Jaarlijks komen er Amerikaanse studenten met een Fulbright beurs naar Nederland. Studenten doen een volledige masteropleiding, onderzoek voor hun PhD of staan voor de klas op Nederlandse scholen. Deze groep studenten deelt graag hun ervaringen aan iedereen in het basis- en middelbaar onderwijs in Nederland. ‘Amerikaan in de klas’ maakt dit mogelijk: wanneer u uw school opgeeft via onderstaand formulier, zal een van de Fulbrighters een bezoek brengen.
Classroom Visit Program: Amerikaan in de klas
Waarom een ‘Amerikaan in de klas’
Al sinds 1949 zorgen academische uitwisselingsprogramma’s er voor dat Amerikanen en Nederlanders elkaars land en cultuur beter leren kennen. Wij noemen dit het creëren van wederzijds begrip, naar de missie van Senator J. William Fulbright. Natuurlijk zijn er veel meer manieren om dit doel te bereiken dan enkel via het hoger onderwijs. Fulbrighters brengen graag een bezoek aan basis- en middelbare scholen en kunnen op heel veel unieke manieren een leerzame toevoeging zijn aan uw lesprogramma:
- Fulbrighters presenteren over hun eigen onderzoek. Denk aan een geschiedenis student die wat komt vertellen over een onderwerp dat verband houdt met de Nederlandse of Amerikaanse geschiedenis of een geneeskunde student die tijdens biologie presenteert over een relevant onderwerp.
- Fulbrighters gaan in gesprek met uw klas en wisselen (culturele) ervaringen uit
- Fulbrighters leveren een bijdrage aan de Engelse spreek- en luistervaardigheid
- Fulbrighters kunnen tijdens verkiezingen meer inzicht geven in de Amerikaanse politiek
De mogelijkheden zijn eindeloos en u bent vrij om het bezoek zelf vorm te geven.
Hoe krijg ik een ‘Amerikaan in de klas’
Vul onderstaand formulier in, dan gaan wij voor u aan de slag! Wij vragen u om een korte motivatie te schrijven, waarom u een ‘Amerikaan in de klas’ wilt. Leg hier in duidelijk uit:
- Wat het doel van de ‘classroom visit is’
- Welke (gespreks)onderwerpen belangrijk zijn
- Wat de leeftijd van de leerlingen is
- Wat het adres van uw school is
- Wanneer u graag een ‘Amerikaan in de klas’ wil
Nadat wij uw aanvraag ontvangen hebben, zullen wij contact opnemen en u koppelen aan een van onze Fulbright studenten of onderzoekers. Deelname is gratis, de Fulbright Commission verzorgt de reiskosten van de studenten.
Participants 2025-2026 (in progress and in random order)
Ryan Peng
Ryan is a student at TU Delft pursuing an MSc in Integrated Product Design. Originally from Atlanta, Georgia and Memphis, Tennessee, he earned his bachelor’s in Design Engineering and Computer Science from Brown University in Rhode Island. His work focuses on implementing positive changes at scale through the design of everyday consumer products. Most recently, he worked on the New Product Integration team at Tiffany & Co., and he hopes to continue working at the bridge of design and engineering after graduation. In his free time, Ryan enjoys exploring the Netherlands, trying new foods, and figuring out how things are made.
Laleh Panahi
Laleh Panahi is a Fulbright researcher working with the Netherlands Helsinki Committee, sponsored by the Netherland-America Foundation, studying how employers, government agencies, and community organizations work together to support people returning from prison. Her research compares approaches to reintegration in the Netherlands and the United States. Her focus grew out of years spent working directly with children and families affected by the justice system. Most recently, Laleh spent a year in Brooklyn, New York teaching literacy and enrichment at Title I public schools, building on earlier work as a teaching artist for foster families and a mentor to youth in foster care. Across these roles, she became interested in how institutions shape opportunity. She’s particularly drawn to the way incarceration’s effects compound across generations, and how access to education and dignified work can change that trajectory. Laleh studied Journalism and Information Management at UMass Amherst, where her undergraduate research examined the pathways that can lead young people toward incarceration. She also taught as a Pilates instructor, raising funds for the university’s prison education initiative. Outside her research, she enjoys painting and reading.
Gitika Gorthi
Gitika is a biomedical engineering researcher at the University Medical Center Groningen, where she explores strategies to improve the viability of donor kidneys for transplantation using normothermic machine perfusion. Her research focuses on protecting mitochondrial function during cold and warm machine perfusion, with the goal of developing new approaches to improve organ quality and expand the number of renal grafts available for transplantation. Originally from Northern Virginia, Gitika attended Columbia University, where she earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Biomedical Engineering and minored in Economics. Following her Fulbright grant, Gitika plans to attend medical school, where she hopes to explore how tissue engineering and biomedical engineering can be leveraged to address the organ shortage and improve care for patients with kidney disease. Outside of her research, Gitika enjoys playing basketball, spending time with her family, and exploring new places.
