Lisa Ball, a science teacher at Lawrence High School, has been awarded the opportunity to participate in an international education exchange program, teaching and learning abroad.
For her “leadership and contributions to society,” Ball received a 2022-23 Fulbright Teachers for Global Classrooms Program award from the U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, according to a news release.
Ball teaches AP Environmental Science and Ecology/Environmental Science at Lawrence High and previously taught at Billy Mills Middle School.
“I am so humbled and ecstatic for this opportunity to extend my own learning and to bring the world into my classroom,” Ball said in the release.
This will not be Ball’s first time teaching abroad, nor her first teaching award. According to her teacher’s page on the district website, she sailed as a Science Communication Fellow last year with the Ocean Exploration Trust and was able to teach classes all over the world, including her own classes at Lawrence High, from the ship.
She has also received a 2020 KEEP Konza Teacher of the Year and Earthwatch Teacher Fellow in 2009 and 2017 as well as been made a member of the Toyota International Teacher Program in the Galapagos Islands in 2010.
As part of the Fulbright program, Ball will engage in a 10-week, online global education class as well as attend a symposium in Washington, D.C. She will then be placed in an international classroom — in a country to be determined — for two to three weeks this spring or summer.
The Fulbright program, which is led by the U.S. government in partnership with more than 160 countries, is aimed at expanding knowledge of the world. Ball will now be joining the more than 400,000 teachers, journalists, artists, scientists and other professionals who were chosen for the program as a result of their “academic merit and leadership potential,” according to the news release. At the end, Ball will create a capstone project detailing her experience.
To learn more about the 75-year-old Fulbright program, visit this link.
Ball could not be reached for further comment by the time of publication.
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Maya Hodison (she/her), equity reporter, can be reached at mhodison@lawrencekstimes.com. Read more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.