Secondary Education English, Creative Writing, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA

I am very fortunate to have had much preparation for my Fulbright award. I studied here in Spring 2017 through College Year in Athens, learning about the Greece of antiquity and of modern day while living with a host family in the northern suburbs of town. I then taught at a secondary school in Alcorcón, Spain for a year before pursuing my master's degree in English Secondary Education and a certificate in ESL Education. I felt as though I knew my field and my placement well. At the same time, though, so much time had passed and so many things had changed in the world and in myself since I was last on Athenian soil. There was no ignoring it: six years had flown by. A pandemic raged. Technology accelerated and evolved. I spent a year outside the classroom to work in higher education while my application went through review.

Like a Homeric hero, I ruminated constantly about my "νόστος" — my homecoming — to Athens and to the classroom. Was my journey to get here too long, too winding? Would what I had learned support my success when I arrived? Would the city welcome me like an old friend, or had I become unrecognizable? Gradually, I came to understand that Greece was both as it always had been and full of discoveries to be made. This intricately multifaceted place embodies both the old and the new. It is a tapestry of worn and fresh thread, a joyful and cacophonous clash. Modern Greek tasted familiar on my tongue, but it took much time and patience in my lessons to work it back into muscle memory. I wandered through the center of Athens on Saturdays, gazing at once at the magic of ancient, unchanged marble, the shedding of old shops I’d known, and the blossoming of fresh street art. I greeted old friends and made new ones, sipped coffee at our favorite haunts and rode on the backs of their motorcycles down the riviera. I joined an emerging choir, where each individual voice was alien but the air vibrating warmly with our shared sound felt like a beloved blanket. I broke bread with my former host family in the home I once shared with them and met their newest guest, now a stepsibling of sorts. I visited sites and cities that had outlasted empires, some for the first time, some over and over. Every moment was a remix and I was eager to see how each one would unfold, what memories they would unlock, and what new chords they would strike.

The classroom was no different. Every school year comes with new names, new faces, and new materials, but the bones stay the same. Students want to be respected as they learn about not just content, but about the world and themselves. My job is to introduce students to the texts and forms I know and to walk with them as they make meaning of the work, apply what they have learned to current events, and imagine a world that will be shaped by them one day. At Psychico College, I taught my high school students the vocabulary to describe problems that have vexed our communities for centuries. We analyzed themes that have charged our prose and poetry for eons. And yet no one class was like any other. Every day, without fail, a student would ask a question or make a comment I’d never heard before and I would marvel as others chimed in to offer their own unique perspectives. The writing I reviewed for our student magazine, Punchline, offered wit and wisdom in equal turn. The Forensics Club, where I taught debate, invited inventive arguments and searing responses. I am deeply thankful to have forged such strong relationships with my colleagues and students alike, that we’ve made an environment where they are brave enough to challenge each other’s thinking and daring enough to dream.

With a few months remaining in my program, my focus now points westward, and again to what my νόστος may hold. I confess, though, that I feel my home now is not in one hemisphere or the other. My homecoming is also my homegoing equally in each direction. As for myself, I am changed, and yet the same: still ambitious, still passionate, still curious. I look forward to taking the spirit of this city with me in my teaching career: to be both learner and learned, to tread along timeless paths and trailblaze, to see at once the journey and each terminus. May Athens and all its complexities continue to elude and inspire me long after I have left.

_{Photo (top): 2023 Eleusis, In situ installation. Artists: Flux Office}