Suzanne Stewart
Staff Writer
After graduating from Brown University, Hillsboro native Victoria Rose knew she wanted to go into education and, for a year, she worked in West Virginia and Seattle, Washington, providing environmental education to schools.
Once she had a year of experience, she applied for the Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship program with which she could teach English to adults and children in a country of her choosing.
For the past year, she has been a Fulbright educator in Vijandi, Estonia.
Estonia is in Northern Europe, specifically in the Baltic region, bordered by Latvia, Russia and the Baltic Sea.
“I have been teaching English and doing cultural activities,” she said. “There are three of us in Estonia, and we are all based at libraries; people are usually based at a school or university.”
At the library, Rose did one-on-one conversation lessons with adults and teens, as well as hosting cultural activities such as movie nights, craft circles and American culture events.
In addition to her work in the library, Rose traveled to a school in the countryside where she taught third through sixth grade on Mondays. She also taught at a school in the town once a month.
“I visited the academic high school a couple times and did lessons for them about national parks and U.S. school culture,” she said. “I did a lot of different things which I think is pretty unusual for Fulbright, but it worked well for me.”
Her favorite project was creating a pen pal connection for the elementary school students in Estonia with fourth grade students at Hillsboro Elementary.
Rose reached out the Chloe Hardesty, an HES teacher, who then connected Rose with her mother, Gina Hardesty, who teaches fourth grade at HES.
“She was also my fourth-grade teacher,” Rose said. “We got to write with her fourth graders which was definitely the most fulfilling thing that I’ve done here. That was really awesome.”
Hillsboro is the smallest school in Pocahontas County and when Rose shared how small her school was, the children in Estonia thought it was a big school, in comparison to theirs.
Rose explained that the countryside school she worked in had a total of 27 students in first through sixth grade.
To make sure each Hillsboro fourth grader got a pen pal, Rose had her fourth, fifth and sixth graders participate. Some of the Estonia students got to have two pen pals because of the uneven number.
All the communication was done through email to ensure the students got to speak to each other regularly.
“We didn’t have them emailing directly, but I did, at the end of the year, share their email addresses,” Rose said. “We had been sending the messages through me and the teacher, partly to see what they were doing and partly because I would add notes when they were talking about things that clearly, the American kids would have no idea about.”
At the end of the school year, the two schools did a video call so the students could see each other in person.
When school let out for the summer, the students were able to keep in touch through their personal emails, although Rose said she was unsure how often the students checked their school emails.
She hopes the pen pal program continues and said the Estonia teacher is open to the idea.
“She has been a joy to work with and is super enthusiastic about continuing this in the future,” Rose said.
At the end of her time with the program, Rose said she calculated that she worked with roughly 566 students in kindergarten through 12th grade and 72 adult students.
During her time in Estonia, Rose was able to take in the culture and sites of the country, which is slightly smaller than the state of West Virginia.
Rose said Estonia is a very tech forward country but is also steeped in tradition and history.
“Estonia got its independence from the Soviet Union at about the time the internet started being widely accessible, so it helped it be super digital from the get-go,” she said. “I think that’s what it’s known for in the world, but for me, my answer to what Estonia is known for is traditional culture.
“Traditional music and traditional dancing and traditional handy crafts are a big deal here,” she added.
Crafts like crocheting, knitting, woodworking and sewing are taught in the schools from as early as third grade. While not all Estonians carry on the crafts into adulthood, they all have had a hand in it as children.
“It’s not something that your grandma does and it’s not something that, oh a few people do,” Rose explained. “It’s something that is part of everyone’s life, even if they literally couldn’t care less about it and actually wish that it wasn’t.”
Each little county in the country has its own music, dance and craft festival and the country had a large festival in the capital every few years.
At the festivals, everyone dresses in traditional clothing and they perform dances and music that are original to the country – both old and new.
“They do dances to music that is sometimes traditional, and also, sometimes modern music that is based on traditional vibes,” Rose said. “There was a rap performer at this year’s festival where it was like rapping, with bagpipes and accordion cut in. It was awesome.”
Rose herself learned to crochet when she was four years old, taught by her grandmother. While in Estonia, she learned how to knit and has been enjoying knitting items such as mittens.
Now that the Fulbright program is over, Rose said she is returning to Seattle in a couple weeks, where she will decide what is next. She plans to go back to being an environmental educator and possibly investigate graduate school.
Rose is the daughter of Bruce Rose, of Hillsboro, and Sheila Rose, of Williamson.
