Jill Camargo - Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad
Ponca High School Spanish Teacher
Launch the media gallery 1 player
Mrs. Jill Camargo was selected by the UNL Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad to be one of twelve participants to travel to South Korea this summer. Her application was one of twelve selected out of a pool of fifty applications. This four-week experience in South Korea had initially been planned for the Summer of 2020, but it was postponed for two years because of COVID restrictions.
Camargo teaches Spanish at Ponca Public School, but her passion for education and gaining worldwide exposure to new learning experiences and different cultures has been an ongoing process. Jill Camargo is a native Nebraskan from Central City, Nebraska, and the daughter of Jack and LoAnn Roach. She began studying language when she was 12 years old. She knew from an early age that she wanted to speak another language so she could explore the world and engage with other cultures and people. Camargo was 14 years old when she first traveled outside of the United States. She went to Mexico for seven days with the Central City High School Spanish club and their sponsor, Mrs. Olivia Santos. Her mom and dad were opposed to this experience. However, she earned the money to go and convinced her parents to let her go.
While there, Jill saw firsthand the Aztec ruins of Tenochtitlan, the city of Teotihuacán, the mysteries of the pyramids, and interaction with native speakers. This trip instilled a great passion for language, learning, and building relationships for a better understanding of the world and its people.
Camargo has traveled to study in Mexico, Argentina, and Spain to learn more about the Spanish language, culture, and people. She sponsored an educational trip to Spain, leading 16 high school students on a three-week adventure to see history and language in real life. She has also acted as an interpreter for a mission trip to Galeana, Mexico, and for a medical mission trip in Nicaragua. The interpreting experience in Nicaragua was outside of her duties as a Peace Corps volunteer, serving from 2016 to 2018. Joining the Peace Corps was a dream for Camargo and was one of the motivators for studying another language. After being an English tutor for two exchange students who were attending Archbishop Bergan High School at the time Camargo was teaching there, she felt it was time to fulfill the Peace Corps dream.
In the Peace Corps, Mrs. Camargo worked with three local English teachers to reinforce and create strategies to use in the classroom. She co-taught with the teachers in Nicaraguan classrooms. Her counterparts and she lead language workshops for English teachers locally and within the state of Matagalpa in Nicaragua. She also helped Nicaraguan English teachers and students improve their English speaking skills in the structured classroom and in community English classes.
Besides learning about the culture and history of Korea, Mrs. Camargo will be interacting with Korean teachers to learn more about their educational system from elementary to post-secondary education. She will be discussing the curriculum, training, and strategies of teachers in Korea in relation to experiences in the United States.
We want to congratulate Jill Camargo on being selected for this experience, and we look forward to learning more from her about her experiences in South Korea.