Recent graduate Taylor Blaylock will pack her bags this August and head to Taiwan where she will live for a year, teaching English and learning Mandarin Chinese, with the possibility of traveling to China, Japan and South Korea. She’s the sixth Berry student to earn a grant from the Fulbright Program, which promotes international goodwill through the exchange of students in fields of education, culture and science.
“Without the unique chances and opportunities that Berry provided, I do not think that I would have won the Fulbright award or would be prepared to take on the responsibilities ahead,” Taylor says.
Certified to teach elementary education pre-k–5, she strengthened her credentials with minors in applied behavior analysis and Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL), including an English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) endorsement. Taylor worked as a teacher’s assistant at the Berry College Child Development Center and completed a year of student teaching in a third grade English and language arts classroom at West Central Elementary School in Rome.
Her Honors thesis explored how ESOL teachers across the state of Georgia use technology with English language learners (ELLs). “I was also able to ask the ESOL teachers about how COVID-19 has affected their use of technology with ELLs and how it has impacted their learning,” Taylor says.
“Taylor is the most driven, hard-working and talented student scholar and teacher I’ve worked with,” says Chang Pu, associate professor of ESOL, who encouraged Taylor to apply for the Fulbright grant. “She presented her research at the Georgia Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (GATESOL) conference and the Berry College Symposium on Student Scholarship — in addition to applying for and winning a Fulbright grant. It really takes amazing determination, strong time-management skills and resilience to accomplish all of these tasks and do them well.”
