What It Means to Arrive: TAS Educators Share Their Expertise Through Fulbright Taiwan

At TAS, learning doesn’t stop at the classroom door, or even at the boundaries of our campus. 

At a recent joint-site orientation for first-year Fulbright grantees, three TAS educators shared their expertise with those participating in the Fulbright Taiwan English Language Teaching Program. Their sessions explored different questions of culture, connection, and community, offering practical ways to approach a new culture while also reflecting something central to the work of education at TAS, where meaningful learning begins with curiosity and continues through relationships, reflection, and experience. 

Rick DaSilva, Director of Belonging and Social Impact; Fish Tung, Interim Assistant Director of Communications and a member of the Amis Indigenous tribe; and Dante Benson, a high school history and math teacher and former Fulbright Fellow to Taiwan, each approached the experience from a different direction. 

Together, their sessions invited participants to listen, learn, and become part of the communities around them, with the hope that the year ahead will be not only impactful, but life changing. 

For Rick DaSilva, that process begins with curiosity. 

"My first trip to Asia, to China and Thailand, was in 2006, and I still vividly remember how disoriented I felt stepping off that very long flight,” said Mr. DaSilva. “Everything seemed unfamiliar. Rather than retreat from that discomfort, I tried to let it change how I traveled: to stay curious, accept being uncomfortable, and become a participant in the experience rather than simply an observer of it.” 

In his 50-minute session, “Arrive Curious: Navigating Culture, Showing Up Professionally, and Building Trust,” Mr. DaSilva encouraged grantees to think beyond cultural adjustment as a set of rules to learn. Instead, he asked them to pay attention to the assumptions they bring into unfamiliar situations and consider how those assumptions can shape their relationships with students, colleagues, and communities. 

How do our assumptions, and our preconceived notions that we have, or potentially don’t even realize that we have, affect how we view new and unfamiliar settings.

Participants reflected on their first experiences in Taiwan, considered the difference between observation and interpretation. At the center of the session was a simple framework: 

Pause. Notice. Interpret. Check. Adapt. 

The process encourages people to distinguish between what they observe and the meaning they initially assign to it. Pausing to identify an assumption, question the assumption, and then checking an interpretation with someone else, creates room to learn from the people and context around you. 

“Curiosity does not require passivity. It allows us to act with greater accuracy,” Mr. DaSilva says. “When I encourage people to ‘arrive curious,’ it isn’t simply an idea or a framework I’m presenting. It’s a practice I’ve been developing for twenty years, and one I continue to practice every day now that I live in Taiwan.” 

For educators entering a new school or community, curiosity is not about standing back and observing. It is a way of participating more thoughtfully. 

Fish Tung approached cultural understanding from another perspective: what happens when we see a community primarily through the things that seem different from what we know? 

As a member of the Amis tribe, Ms. Tung introduced participants to Taiwan’s Indigenous peoples and communities through her unique Amis perspective on culture and connection. 

Her presentation, “Getting to Know Taiwan’s Indigenous Peoples and Communities: An Amis Perspective on Culture and Connection,” explored aspects of Amis life in Chihshang, Taitung, including community relationships, responsibilities, traditions, and the ways people learn from one another across generations. 

At first glance, visitors may notice songs, dancing, traditional clothing, and celebrations. Less immediately visible are the relationships and systems that help the Amis community function and thrive, including responsibility, leadership, kinship, knowledge, and the ways people learn from one another. 

But even this is only part of the picture. There is no single way to describe what it means to be Amis, just as there is no single Indigenous experience. Communities, families, and individuals carry different histories, practices, relationships, and ways of understanding their identities. Even within one community, people may experience and express their culture differently. Recognizing that complexity matters. Rather than seeing a cultural group as one whole, fixed identity, we can learn to appreciate the beauty in its diversity, contradictions, changes, and many different ways of belonging. 

