By Tim Hargis
Kentwood Public Schools
East Kentwood High School art teacher, Olivia Miller, is a lifelong learner and self-described explorer. She has a passion to experience other parts of the world, other cultures, and that passion spills over into her classroom. It is also taking her places.
Recently, Miller was named a 2023 National Education Association (NEA) Global Learning Fellow. She is the only teacher in Michigan to receive this honor. According to the NEA Foundation, Miller will join colleagues from states across the country to immerse themselves in a year-long study that involves online coursework, webinars, readings, and reflections. Eventually, the group will travel to South Africa this summer as part of this experience.
The goal, Miller says, is to return to the classroom, enriched from the learning, to create a global learning experience for her students. This work, she feels, also helps her to connect with her students.
“For me, the biggest way that I can learn is experiential, through traveling,” Miller explained. “It’s so different walking into a school in a different country and seeing how things are done there….It’s a different level of experience that I can connect with and then maybe better understand my students who come from different countries.”
This is not the first time Miller has been part of this type of opportunity. Prior to the pandemic, she was accepted as part of the Fulbright Teachers for Global Classrooms Program. This enabled her to work with teachers from across the nation and to travel to Morocco as part of this learning experience.
Part of Miller’s motivation is rooted in her own heritage. Her mother’s family immigrated to the United States from Ukraine. Growing up in West Michigan, she says she did not see much of her own family’s history and culture represented in the school curriculum. This made her wonder about representation for the students she serves today.
This is Miller’s third year teaching in the Kentwood Public Schools and her tenth year of teaching overall. Kentwood is where she wants to be. “This has been my dream school to come to,” Miller says of East Kentwood High School. “There are so many layers and good things to our EK community and environment. This place is such a cultural hub that many people may not even know about. You can learn about so many different ways of life, different cultures, different people here in Kentwood.”
East Kentwood is definitely glad to have Miller on its team. “Ms. Miller is one of the most culturally sensitive and equity-minded teachers that I’ve had the pleasure to work with,” says EK Assistant Principal Lindsay Kimbrough. “She brings a perspective that goes much deeper than the beautiful art she elicits from her students. She promotes social emotional development, and through her whole-child approach, helps to mold true global citizens.”
Kimbrough adds that the relationships Miller builds with her students are so important. “Her innate ability to build relationships with students is the bridge that leads students to taking academic and artistic risks, reaching heights they may have never dreamed of.”
The trip to South Africa this summer will be a rewarding culminating activity for Miller as part of her role as an NEA Global Fellow; however, there is work to be done between now and then. This work includes a trip next month to Washington, D.C. where she will collaborate with the other NEA Global Fellows from around the nation at a conference in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Education.
While Miller is focused on her current students and how the NEA Global Learning Fellowship will positively impact them, she is also looking ahead, and dreaming about possibilities to benefit KPS students and staff in the future.
“I want to someday have funding to take KPS teachers to the countries that our students are primarily from,” Miller explains, “to do a teacher tour. To go into the countries and learn.” She adds, “I think that would really make a big impact. It would close a gap in the relationships between teachers and students because students would be like, ‘Oh my gosh. You cared enough that you went and traveled to where I’m from.”
Reprinted with permission from the Kentwood Public Schools.
