Fulbright Scholar: Paula Koch puts coveted scholarship program to use in her classes

By CHRIS PETERSON

Hungry Horse News

Longtime Columbia Falls junior high Spanish and advanced studies teacher Paula Koch has been putting a coveted Fulbright Scholarship to work in her classroom.

Koch was awarded a Fulbright Teachers for Classroom Program scholarship in February, 2023. She was one of 50 chosen out of about 5,000 applicants.

When she learned she was accepted she said she was “stoked.” The affable Koch is fluent in Spanish and her advanced studies students often go on to bigger and better things in their lives. This scholarship was a great opportunity to broaden her students’ horizons and thinking. More than a few students in Columbia Falls have never been outside the state, never mind thought about countries like Uruguay in South America, where Koch visited in June with 17 of her Fulbright colleagues.

Koch is fluent in Spanish, having worked in orphanages in Guatemala for several years prior to becoming a teacher, which she said probably helped in her application.

The program started with an intense and rigorous 10-week online course with 10 to 15 hours of coursework a week. She completed it on top of her classroom work at the junior high.

She immediately began incorporating the Fulbright program into her curriculum. 

“In my classes we work on (learning about) the 17 United Nations goals for sustainability,” she said.

The goals are fairly simple, like no poverty, clean water and sanitation, quality education and good health care, to name a few. 

The lessons also had practical implications as well. For example, last year she knew she was going to visit schools in Uruguay, so her Spanish students wrote more than 100 postcards, in Spanish, to their fellow classmates. That required the students learning Spanish well enough to write coherent Spanish sentences.

When she visited Uruguay in June, she handed them out and they were well received. 

“They loved it, they were impressed (our students) could write in Spanish,” she said.

Today, they still correspond through email and other means with those same classes.

The Uruguayan educational system is different than the U.S., Koch said.

Instead of teaching at one school, teachers travel from school to school, working different shifts. A day starts at 7 a.m. and often ends at 7 p.m. for them, Koch noted.

“They’re absolutely dedicated and believe in what they do,” she said.

All told, they visited 20 different schools, from the inner city to rural areas.

Uruguay is much like central Montana, Koch noted, though it has a coastline and while there’s plenty of cattle, there’s also ostriches of all things, wandering through the landscape as well.

The teachers from both countries found they had much in common and Koch is now hoping to help other teachers apply for the program.

It’s been a life changing experience.

“My Fulbright experience stands as the most impactful and relevant professional development opportunity of my career. I hope that by sharing my experience, I can inspire others to take the leap and apply for this exceptional opportunity in the years to come,” she said.

She is also keeping in touch with the U.S. teachers she went to Uruguay with and her class frequently communicates with a class from Minnesota.