The Wi-Fi Is Spotty, The Learning Is Not

A few minutes into this conversation, we realize something: the most eye-opening part of global education is how much of it feels familiar. Dr. Christine Royce, a faculty member at Shippensburg University, joins us fresh off a Fulbright Scholar experience in Cairo, Egypt, where she taught future STEM teachers and worked alongside university faculty in a program built to prepare educators for grades 7 to 12. 

We get specific about what she noticed on the ground. The structure of teacher preparation can look surprisingly similar, but the day-to-day learning conditions change everything: different access to materials, different tech realities, and students collaborating in ways shaped by shared devices and limited campus-wide Wi-Fi. We also unpack a huge instructional wrinkle that’s easy to overlook from afar: STEM subjects taught in English even when it’s not students’ native language, and what that can mean for scaffolding, participation, and cognitive load. 

Then the conversation turns to purpose and motivation. The Cairo program ties coursework to practical application and the “grand challenges” of the country, pushing integrated STEM thinking instead of isolated subjects. Christine shares a moment during Ramadan that stops us in our tracks: an extra class session added because the learning wasn’t done, and students showed up ready to engage. It raises a simple question with big implications: what happens when learners truly see education as a scarce, valuable opportunity? 

If you’re interested in STEM education, teacher prep, global education, or meaningful professional learning, you’ll leave with concrete insights and a push to seek perspective, even if it’s just the next classroom over. Subscribe, share this with an educator friend, and leave a review, then tell us: what’s one place you could go to learn something new about your own teaching?

Want to send us a show idea or just say hi?  Email us at: thechangedpodcast@gmail.com! 

Transcript

Opening Banter And Host Intro

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Tony, you wanna error or Patrice, either one of you wanna open it?

SPEAKER_02 0:03

Why do you do that to us?

SPEAKER_03 0:04

Yeah, you know you're gonna open it.

SPEAKER_01 0:06

Well, we just half recorded a season three ending, and they told me that we just stopped doing the ending the way I do it. So I didn't know if that included the in season four.

SPEAKER_02 0:14

In season four. Come on. You don't need to be pouty, man. Or Christine.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Welcome back to Change Ed. Changed. Change Ed. The number one rated all-time reigning champion podcast in education. I am one of your three adored hosts, Andrew Kuhn, education consultant from Montgomery County Intermediate Unit.

SPEAKER_02 0:40

And here with me is Patrice Semitek, also out of the Montgomery County Intermediate Unit.

SPEAKER_03 0:46

And Tony Marabito from Carbon Lehigh Intermediate Unit.

SPEAKER_02 0:49

We are titless today. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

Wow, great job. Thank you for the memo and for keeping me in the loop on that.

SPEAKER_02 0:55

I don't think you've caught on yet. Tony and I are revolting and starting our own thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

We are here with one of my favorite professors from Shippensburg University who is also a world traveler. We have Dr. Christine Royce here with us on the show today. Welcome, Christine.

SPEAKER_00 1:15

Yay. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_01 1:17

Yeah, thank you.

Meet Dr. Christine Royce

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Do you mind introducing yourself a little more formally than I did so that the Change Ed Nation knows who's on today's podcast?

SPEAKER_00 1:26

Sure. So I'm Christine Royce. I'm a faculty member at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania, where I teach future teachers. I joke about, I teach them all the classes that they don't want assessment, research, methods, science. But I also work with the STEM program that we have at Shippensburg and also work with opportunities for teachers across the nation with education. Sounds like a very fun job.

SPEAKER_03 1:52

Yeah, that sounds amazing. I want to hear about these world travels.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

I just got back from Egypt. It was a great opportunity and it was cut way too short, but I'm back.

SPEAKER_02 1:59

Oh, that sounds amazing. What did you do in Egypt?

SPEAKER_00 2:01

So in Egypt, I had a Fulbright, Fulbright scholarship,

Fulbright Teaching In Cairo

SPEAKER_00 2:05

to work with a university there, very similar to what I do here. Teach future STEM teachers there at Ein Schomps University in Cairo, and also work with the Fulbright program and interact with faculty members at the university.

SPEAKER_02 2:20

That sounds like a ton of fun.

SPEAKER_03 2:21

Now I need to know more about this. So what what is the biggest difference that you saw, America, Cairo? What was your take?

SPEAKER_00 2:28

Culturally, I think one of the big differences is their day starts very late at night, like nine o'clock at night. That's when people start to go out.

SPEAKER_02 2:35

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 2:36

It's a different cadence, if you will, on the street. Food-wise, they obviously have their own food that they you would eat in, but you could find pretty much anything, like any any major city. And educationally, I think the major difference is the students I had go to school specifically to be STEM teachers. So they'll have a subject they'll teach, but they focus on STEM.

