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News /

A Grateful Student Intent on Becoming a Great Teacher

June 11, 2019
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Bressni Neary

Fulbright recipient Bressni Neary will be traveling to Spain to teach elementary students.

“Teaching is something I love to do,” says Bressni Neary, who has graduated with majors in early childhood education and political science, and a minor in media studies. She is currently student-teaching first and second graders at the Children’s Workshop School in the East Village, where she hopes to be able to return when her Fulbright year ends.

The daughter of an Irish mother and an American father who was raised in Ireland, Neary grew up in Queens, where her parents met after moving from Ireland. A remarkably strong student, she attended a parochial high school on scholarship, applied to 20 highly selective colleges, and won admission to them all. While most acceptance letters came with financial-aid offers that fell significantly short of what her parents could afford, the exception was Hunter’s Macaulay Honors College. Macaulay offered her a rigorous education at no charge, along with a special community of talented young scholars and a free dorm in Manhattan.

Neary hasn’t looked back. She raves about the professors, classes, and rich opportunities she’s had at Hunter. But her path – like the academic paths of many bright, thoughtful students – was not a straight and certain one. She arrived at Hunter expecting to major in the sciences.

"Whatever I do, I want to contribute positively to the world around me.”

Bressni Neary '19

“Like a lot of students, I started college thinking I was pre-med,” she says, adding that it took just one chemistry course to “help me realize I didn’t want to do something that wouldn’t make me happy.”

For a while, she admits, “I was adrift and wondered, what am I good at?” She loved to write, enjoyed classes in media, and considered journalism. But she became disillusioned when one media course opened her eyes to the economic side of journalism and the question of who pays for and controls a publication.

She found her way ahead by looking back at her experiences growing up – when she had great teachers in school, and at the same time helped her mother care for and teach young children.

She enrolled in the Hunter School of Education’s undergraduate program in early childhood education, where she and her classmates completed extensive coursework in pedagogy and related fields, worked daily as student teachers in public schools, and received guidance and mentoring from faculty advisors like Carmen Brown, coordinator of the Early Childhood Education Program.

“Dr. Brown was very supportive and always told us how rewarding teaching can be, but she never sugarcoated things,” Neary says. ”She helped us understand and handle the realities of teaching.” Neary also learned a lot about classroom management as a volunteer with Hunter’s Peer Health Exchange, visiting local high schools to teach classes in mental health.

Her Fulbright destination is the La Rioja wine-producing province of northern Spain, where she’ll teach English to elementary school students. She plans to earn a master’s in education when she comes back to New York, and perhaps attend law school at some point in the future. Her specific area of interest is special-education law.

“I want to make sure special-education students get what they’re entitled to under state and federal law,” she says. “But I’m also open to seeing what other opportunities arise. Whatever I do, I want to contribute positively to the world around me.”

To get expert help with applying for NSF Graduate Research Fellowships and other national awards, Hunter students and graduates should contact The Ruth & Harold Newman Office of Prestigious Scholarships & Fellowships at (212) 396-6910 or ops@hunter.cuny.edu.

 

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