The EXCITING NEWS....and then....
April 5th. Results day! Like I mentioned in our last post, we were anxious and excited all day! A bit more background--LAST year, a few Waterbury teachers were also recipients of the fellowship. One of them, was surprised on April 4th by the FFT team! So, as you can imagine, Doreen and I were already thinking the worst.
Time ticked on. Then, at 3:50 PM my phone sounded to signal another email notification. This time is was from FFT! All I saw in the subject line was "Congratulations!" before I even opened the email. I called Doreen and told her to check her email. As she was opening it up, I just blurted it out, WE ARE GOING TO PRAGUE!
My next phone call was to my husband (I was not home at the time of the email) to which his response to my freak out was "I'm so proud of you, and I already knew you had it." Ummmmm, WHAT?! Then, I texted my principal the great news and her response: "WOOHOO!" As it turns out, both my principal and Doreen's principal had already gotten phone calls from FFT. They set up a surprise visit to come in to school and share the news with us in front of our students the next day. Mrs. Ponte, my principal, had called my husband to invite him in for the special surprise. I still cannot believe he kept the secret from me!
Friday was full of emotions. Since Doreen and I work at different schools in the district, we were surprised separately. I will let Doreen share her story in another post. My students were a bit confused at first, one saying: "wait, do we get to go with her??" For the record, I'd fit them all in my suitcase if I could!! Immediately, they made connections to back in January when I had just mentioned to them that I had submitted a special project for a special educational journey that if awarded would allow me to continue my lifelong learning mission in a very amazing way!
Here are photos of both of us during the surprise in our respective classrooms. We were gifted super cool traveling backpacks!
Here is a link to the article that was in our local newspaper: Click here!
OK , let us get to the "and then...." part of this post. As directed in the congratulatory email, we were able to begin securing our workshop enrollment. I emailed The Creativity Workshop with the good news and I was absolutely devastated with their response. It was quite long, so I'll paraphrase:
"I am very sorry....this has never happened before...we work so closely with FFT and value the working relationship we have with them...due to unforeseen circumstances...the Prague workshop is FULL...we are no longer able to honor the two saved spots for you."
Heartbreak. From cloud nine to complete devastation in a matter of 24 hours. Doreen and I had already made plans to meet after school that Friday, so we were together when the email came through. We immediately reached out to Dale, our FFT representative. Wouldn't you know, that on a Friday evening, Dale called me back within 20 minutes. A true testament to the support and appreciation that FFT has for it's fellows!
Let's get to the good news now...Dale confirmed that we would not have to "give back the grant" which if I were being honest I was TOTALLY afraid of! She explained the logistics to us and we got started with what seemed like 2 weeks straight of research but was in reality, 2 hours. The Creativity Workshop (TCW) had offered us one of their other Europe locations with the sad news email. So, we started there. We essentially had three choices of other workshops, however two of them had dates that were in early June and during the week of when Doreen and I will be at the National Education Association's annual representative assembly.
Enter, CRETE. Still, not exactly ideal dates--to make it work, we would have to get special clearance from our school district to release us three days early at the end of the school year for professional development. An email was sent that Friday evening to our Chief Academic Advisor and he responded less than a day later with the positive news we were hoping for. To recap, we have extremely supportive principals, Mrs. Ponte and Mr. Edwards along with an equally supportive Chief Academic Advisor, Mr. Schwartz whom all are excited not only for our educational journey, but the amazing opportunities that it will bring back for our community. Stay tuned for all of the awesome-ness!!
At the suggestion of a previous fellow, we booked our flights and hotel as soon as we received confirmation from all angles on the itinerary change. The price fluctuated by $150 in a matter of one hour, crazy! We were on the phone together as I clicked "Book Now" and VOILA! We have confirmation emails, this is really happening!
There you have it. We are still attending the same workshop that we planned for, just in a different country. I'll admit, it took me a few minutes to be able to pronounce Crete--I found this cool pronunciation video on YouTube.
