With two parents who have long worked in public and higher education, the importance of creating engaging and inclusive learning environments was a regular dinner table topic for Maya Antonio ’24 and her family. But, she says, those ideals did not match her lived experience as one of the few Asian American students in her suburban Philadelphia school district.

“Living in a predominantly white suburb often made me feel like I had one foot in an Asian identity and the other in an American identity,” says Antonio, whose grandparents on both sides immigrated to the U.S. “But I still couldn’t find sure footing in American culture. None of my favorite pop stars or television characters looked like me, and the food my family ate and the holidays we celebrated didn’t have English names.”

Through her recently awarded Fulbright Scholarship, Antonio, who graduated in December as a double major in linguistics and education, will explore ways to shift the classroom dynamic to one that is more inclusive of all languages, cultures, and personalities. In early August, Antonio will travel to Taiwan, where she’ll be embedded in an elementary school to cultivate “joy, connection, and community” in the country’s high-stakes educational system.

Through what she envisions as a two-way cultural exchange, Antonio says she hopes to create an environment where all students feel welcome and some measure of relief from the pressures of expected academic success. Her experiences in Taiwan, she says, will inform her career as an educator in ways that will allow her to instill intellectual rigor while fostering a love for learning in her future students.

When she arrived at Haverford, Antonio says she had no plans to pursue education despite the proximity to her parents’ careers. Instead, she had her eyes set on sociology, though she admits she wasn’t sure what that might entail.

“At the time, I didn't fully understand what sociology even was, but I was definitely not interested in pursuing linguistics or education,” she says. “I'd never really thought of a career in education as something for me. That’s largely because, besides my dad, there are not many Asian people who work in education where I grew up.”

Her thinking shifted, though, when, as a first-year student, she found herself enrolling in a linguistics and education class in back-to-back semesters.

“Something that I really appreciated in those courses is that I found solidarity with people who had also experienced similar negative or harmful schooling experiences. But they had hope and were actively working towards making better educational environments,” Antonio recalls. “That really resonated with me and inspired me to try and create the educational experiences that I wish I'd had as a kid.”

Informed by fieldwork she conducted with a program that serves Latinx multilingual learners and an eight-week summer teaching fellowship at a charter school in Brooklyn, Antonio will arrive in a country that holds significant professional and personal significance for her. One of her grandparents is Taiwanese, and Antonio says she has yet to visit Asia herself.

Her grandfather has not returned to Taiwan to see his family and close friends in decades. He promised Antonio he would visit her if she received a Fulbright.

“He’s been wanting to go back to Taiwan for a long time, but he’s older now, and it’s difficult for him to travel,” Antonio says. “But he’s told me he would go only if there were a really big reason to do so.”

Antonio is one of four Fords to be accepted into the prestigious Fulbright program for the 2024-2025 academic year. Learn more about their plans.