Hallie Gilbert 2025 Fellowship Report: Connecting Places, Empowering Learners
Learning from Tanzania: Place-Based Stories that Inspire Young Changemakers
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In August 2025, I traveled to Tanzania to explore sustainable, community-driven solutions to environmental and social challenges. Through a fellowship with Thomson Safaris and Focus on Tanzanian Communities (FOTZC), I visited schools, conservation projects, agricultural sites, and Maasai villages across the Serengeti, Ngorongoro, and Eastern Serengeti ecosystems. My time was spent listening to local leaders, observing conservation efforts, learning from educators and farmers, and documenting practices through photography and interviews.
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This fellowship reshaped my teaching practice as I transitioned from a high school setting into a second-grade inclusion role at King Elementary—a school with 43% of students receiving special education services, a robust ABA strand, and 40% multilingual learners. The experience provided tangible, inclusive ways to connect young learners to big questions: How do people and places shape one another? and How can we be part of building sustainable communities, even at a young age?
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In the short term, the trip enriched how I will launch Unit 3 of our Focus on Second curriculum: Connecting Places, Connecting People. It gave me new tools and stories to help students reflect on their own relationship with place and community. In the long term, it has deepened my commitment to inclusive global learning, ensuring every child, regardless of background or learning profile, sees themselves as capable of engaging with the world and making an impact.
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Reflection Questions
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How have your knowledge, skills, and capabilities grown?
This fellowship helped me grow as both an educator and a learner. It expanded my understanding of how environmental and social systems are interconnected, and how community-based action can lead to sustainable change. I also learned new ways to observe, listen, and document experiences across cultures. These skills are essential for teaching diverse learners and guiding them in inquiry-based learning that is grounded in empathy, representation, and real-world relevance.
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How will your instructional practice change as a result?
Previously, my lessons emphasized accessibility and content delivery. Now, I am designing instruction that centers student identity, agency, and connection. In our second-grade classroom, we will launch the Connecting Places unit by journaling about where we live, who we live with, and what makes our community special. I will share photographs and stories from Tanzania to broaden the conversation and invite students to see the similarities between children across the world and themselves. Every lesson will include visual aids, sentence starters, and open-ended prompts to ensure that students in the ABA strand and multilingual learners can engage deeply.
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For example, when learning about how communities manage resources, we will compare Boston’s water fountains to rainwater collection tanks I observed in Tanzania. This will lead to a shared writing project where students created posters with water-saving tips, linking personal responsibility to global sustainability.
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What is your greatest personal accomplishment from the fellowship?
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The most meaningful accomplishment will be learning how to translate complex, global experiences into age-appropriate, inclusive instruction for second graders. I expect to be challenged to take something rich and unfamiliar and make it accessible to students who are just beginning to form a sense of the world beyond their neighborhoods. I’m envisioning the moment when students light up at photos of Tanzanian schools or stories of community farms, and then connect those ideas to their own lives, as the most rewarding outcome of this journey.
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How will your experience positively impact student learning in new ways?
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Students will now have access to real stories, photos, and voices that reflect the diversity and interconnectedness of our world. We’re no longer learning about “faraway places” in an abstract way. We’re exploring how we can take care of the land, solve problems, and help others, just like the children and adults in Tanzania. This has made our learning more authentic, student-centered, and rooted in action.
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We will introduce a journal project titled My Place, My Impact, where students reflect on their own identity, community, and contribution. The project is scaffolded to include drawing, dictation, and structured writing, ensuring that students with language and cognitive challenges can fully participate.
What are your plans to work collaboratively with colleagues?
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I’ve already shared a presentation and slide deck from the trip with our grade-level team and ESL specialists. We’re planning to co-create a mini-unit in which students interview family members about their own migration stories or neighborhood histories, connect those with photos from Tanzanian communities, and map the connections. I’ve also begun collaborating with the art and library teachers to create a "People and Place" gallery walk where students can share photos, writing, and drawings with the school community.
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Are there challenges in your school or community that you now feel more prepared to address with your students?
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Yes. Many of our students live in communities affected by economic hardship, housing insecurity, and environmental inequality. While they care deeply about fairness and justice, they often feel disconnected from solutions. This fellowship helped me see how place-based storytelling and concrete examples can make global topics feel personal and actionable. I now feel more prepared to guide students in small acts of leadership and sustainability, whether that’s learning about composting, organizing a class cleanup, or proposing a change to school recycling routines.
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How would you describe the most fundamental way your fellowship changed your perspective?
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It showed me that global learning can and must begin in early elementary classrooms, and that every student, regardless of learning profile, deserves to be included in those conversations. It reminded me that the stories we tell, the examples we use, and the people we elevate in our curriculum shape how students see themselves and their role in the world. I am now more intentional about whose voices I amplify, how I invite all learners into the work, and how we connect our classroom to the wider world.