Social impact can encompass a wide range of ideas and projects that positively affect the communities we live in. We are delighted to showcase Fulbright alum working on education research projects that are contributing to a better world.
By Jordan Andress (Fulbright Intern, Summer 2025)
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Shana Haines – Professor of Special Education at University of Vermont in Burlington, Vermont | Program Coordinator for PhD in Social, Emotional and Behavioral Health and Inclusive Education (SHIE); University of Vermont
Fulbright alumna, Dr. Shana Haines, completed research at the University of the Azores in Ponta Delgada on São Miguel Island in 2020 with the support of a Fulbright grant. Formerly a Peace Corps volunteer in Cote d’Ivoire, West Africa, and a teacher in New York City and Portland, Maine, Dr. Haines previously completed a degree in Urban Studies and Environmental Science at Barnard College in New York. Later, she earned her master’s in education from City College, College of the University of New York (CUNY), and a doctoral degree in special education at the University of Kansas. Her areas of expertise involve family, school, and community collaboration, inclusive practices in special education, teacher preparation, and qualitative research.
We interviewed Shana about her experience as a Fulbright grantee and her time in the Azores, and how it has impacted her life and career in education.[1]
Can you describe your Fulbright experience?
I was a Fulbright scholar in the Azores, and I was at the University of the Azores on São Miguel in Ponta Delgada. Officially, I began in January of 2020, and I was supposed to be there right until April of 2020 with Fulbright. I say officially because I got there in October of 2019 and so I was there for almost six months total, but only three months of that was officially with Fulbright. The project that I was working on was a research project in a town on São Miguel – a fishing village – and we were doing a research study of how the families and the town and the school partner for student success, and in this fishing community, there is a large rift between the community and the school. So, we were interviewing mostly moms of kids who go to the school, and most of those moms had also gone to that school. And so, it was an interesting collaborative project that I was conducting with my counterpart at the University of the Azores. In addition to that, I taught a few classes. I didn’t have a class I was teaching, but I did some guest lectures and some presentations.
What inspired you to pursue your research on the rift between the schools and this community in the Azores?
This is my area of research here. I’m a professor at the University of Vermont, and what I had been focusing on at that time was the relationship between families who had refugee backgrounds and their children’s teachers in the in the US public school system. And there’s a big kind of hidden curriculum, if you will – a cultural difference between people from many different countries and the US, and the ideas of how a family is expected to participate in their child’s education within the US educational institutional system. And so, when families come to the US, they often kind of don’t know that they don’t know, because it’s just a sort of hidden part of our culture and our society. And so that’s what I had been studying. And then in 2016 or 2017, I had the opportunity to go with FLAD (Fundação Luso-Americana – Para o Desenvolvimento) to go and visit the Azores. And FLAD had arranged for me to visit a lot of different communities. And when I went to this fishing village, I could sense that there was sort of a divide between the community and school. Then the outcome of my participation in the FLAD program was to design a travel study class at UVM to go to the Azores. The following year, we redesigned our travel study class completely, and we only went to that community, and we did a service-learning project in that community, and we partnered with the school there, but also a nonprofit that provides sort of more holistic services to students in that community. And the project that they came up with was that they really wanted us to work on was to help increase the school pride that the students at this elementary school. And I wanted my students to learn how to interact with a variety of families, different family demographics, and to engage with the students and to sort of develop more relational competencies. And doing that across language barriers is an amazing opportunity to grow. And so, we did this project there, and what we ended up designing was a digital story that my students from the University of Vermont did in partnership with fourth graders from this community. The students went around with cameras, phones, video cameras, we had iPads for them to use, and they made videos of their community, and they talked about what they loved most about their community. Then we had a screening afternoon, during the school day, but more towards the afternoon, and we invited the families to come in and to watch these movies that the kids had put together and to celebrate the work that they had done. And most of the families showed up, and it was amazing.
Could you tell me what aspects of Portuguese culture left the strongest impression on you?
One aspect was the mindfulness and a little bit slower conversation that’s really seeking to understand and engage made me feel seen in ways that I had sort of taken for granted before I was there for a longer amount of time. So when I was there as a Fulbright Scholar, because I did get to be there for five and a half months – I did have to leave a little early because of COVID – but I became very aware of how nice it feels to go into a cafe and to order your coffee and to have a little conversation with the person who is serving the coffee and the care that they put into doing it. It’s a small thing, but I feel like it’s sort of symptomatic of a bigger cultural way of living, which is really at mindfulness and focusing on who and what is in front of you and giving it your all.
What advice would you offer to future Fulbrighters going to Portugal?
Don’t hesitate. It’s a great experience. I don’t really know very much about mainland Portugal, but I guess some advice I would offer is that I was glad that I lived close to the university, because I was able to take advantage of things that were happening at the university that maybe I wouldn’t have known about if I hadn’t lived close. I’m also glad that we put the kids in public school. I think it was an interesting experience, but if my kids were a little bit older, I probably would have put them in a private school, because the school system is very different. I don’t regret what we did at all, but one thing is that it’s a different pedagogical approach between the public schools there and here in the states. My kids told me that a lot of the education was the teacher talking and writing on the board and the students copying it. I guess, one piece of advice is, have your kids learn cursive before you go. Because my kids were writing stuff down, and I would ask, “what does that say?” And they would reply, “I don’t know. It’s in cursive.” So, I think that those are some things. Another piece of practical advice is that the banking can be tricky, and setting up a bank account in Portugal can be tricky, so getting the help from Fulbright on that is important, and that’s something that I wish I had known before I went over there. And I think just going in with an open mind and a lot of patience and realizing that the American sense of time is not something that everybody shares, and that that’s a really great thing and a great opportunity to kind of be open to a different way of living. It’s a welcome and refreshing attitude, in my opinion.
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Shana’s time in the Azores continues to leave a lasting influence on her professionally and personally. Having her family with her during her time in the Azores has left a lasting impression on them as well. Thank you for sharing your story, Shana! We appreciate your continued impact on the field of education and education research!
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About the Author:
Jordan Andress is a current Master’s in Public Affairs and Master’s in International Affairs dual-degree candidate at Indiana University’s O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs in Bloomington, Indiana. Prior to graduate school, he served for five years as a public-school teacher in Chandler, Arizona. He is currently a summer intern at the Fulbright Commission in Lisbon, through the Study in Portugal Network (SiPN) internship program, supporting the Commission’s work and operations through alumni outreach, communications, and institutional engagement.
[1] This interview, conducted over Zoom, has been edited for clarity, grammar, and flow while preserving the original intent of the speaker’s responses.