Sydney Leiter

I am currently a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Slovakia. I assist with English conversation classes at a gymnázium secondary school in Levice that prepares students for higher education. I have classes with students ages 12-15 and 17-19 and run an English Conversation Club open to all students at the school. In addition to my formal teaching duties, I act as a cultural ambassador of the U.S., teaching my students about U.S. culture and history. The major goal of the Fulbright is to create mutual understanding through cross-cultural education, communication, and exchange, and I contribute to this by learning about Slovakia and Slovak culture while helping my students improve their English and learn about the U.S. through open, honest communication.

The Institute for Women's and Gender Studies helped teach me how to be open-minded and accepting of other cultures. My Women's and Gender Studies classes focused heavily on intersectionality and recognizing biases to help minimize or eliminate them. I was able to take classes on multiculturalism that highlighted a diverse range of cultures. I truly believe these classes and this understanding of multiculturalism and cross-cultural communication were critical in my selection for the Fulbright Program and my successful transition to life in Slovakia. Women's and Gender Studies taught me how to appreciate the diversity of the world, and everything I learned in my classes helped me adjust to life abroad and really fall in love with Slovak culture. Additionally, the teaching style of my Women's and Gender Studies professors is something I try to emulate in my classes as an English Teaching Assistant. Women's and Gender Studies was about communication and learning to think for oneself, not just about learning the content from a lecture. I try to engage my students in discussions like the ones I had in these courses and allow them to express themselves in whatever way they are comfortable with no pressure or judgment. My professors also cared about their students as people rather than just students, and that same level of empathy is something I try to show to my students as they learn English and struggle through teenage life.

Dr. Herles's courses are some of my favorite memories from UGA in general. I met Dr. Herles as a high school senior before I chose to attend UGA, and then I was able to take a class with her as an undergraduate and again as a graduate student. Dr. Herles was one of the kindest professors I had throughout my time at UGA and genuinely cared about her students as individuals. I took North American Asian Feminisms and Environment, Gender, Race, and Class with Dr. Herles, and both classes were fascinating and taught me so much about those topics and the world more generally. I also loved that Dr. Herles allowed us to be free-thinkers and creative, empowering us to comfortably express ourselves in class discussions and choose topics of interest for our assignments. She focused heavily on applying our classroom learning to the real world, which is something I rarely experienced in other classes and allowed a deeper level of learning. These were unlike any other classes I had, and the freedom and kindness I experienced in these courses allowed me to grow as a person and a student. Dr. Herles created that classroom environment, and I will always remember that.

The Institute for Women's and Gender Studies offers so many opportunities, and you should absolutely take advantage of as many of them as you can! I wish I had been more involved with IWS outside of just my courses because there really are so many opportunities to learn, volunteer, network, and grow outside the classroom that IWS makes easy to access.