For Ms. Tung, looking more closely also means seeing Indigenous people not simply through the lens of cultural difference, but as contemporary people living contemporary lives, with their own relationships, responsibilities, interests, and aspirations. Culture is not something that exists only in ceremonies, clothing, or traditions. It can also shape how someone understands family, community, responsibility, and their place in the world. And in many ways, isn’t that something we all do? We grow up shaped by the people, places, relationships, and environments around us. Perhaps the more closely we look at our differences, the more we also begin to notice how much connects us. 

That perspective connects to one of the core lessons she has taken from her own Amis identity: the intertwined relationship between “me” and “we.” Individual identity does not exist separately from community; who we become is continually shaped by the people around us, just as our own presence and actions help shape the communities we belong to. 

“I grew up with a strong sense of ‘we,’ knowing that wherever I go, I have a community to lean on, and I have a responsibility to the people around me too. For the Fulbright grantees just arriving, just show up, listen, observe, stay curious, and get to know people for who they are.” said Fish. “So much is learned simply by being there. Let those relationships teach you, and enjoy the process of moving, little by little, from ‘me’ to ‘we’.”  

As these new Fulbright fellows travel across Taiwan, for some of them being in a different country for the first time, Ms. Tung gives them a glimpse into one of the many cultures that make up the fabric of Taiwan. These educators have the chance over the next year to turn their own individual “me” into “we,” as they look around and realize that although they are in a new country, surrounded by the many cultures and people that make up Taiwan, there is belonging for everyone who is here. 

Because really, we are all more similar than we are different. Perhaps the challenge is just learning to see it. 

Mr. Benson approached the Fulbright experience from a different angle, informed by his own experience as a Fulbright Fellow to Taiwan almost 16 years ago: once you arrive, what will you do with the opportunities right in front of you? 

His first piece of advice was to change how grantees think about their year in Taiwan. A Fulbright grant, he explained, is not a study-abroad program or a trip. It is a job. 

That job includes serving as a cultural ambassador, not only when working with students, but also when interacting with colleagues and meeting people in the broader community. 

That responsibility can mean navigating moments that are unfamiliar or uncomfortable with grace and dignity. Curiosity from others may not always be expressed in ways that feel comfortable, but those moments can become opportunities for understanding.

Mr. Benson also encouraged grantees to learn from the people in their own Fulbright cohorts. 

Taking the time to understand fellow grantees, he explained, can make the experience richer. Those relationships can become friendships and may even open opportunities long after the Fulbright year ends. 

His final piece of advice was simple: seize every opportunity. 

Even when tired or naturally introverted, say yes to invitations that offer a chance to experience something new. 

He recalled one such experience from his own time in Taiwan. A few elementary school Lead English Teachers from the Atayal Tribe, living in Nan’Ao, Yilan County, invited him and several others to celebrate Christmas with them andtheir community. The group met at a school, where they learned to use bows and arrows and shared traditional food. Later, they went to a gym, sang karaoke, and spent the evening together. 

“We were singing everything from Whitney Huston, Mariah Carey, and Micheal Jackson,” Mr. Benson said, smiling.  

The most memorable moments of a Fulbright year, Mr. Benson explained, are often the ones you don’t plan. They come from saying yes, stepping outside your comfort zone, and then being open to whatever happens next. 

As the educators beginning their Fulbright experience, these three sessions offered different ways to think about what it means to become part of a new community. 

For TAS, the opportunity offered a glimpse of the educators who teach and support our students every day. The people working with our students are themselves deeply engaged in the work of understanding culture, building relationships, and learning across differences. Their expertise does not stay within the walls of their classrooms or on the TAS campus. It travels through the educators they mentor, the communities they engage with, and the experiences they share. 

As these Fulbright educators begin their year in Taiwan, their own learning will take shape through the people they meet, the communities they enter, and the experiences they choose to embrace. In sharing their perspectives, three TAS educators offered more than advice for navigating a new culture. They modeled something we hope all of our learners carry with them: the willingness to stay curious, look beyond what is familiar, and allow new experiences to change the way we see the world. 

Photo Credit: Jeff Wang