Please continue to follow our fellowship journey. We depart the evening of June 18th and will return June 27th. I will post our itinerary in a new blog post. You may even see a video blog or two! We fancy! 😉
<3, Mrs. Kirchberger
Time ticked on. Then, at 3:50 PM my phone sounded to signal another email notification. This time is was from FFT! All I saw in the subject line was "Congratulations!" before I even opened the email. I called Doreen and told her to check her email. As she was opening it up, I just blurted it out, WE ARE GOING TO PRAGUE!
My next phone call was to my husband (I was not home at the time of the email) to which his response to my freak out was "I'm so proud of you, and I already knew you had it." Ummmmm, WHAT?! Then, I texted my principal the great news and her response: "WOOHOO!" As it turns out, both my principal and Doreen's principal had already gotten phone calls from FFT. They set up a surprise visit to come in to school and share the news with us in front of our students the next day. Mrs. Ponte, my principal, had called my husband to invite him in for the special surprise. I still cannot believe he kept the secret from me!
Friday was full of emotions. Since Doreen and I work at different schools in the district, we were surprised separately. I will let Doreen share her story in another post. My students were a bit confused at first, one saying: "wait, do we get to go with her??" For the record, I'd fit them all in my suitcase if I could!! Immediately, they made connections to back in January when I had just mentioned to them that I had submitted a special project for a special educational journey that if awarded would allow me to continue my lifelong learning mission in a very amazing way!
Here are photos of both of us during the surprise in our respective classrooms. We were gifted super cool traveling backpacks!
Here is a link to the article that was in our local newspaper: Click here!
OK , let us get to the "and then...." part of this post. As directed in the congratulatory email, we were able to begin securing our workshop enrollment. I emailed The Creativity Workshop with the good news and I was absolutely devastated with their response. It was quite long, so I'll paraphrase:
"I am very sorry....this has never happened before...we work so closely with FFT and value the working relationship we have with them...due to unforeseen circumstances...the Prague workshop is FULL...we are no longer able to honor the two saved spots for you."
Heartbreak. From cloud nine to complete devastation in a matter of 24 hours. Doreen and I had already made plans to meet after school that Friday, so we were together when the email came through. We immediately reached out to Dale, our FFT representative. Wouldn't you know, that on a Friday evening, Dale called me back within 20 minutes. A true testament to the support and appreciation that FFT has for it's fellows!
Let's get to the good news now...Dale confirmed that we would not have to "give back the grant" which if I were being honest I was TOTALLY afraid of! She explained the logistics to us and we got started with what seemed like 2 weeks straight of research but was in reality, 2 hours. The Creativity Workshop (TCW) had offered us one of their other Europe locations with the sad news email. So, we started there. We essentially had three choices of other workshops, however two of them had dates that were in early June and during the week of when Doreen and I will be at the National Education Association's annual representative assembly.
Enter, CRETE. Still, not exactly ideal dates--to make it work, we would have to get special clearance from our school district to release us three days early at the end of the school year for professional development. An email was sent that Friday evening to our Chief Academic Advisor and he responded less than a day later with the positive news we were hoping for. To recap, we have extremely supportive principals, Mrs. Ponte and Mr. Edwards along with an equally supportive Chief Academic Advisor, Mr. Schwartz whom all are excited not only for our educational journey, but the amazing opportunities that it will bring back for our community. Stay tuned for all of the awesome-ness!!
At the suggestion of a previous fellow, we booked our flights and hotel as soon as we received confirmation from all angles on the itinerary change. The price fluctuated by $150 in a matter of one hour, crazy! We were on the phone together as I clicked "Book Now" and VOILA! We have confirmation emails, this is really happening!
There you have it. We are still attending the same workshop that we planned for, just in a different country. I'll admit, it took me a few minutes to be able to pronounce Crete--I found this cool pronunciation video on YouTube.
Please continue to follow our fellowship journey. We depart the evening of June 18th and will return June 27th. I will post our itinerary in a new blog post. You may even see a video blog or two! We fancy! 😉
<3, Mrs. Kirchberger
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