2015 Updates

From the Bronx to Beijing

Gregory Scott,  2011 Scholar

Greg Scott at Beijing's 300-year-old Yonghe Temple.

It's a long way from All Hallows High school in the Bronx to Peking University in Beijing, especially by way of Rochester and Brazil, but that's the road traveled, so far, by Gregory Scott, a member of the second Scholarship Plus class.  Already conversant in Portuguese, thanks to four months of study in Brazil, continuing chats with friends on Skype and watching shows from Brazil on the internet, Greg is now doing intensive study of Chinese -- spoken and written -- for four hours each day in a program sponsored by the Chinese Government.

"The teachers are quite formal," Greg writes, "but very understanding and caring. I don't know if I can generalize and say that Chinese professors here are all great, but they seem to be."  

All of the students in Greg's class of 15 are foreigners, most from Germany, but others from Russian, England, Mexico, Thailand, South Korea and Sweden.

"Chinese is difficult," says the University of Rochester graduate, "but I am coming along OK.  The HSK test -- the Chinese proficiency exam -- has six levels, with 1 being the most basic and 6 the most advanced.  I should be at Level 3 by February and hopefully 4 or 5 by July (the end of my stay) if I study really hard."

"Life is Beijing is fascinating," Greg writes. "It's really hard to believe how old this city is unless you go and visit the Hutongs [narrow old streets and alleyways] or have conversations with older Beijingers. The constant sight of swinging cranes and smog reminds me that I am in a very fast-moving environment."

Beijing's pollution has taken some getting used to, he said in a late-October email, "although these last couple of days have been great."  "Wearing a mask on really bad days," though, "was an adjustment, as I always take nice sunny days with fresh air back home for granted."

Greg, who worked for 10 weeks at the Paul, Weiss law firm in New York last summer, has his post-Beijing sights set on law school, and then either law or business.  

Greg says that he has learned to love Peking duck as well as Jiaozi, which are dumplings with different fillings, generally pork.  But, he says, "I do miss hamburgers and pizza. Although some places in Beijing have them, there is nothing like a burger from home."

Student Teaching

Raquel Beckford, 2012 Scholar

Raquel Beckford at gate of Hartford's Trinity College.

"I've done a lot," says Raquel Beckford, looking back over three and a half years that have taken her as far away as South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe. A constant theme in those years has been working with children, whether at Trinity College, where she's in her final year, or at the University of Cape Town or at a summer job in the South Bronx, or as a teacher at Exeter.

With 26,000 students, the University of Cape Town is about 10 times the size of Trinity but the cosmopolitan, Americanized atmosphere of the South African school made Raquel wonder at first, "whether I had gone abroad or across the street." It was, though, a time of protest at the University, notably a campaign that led to the removal of a statue of Cecil Rhodes from the campus.  A highlight of her time in Africa was a spring break camping trip to Zimbabwe and Botswana. One morning she looked up from her table to find "an elephant right there" -- though not close enough to share her breakfast.

Both at the University of Cape Town and at Trinity, Raquel has worked as a tutor to young children.  At Cape Town she worked for two hours a day, five days a week, with children between the ages of 5 and 8. At Trinity she works as a tutor for 4 to 6 year olds, and in a campus day care center for children ages 2 to 5. That interest has carried over to her summer jobs.  In 2014 she taught 8 to 15 year old students at St. Ann's Church in the Morrisania section of the Bronx as part of the Children's Defense Fund Freedom Schools program.  Last summer she taught two writing classes at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, in a five-week program that brought 750 children from 43 countries to the New Hampshire campus.  She was also a resident assistant in the program, with two advisees from China and one each from Texas, Montana and the Bronx.

Helping her as she looks at her options is the fact that she will graduate debt-free, thanks to her scholarships.  In addition to Scholarship Plus, she has received scholarships from Trinity and from a lawyer at a firm where she worked in high school, Adam Leitman Bailey. 

Her next step will probably be teaching, perhaps in a program that would allow her to earn a master's degree at the same time.  Longer term, she knows she wants to keep working with children, perhaps even establishing her own mentorship program.