearful to courageous – and this indeed is life changing. Using the language of courage is much more specific and tangible in an interview than that overused and non-specific “life changing.”
  • Commitment: From the values standpoint, Columbia College uses the word commitment to “describe the process of exploring communities, examining their values and goals, and choosing from among them.” As a future leader, one needs to be able to open the mind and heart to exploration of ideas, values and goals. This requires patience and an understanding of how decisions ultimately impact not only constituents and clients, but the greater world. When returning from abroad, students are often encouraged to claim the magical badge of global citizenship. (Global citizenship is not possible after a short study abroad experience, but it can put you on the lifelong quest of global citizenship –which I explained in this piece in more detail.) For the purposes of connecting the dots today, I believe that the use of the word “commitment” is much more illustrative of what we too often claim to be global citizenship. Instead, we can express that we are committed to the process of exploration, examination of values and pursuit of goals that contribute to a greater world for everyone.” This too offers more clarity than dropping the lofty “I’m a global citizen now” claim to a prospective employer.
  • Confidence: I’ll veer away from Columbia College for a moment and focus on this simple definition instead: Confidence is a trust in your own abilities. Interestingly, increased self -confidence is a term that is often expressed by those coming home. That is pretty straight forward. However, sojourners also typically express their confidence by stating that they are now more “flexible.” Time abroad does create daily opportunity after opportunity to embrace flexibility. When you have finally mastered the tube in London, you will inevitably experience a tube strike. You have to figure some other mode of transportation out, even if it means that you have to pull out a map and walk a few miles to your flat or try a bus you never planned on stepping on. Those humbling experiences, when you are forced to be flexible and quickly realize that you CAN work through those little challenges, can and do build confidence. So when tempted to describe how flexible you are, instead also relate it to your level of confidence. This is something all employers are seeking, particularly in those who are “green” to the full time employment scene.
  • Competent: Let’s return the Columbia College mission. It describes competence as “the ability to identify and pursue specific opportunities for change, to plan and implement specific actions.” This series of skills are often described by returned students as “productivity” – or achieving results. For example, a student who has returned from an internship abroad may tell you that s/he was very productive abroad, but could instead be telling you (and those s/he is interviewing with) that time abroad enhanced his/her competency instead. Productive sounds like a skill for the worker bee, competency sounds like the skillset of a future leader. Competency also offers the ability to explain areas of competence such as enhanced cross-cultural skills, improved language skills, awareness of accounting practices used abroad in an internship, different methods of academic research, improved understanding of power dynamics and so much more.

What other over used terms are you hearing out there in the study abroad sphere? How else can you see linking these terms with employer friendly language?

 

 

About the Author:

Melissa Gluckmann, contributor to the Studyabroad101 Blog and founder of Melibee GlobalMissy Gluckmann is the Founder of Melibee Global, which aims to elevate the discussion about education abroad, culture, diversity and the lifelong path to global citizenship by offering trailblazing tools, speakers and professional development for the global education and travel communities. Raised in New York, Missy has lived abroad three times and traveled to dozens of countries. Missy currently resides in North Carolina and experiences culture shock there on a daily basis! She can be followed on Facebook and Twitter.

Wellness Wednesday: Can a Semester Abroad Change your Career Path?

Rome SunThis Wellness Wednesday post comes from our expert on expat emotional health, Melissa Doman, M.A., LGPC, NCC.  In this post Melissa questions how a study abroad experience can change your career path.

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