Understanding our role while visiting Canada

On the first morning in Toronto, it was time to meet as a full cohort and begin our journey of our International Teaching Exchange in Canada. For our first set of presentations as a full cohort, we spent the morning deep-diving into the Canadian Education system and took a few moments to reflect on the government programs that made our exchange possible. We went through our program details for the next few days with the team from IREX, one of the programs responsible for the Teacher Exchanges Program, and discussed what our role was with visiting Canada. We were told that it was okay to ask clarifying questions, for email contacts, and to engage in respectful dialogue with others. We had been given the clearance to learn - and to not be bashful about being curious during our time in Canada.

We met with various people from the US Department of State Office in Toronto and on Zoom with Department of State in Ottawa and together, they gave us some great context as to how impactful our visit could be. We are coming into this trip, not as a trained diplomats, but still are acting as representatives for the United State and it was Diane del Rosario, a US Public Affairs Officer in Toronto who told us that, “diplomacy is about relationship building and strengthening” which made us realize how important our journey and time was here. Daniel Stewart, a Cultural Affairs Officer spoke about his excitement to be welcoming this specific Fulbright program into Canada for the first time and how much he has enjoyed working with others on creating the experiences we were about to have. He went on to say some remarks about education including that, “teachers are the conveyors of the American values.” He also warned us, kindly, that “...Canadians know so much more about us than we know about them….this is an opportunity for you.”

Diane del Rosario, a US Public Affairs Officer speaking with the Fulbright TGC Cohort