Who Do You Think You Are...Why, I'm Dr. H, a Fulbright Teacher

          Hello and welcome to the inaugural post of Dr. H's Fulbright Experience. As stated in the description of the blog, my posts will describe my observations and reflections throughout my journey to Vietnam as a Fulbright Distinguished Teacher. I am sure that you have many questions...What exactly is a Fulbright Distinguished Teacher? What will I be doing as a Fulbright Teacher? What is the process to be selected for this program? Why will be I going to Vietnam? What will I be doing once I get there? The questions are endless and, actually quite good ones. I will be addressing each one of these in upcoming blog posts.
          But, first things first. I think it is time to address the 800 lb. gorilla in the room - the one question that is at the top of each and every reader's mind - What is the deal with the blog title? Believe it or not, there is a sound explanation for the selection of a blog title. Well, here goes. While I was a college student in my hometown of San Angelo, Texas, I was an announcer at local radio stations. If you don't believe me, well here's proof!

          It started as a part-time job working on weekends and lasted for five years until I graduated and moved to Richardson, Texas to pursue graduate degrees in Physics at the University of Texas at Dallas. My love of music, combined with my love of talking, made this an ideal job for me. Because most songs, in my opinion, were more than lyrics set to a melody but rather a narrative that told a story, I thought that song titles would be an excellent backdrop for the stories that I will convey through my Fulbright experience. Therefore, each blog entry will be a modified version of a song title relevant to and consistent with the topic of the story described within the blog.
          Now that the blog titles have been explained, I would like to introduce myself and explain why a high school physics teacher in Texas is interested in serving as a Fulbright teacher and, most importantly, provide details about the scientific research conducted during my expedition.

Introducing…me

          I am currently in my 18^th year of teaching physics at Richardson High School in Richardson, Texas, a suburb north of Dallas. It is a Grades 9 - 12 high school with an approximate student population of 2,700 students.

I know that physics often gets a bad reputation among high school students as being hard, involving math, and quite frankly a class that they are forced to take. And these students would be correct. However, as I often tell my classes at the beginning of each school year, “the reason I love teaching physics is that each of you experience physics on a consistent basis throughout your life and I do not have to think long and hard to come up with examples and applications of every topic and concept covered in class.” I know that if I am successful in this regard, then perhaps some of my students might actually grow to tolerate and, who knows, maybe even come to enjoy physics. So, what am I like in the classroom?

How did I end up in the classroom?

          At the beginning of each school year, I am inevitably asked the same two questions by students. To the first question, “How long have you been teaching at Richardson High School?”, I respond this year with, “This is currently my 18^th year.” The second question I am asked is, “Did you always want to be a teacher? To which I respond, “No. No, no, no. Not no, but heck no!” When I graduated from high school, I didn’t know what I wanted to be but I knew what I didn’t want to be…a teacher. I did not want or even entertained the notion of me as a teacher. What makes this even more astounding was that everyone in my immediate family were teachers…except me. In fact, my dad was the Education Department chair at the undergraduate university I attended (Angelo State University). After multiple attempts of my dad trying to persuade me to reconsider my stance on teaching and pursuit of educator certification, I still was not interested. I wanted to pursue a career in medical research.

          Following my attainment of advanced degrees (M.S. and Ph.D.) in Physics from the University of Texas at Dallas in Richardson, TX, two postdoctoral fellowships (one in nuclear medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester, MA and another in neuroradiology at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, CA), and a career as a staff scientist for stroke at the American Heart Association, I was able to live my dream in medical research but gradually realized that it was impacting my reality.

          My wife, Kelly, and I have a daughter, Alexandra, who has always loved school and invested her time in any and all extracurricular activities she could possibly handle. My time was invested in activities that I had to direct my attention to such as meetings, conferences, grants and drafting manuscripts for publication and not activities that I wanted to focus on such as attending recitals, performances, parent-teacher conferences and help with homework. I understand that there are priorities in life and for me, and they finally came into focus for me. I decided to change careers – change into the one career I thought I would never pursue – teaching. Seventeen years later, I still have not regretted the move. 

Coming Up Next: Now that you know a little about the who behind the blog, it is time for you to learn about the why. In the next blog, I will describe the Fulbright Program and explain what it means to be a Fulbright Teacher.


Disclaimer: The blog, "Dr. H's Fulbright Experience", is not an official site of the Fulbright Program or the U.S. Department of State. The views expressed in this blog are entirely those of George Hademenos and do not represent the views of the Fulbright Program, the U.S. Department of State, or any of its partner organizations.