K-12 Teacher Profile: Cindy McNulty
By Clare Connors
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Enjoying Koushery, a popular Egyptian dish, in Aswan, Egypt. |
In our first inaugural Global Studies Center Newsletter, we focus on the work of Ms. Cindy McNulty, an English and history teacher at Pittsburgh’s Oakland Catholic High School for over 20 years. She has been an active participant in GSC’s outreach programs for several years. Through sustained work with the GSC, Ms. McNulty creates challenging AP World History and Honors English and history courses that bring a powerful global perspective to her students.
Ms. McNulty received both her B.S. Ed and Master of Liberal Studies from Duquesne University and has completed additional graduate work at both Duquesne and at Pitt. She has been awarded two National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Fellowships, three Fulbright-Hays Fellowships, two All-Star Educator awards and the World Affairs Council's George C. Oehmler Award. Ms. McNulty is active with the National Consortium for Teaching About Asia and works with the World Affairs Council of Pittsburgh on their Teacher Advisory Board and the Global Scholars selection committee.
Ms. McNulty’s commitment to teaching traditional courses from a global perspective began with the Asian Studies Program and the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia (NCTA). During a sabbatical in 1991 and 1992, she spent a year living in Shanghai. “There was little development in Shanghai at the time, and no subway, where now Shanghai has the most extensive subway system in the world,” she remembers. With limited Mandarin, Ms. McNulty traveled across China. “I was so happy to be there,” she explains, “there were fewer foreign students at the time than now, and I was enough of an anomaly that people were always willing to stop and help me.”
Ms. McNulty’s involvement with the GSC began in 2009 with a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship that funded study, travel, and research in Egypt for a small cohort of secondary teachers based on a GSC curriculum designed by Elaine Linn, GSC Assistant Director of Academic Affairs and Academic Advisor. “There is nothing like first-hand experience. I was eager to apply to the program and Elaine put together a terrific experience,” she said. “It was the moment I really connected to Global Studies.” Ms. McNulty sees her experience with the Fulbright-Hayes Program as a turning point in her teaching career. “The Fulbright-Hayes program in Egypt was so well-constructed and condensed in terms of exposure,” she explains. “We had one month to complete work on a major research project using primary sources available only in Egypt. In preparation for that, Elaine took us through layers and layers of Egyptian life.”
Visiting a Coptic Monastery in Luxor
Through the Fulbright- Hayes program, Ms. McNulty experienced an intensive, hands-on immersion into contemporary Egyptian life and culture, and a basic introduction to Egyptian Arabic. She summarizes the trip: “We landed in Cairo, saw the pyramids, took a train to Aswan and learned about Nubian culture. We started our way north and met community groups as we moved to the Valley of the Kings, and then made our way up to Alexandria, where we saw a very different Egypt – more Roman and Mediterranean. The trip continued to Cairo where the teachers got to meet with community groups from a rich range of Egypt’s social and political strata.” The trip gave Ms. McNulty exposure to a wide range of visions and a glimpse of what Egyptians were able to accomplish under the increasingly severe economic and political limitations of the Mubarak regime. Visits to a number of mosques gave the group a sense of the diversity of religious life in Egypt.
Following the trip, the Fulbright-Hayes program participants returned to the United States and gave presentations to schools in Erie, the first part of giving back. Subsequently, selected teachers were invited to serve as faculty participants in the one-credit BRICS and Muslims in a Global Context mini-courses focused on Egypt. Writing a secondary-level curriculum based on her research in Egypt was one of the requirements of the Fulbright-Hayes award, and Ms. McNulty decided to focus on Egypt after Mubarak.
Ms. McNulty continues to be involved in events and programs through the GSC, and has been a regular attendee at both the BRICS and Muslims in a Global Context mini-courses. She believes that the BRICS and Muslims in a Global Context courses are ideal professional development opportunities for busy teachers. “Nobody, especially teachers, has the time to take three-credit graduate courses during the academic year,” she explains. “These one-credit courses are tremendous. They provide critical up-to-date instructional context for creating relevant, contemporary history and social studies courses and materials. It is very generous for the GSC to offer these classes to secondary teachers free of charge.”
During the academic year, Ms. McNulty also makes the time to participate in outreach workshops designed specifically for teachers, like the K-12 Book Discussions. Most recently, she attended the discussion of The House at Sugar Beach, a memoir about the author’s early life in Liberia. This workshop was the first in a series of six workshops focused on different global issues and supports educators in learning how they can use literature to teach each of the GSC’s four themes (global health, global economy, global security, and global society). This workshop focused on Africa and the topic of human security. Dr. Yolanda Covington-Ward, Assistant Professor in Africana Studies, led the animated discussion of the book.
A group photo after dialogue session at Sufi mosque on the west bank of the Nile in Luxor.
“Summer programs and institutes, like the NEH, are also so valuable to teachers, as schools and districts lose funding,” explains McNulty. “Generally,” she continues, “teachers have much less of a problem attending summer programs, so they are a good fit. Students need hardcore content on emerging nations and economies, like China and India, since these nations will be an important part of the economic systems students will be participating in. The various kinds of intensive programs available through GSC really prepare teachers to develop the curriculum materials that they need.” Looking back over the last 15 years, Ms. McNulty concludes, “Having first-hand experience traveling to the places I teach about has given me a heightened sense of how many societies right now are quivering on the brink of change. Through my experiences living in Shanghai and traveling through China in 1992, and then living most of the summer in Egypt in 2009 observing the circumstances, I recognized change was inevitable. I am not prophetic, but I could clearly see that the tensions were not sustainable.”
After decades of dedicated teaching, Ms. McNulty is beginning to look towards retirement and taking her passion for global students into new arenas including more history and social studies curriculum development projects. “I am also quivering on the brink of change. I am looking forward to retirement and for work more focused on curriculum design, potentially online.” She currently takes online courses through the University of Colorado and other online programs within her focus on Asia. Ms. McNulty is also part of NEH Residential Program focused on India and China that asks the question: Is it good pedagogy to contrast and compare the current developments of India and China? Ms. McNulty explains, “My interests have expanded to better fit the frame of world history and looking at global development through the lens of connections. For example, when I teach the spread of Buddhism to my students, and I have to talk about its emergence and development across India, China, Korea and Japan, I must articulate for students the connections between India and China that made the spread of Buddhism possible.”
Ms. McNulty emphasizes that her experiences through the GSC have helped her to identify the connections that she wants her students to see. “My job as a teacher now is focused on creating the curriculum and classroom experiences that make it possible for students to see the connections across regions and historical circumstances for themselves.” Her work with Global Studies has also given Ms. McNulty a clear understanding of why teaching from a global perspective is so essential. “I am very fortunate to have a receptive administration that is open to new and better ways of teaching history and social studies,” she explains. “My administration is open to my teaching ideas,” she adds, “but they want to hear a clear and well-articulated rationale, which my work with the GSC and the World History Center has supported me in creating.”
Though Ms. McNulty may be moving towards retirement after a long and very successful career at Oakland Catholic, she can’t imagine a life that at its core excludes educating the young, in one form or another. Ms. McNulty sums up the joy of teaching at the secondary-level in this way: “Students’ questions may be somewhat naïve sometimes, but they are always very clear and direct. Sometimes adults want to give the impression that they know more than they do. Kids will just go ahead and ask the obvious questions and talk directly about the elephant in the room that adults are too afraid to mention.”
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