How Diversity Can Build a Better Campus

The 20th of February brought the beginning of an event that Pleasant Valley High School is very fortunate to host; the Fulbright International Teachers visit. For over a decade, teachers from all over the world have joined our campus in order to receive a firsthand experience of the inner workings of American education. These foreign teachers are some of the best educators in their countries, qualified to visit PV through a very rigorous program, Fulbright Teaching Excellence and Achievement (FTEA). The foreign teachers who visited our campus worked very hard for the opportunity to see and work in an American school. They spent a month and a half in total in the United States, spending 1 week teaching in public schools (February 20-27). At Pleasant Valley, each foreign teacher was paired up to co-teach with a PV teacher, allowing them to learn from each other’s different styles of teaching, a valuable opportunity for both. The goal of this program is ultimately to bring cultures together and promote mutual understanding.

According to Mrs. Besnard, an English teacher and the coordinator of PV’s FTEA program, Chico was lucky enough to host a total of 23 foreign teachers this year, with Pleasant Valley High School hosting 15. Mrs. Besnard described the visit as something that PV students and staff alike were “very fortunate” to experience.

Many of the foreign teachers expressed that this was their first time visiting the United States, and Saga was fortunate enough to have some of the guest teachers share their observations and culture shocks from their week at PV. One common thing that surprised many of the foreign teachers was the level of informality between American students and teachers in school. When Francis Bougma, a teacher from Burkina Faso, was asked what lessons from his visit he would bring back home, he responded “From my experience at Pleasant Valley, there’s a lot of things that I will go back with. The first thing is, like, uh, I will try to be more flexible with my students; more friendly with my students. I’m friendly with them, yeah, but I will increase it. I will give them more confidence and more autonomy.” Many foreign teachers decided to adopt this after seeing the positive effect it could have on students in a classroom setting–friendlier teachers make students feel more comfortable to ask questions and learn better. Describing her interactions with students, PV teacher Ms. Hanson said, “We’ll kind of check in more so as human to human, instead of, like, ‘I’m the authority, you’re the subordinate.’ And, so, I always hoped that they [the foreign teachers] would take that back. Like, we’re all just human at the end of the day.”

Diversity was a big subject for the international teachers, with many of them having a myriad of different perspectives to offer on the topic. When asked what diversity means to her, Imalka Wickramasinghe, a teacher from Sri Lanka, replied “All are equal. But we are different through language and skin color and religion. Under those three, if we uncover—if we remove that, all are equal for me. All are human beings.”

When asked the same question, Francis from Burkina Faso had an interesting comparison to make. “Even the fingers of our hands, they are not the same. So that means that, even in your own body, you will see that there are some things. You don’t have the same exact things on your body. Some people, their right eye is different than the left eye, one foot is longer than one, and so, this means that, despite all the differences, the body is capable to be as one. So, that’s why I say that. Diversity means you have to be able to accept the differences of people.”

Semakor Dadoza, a teacher from Ghana, was asked the same question “I believe that there’s always not one way to doing something,” she remarked. “We could have the same goal, but go through—someone may decide to go through the straight path, and still get there. Someone may go this way, still get there, the person may go the other, and still get there, so that’s diversity for me.”

Overall, many of the foreign teachers seemed to hold one belief; that everyone is different, but we are all equal. Each teacher was different from the other, just like no two people are the same. However, in the words of Ms. Hanson, “We all come from different cultures, different families. And so, I think that a lot of people, in order not to be ignorant, in order to get out of your bubble and be more accepting and just more loving towards one another, we really have to understand where we come from and step out of our comfort zone.”

One valuable lesson that PV students and staff alike can take away from this experience is that we are not all the same, but that is not a bad thing. It is a privilege to be able to learn from each other and to get to experience different cultures and learn about things that you did not understand before. Burkina Faso’s Francis told Saga “I like to try new things. I like to travel, to see different things […] When you are doing the same, same, same thing, you are killing your brain. So, if you want your brain to be ‘alive,’ you try new things, and you can travel to see new places, to see new people, discover new things, so I like to experience new things. And it’s very good, because it opens the mind. It opens people’s minds.” 

All in all, the FTEA international teachers visit was an extraordinary learning experience for everyone who got to participate in and witness it. People came together from all walks of life to share stories, cultures, knowledge, and left having learned more about others who are different from them. 

When asked about what we can take away from this event, Ms. Hanson said, “Stepping outside of comfort zones is so important to grow as a human being, and also meeting people that are so different from us helps us open our hearts and lean in with love, and I hope that that’s what a lot of people learned from their experience meeting the international teachers.” When diversity is prominent in a school or community, different perspectives can be shared, people can learn from each other, and mutual respect can be built. 

International Teachers at PV 2025