Niku Myers
Niku is a first-year master’s student at Wageningen University and Research in the biotechnology program. He is originally from the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois and graduated from the University of Michigan in 2026 with a bachelor’s degree in molecular, cellular, and developmental biology. Through his master’s program, he hopes to learn about applications of microbes to industrial settings – specifically how microbes can be utilized to make manufacturing processes more sustainable and environmentally friendly. He is also becoming more interested in food technology and the cultivated/lab-grown meat industry. Outside of classes, he plays percussion in the campus orchestra and is involved in the rock climbing club. He loves anything microbial, especially fermentation products, as well as cooking and being outside.
Dasani Madipalli
Dasani is an architectural researcher working with TU Delft and the Blue Revolution Foundation. Her research focuses on understanding how to make our built spaces more accessible for people of all types of abilities. In the Netherlands, she is particularly interested in understanding how to make buildings built on water more accessible. Dasani spent her childhood in two different countries, India and the United States, and is married to her husband, Raul, who is Mexican. As a result, she is always cooking food that is a fusion of cuisines from all around the world. She also enjoys making things in all media, including carpentry, robotic 3d printing and crocheting!
Divya Tadanki
Divya is a researcher at the UMCG studying neurodevelopmental outcomes in pre-term born infants and biomarkers of pre-term birth in pregnant women. She is originally from Atlanta, Georgia and graduated from the Georgia Insitute of Technology with her Bachelor’s in Neuroscience. Passionate about maternal health equity and public health, Divya hopes to attend medical school after her Fulbright grant and work to improve healthcare access in the United States. In her free time, she loves to travel, hike, and dance!
Emma Fuchtman
Emma Fuchtman is a student at Maastricht University, where she is earning a Master’s degree in Arts and Heritage: Policy, Management and Education. Just before moving to the Netherlands, she graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Art History and a Certificate in Museum Studies from the University of Iowa. Her research interests center on art crime, with an emphasis on looting and repatriation. After writing a thesis about the acquisition policies of U.S. museum curators purchasing Greek and Roman antiquities, she is now shifting her focus to the restitution of Nazi-looted art. In her free time, Emma enjoys taking long walks in nature, reading murder mystery books, and watching Formula 1.
Ervaringen van deelnemers
Benieuwd naar de ervaringen van Fulbrighters? Lees hieronder een verslag van een recent bezoek in de klas.
Samuel Chen, Julia Jung & Catherine Knox
Samuel Chen, Julia Jung & Catherine KnoxHow would you explain America’s upcoming election in fifty minutes or less? Could you do it across a language barrier, across a cultural barrier, in a country accustomed to over a dozen political parties, instead of just two? Doing so would require a kind of Rosetta Stone: something to translate not just the words electoral college and absentee ballot, but also their implications, what they might mean for Americans and Europeans alike.
My fellow Fulbrighters Julia Jung (Utrecht University), Catherine Knox (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) and I tried our hands at translation last month. Set to teach a short class on the U.S. election system at Dorenweerd College in Gelderland, we tried to create a lesson plan that would encourage a more nuanced understanding of the imminent vote. We included definitions for the relevant vocabulary – nationalism, political platform, etc. – and activities to help illustrate the “winner takes all” logic of electoral points. But we were writing for an invisible audience, with no way of knowing how the lesson would be received, or if it would be understood.
Arriving at the school, we received encouragement. The space itself seemed reassuring – set back on a tree-studded hill, the high school was open, bright, filled with the same type of nervous energy we remember from our own teenage years. Inside, the teachers who had answered our late-night emails and deciphered COVID regulations to bring us in all assured us that the students were excited and receptive. The students themselves – somehow already taller than us at just fifteen – took their seats respectfully, listened closely, participated tentatively. As the lesson marched along, we loosened, seeing that the words were being absorbed. But the concepts? Did they translate? We couldn’t know until the final minutes of the class, the time when we asked “Any questions?” and waited, nervously, for signs of comprehension.
In each class, the silence after the question seemed to stretch impossibly long. Twenty or so students, suddenly hushed, as if a cleared throat or muffled cough would be met with an invitation to speak. We waited with tightened stomachs, wondering whether we spoke too quickly, too slowly, too softly. But a hand eventually found itself raised, and a question issued forth with thoughtfulness and engagement beyond what we had expected. With the question, the classroom shifted from monologue to dialogue, and we remembered the reason for our time here, both in Gelderland, and in the Netherlands in general: to foster dialogue in every interaction, and to connect despite barriers.
Speaking with the students at the end of the lesson, we felt this connection, and are grateful to Dorenweerd College for letting us into their lives, and to the Netherlands’ Fulbright commission for allowing us to forge such connections in a time of such uncertainty.