SPEAKER_03 2:59

That's cool. That's really cool.

SPEAKER_02 3:00

Is their program as intense as ours or as long or more intense?

SPEAKER_00 3:04

It's a four-year program. Okay. Um, very similar to what ours is. They take specific education classes throughout it. So I was teaching a technology class, I was teaching introduction to STEM class. They also take content classes. So they will be focusing in one area, math or biology or chemistry. And then they have their what we call gen eds. They have those types of classes as well.

SPEAKER_03 3:25

Are these teachers more for high school level or what they would consider a high school level?

SPEAKER_00 3:30

I would say it's for our seventh to twelfth grade. So it's it's a similar structure. They call it secondary school there. So it would be the equivalent of our our seventh to twelfth grade.

SPEAKER_01 3:40

You know, when you introduce yourself and you said you you teach the classes that that students don't want to take. What I thought was interesting about that is that the importance and the relevance of those classes are so much more significant when you're in the field, when you're doing the work. And then it's like a hindsight like, wow, I really wish I had listened to Dr. Royce. Or what did Dr. Royce say? Especially with assessment. That's a very big, heavy request that we receive a lot right now, especially with steels and the transition that we've made. And it's an ongoing conversation, but also I think for our educators, they're in a spot where they're like, I need to know now so that I can implement this correctly. What does that look like? And that sounds like is a little bit different from when you're coming into it from a college standpoint, and you're looking at the whole picture, and then I think you're able to kind of narrow your view because as an experienced teacher, you've you've got a lot of those things under hand. Uh, under that's the word I'm looking for, Tony. You're so smart.

SPEAKER_03 4:31

I don't know where you're going. Like normal.

SPEAKER_01 4:33

Yep. Any idea what word I could use there? I don't know where you were going. Okay, I'm gonna rephrase. So helpful as always. You have a lot of the peripheral parts under control. Now you're focused, you're dialed in into the parts that are are so important, which it sounds like is a lot of what you do work in and those really important parts, you're at least giving them the foundation. Were you getting the same vibe from your students in Egypt that they were kind of like less interested in what, you know, those those parts, or were they maybe interested in a different way?

SPEAKER_00 5:03

I think the word foundation is a good way to describe that. I think that in college, as an undergraduate, no matter if it's here in the US or in Egypt, they're getting the foundational skills associated with what they need. I think then as they become teachers, they start to actually focus more on how do I take those skills and make it my own. So if I looked at building a wall, the foundation is it's a wall, but now am I going to use bricks? Am I gonna use flagstone? In Egypt, I think the students were the same. Many of the classes had very practical application type assignments. So, similar to what we do here, we're trying to show them the relevance now. They too go out and observe in classrooms. So hopefully they start to see that while they're they're seeing the foundational information and then how teachers are applying it.

SPEAKER_01 5:46

You know what I find fascinating is I'm listening to you talk. I'm thinking about the fact that you're not in the United States while you're doing this, you're somewhere different, and I'm hearing so many similarities.

How STEM Is Taught There

SPEAKER_01 5:55

There must be differences as well. Are they very nuanced? Are they very small? Are they more like cultural differences, or do they have fundamental philosophical differences there that you noticed?

SPEAKER_00 6:06

This particular program is largely aligned with STEM education internationally. It was supported. There's different universities in Egypt, there's different universities in other parts of the world that worked on designing what STEM education looks like. I think the differences really came down to how the class is taught. Here in the US, we have a lot of different manipulatives, and the students immediately pull out their laptops and we do a lot of things that are online. And there, while they might have a laptop per table for a station, they're using their phones. The university I was at actually doesn't provide global access to Wi-Fi for students on campus. So they're connecting via their phones, they're asking questions after talking among their groups. And part of the difference is they're learning their STEM subjects in English, even though that's not their native language. Because English is how STEM subjects are taught in secondary schools there. Why is it why is it taught in English? My understanding, and it's not just Egypt. I've worked in the Emirates, I've worked in Qatar as well. English is really the language of the STEM fields, largely. And so I think what happens is they expect it to be a second language for the students in case they're doing something else for graduate work or in case they're pursuing some kind of scientific study because they're need that language.

SPEAKER_02 7:26

That makes sense. That's so much harder though. Like, first of all, English is a hard language to learn. And second of all, like the translation in your head, that's hard unless they've been working on English for a while. They might have been. I don't know the culture as much as I should.

SPEAKER_00 7:39

They do start learning English earlier in school, although it's taught as like a subject, a standalone subject.

SPEAKER_02 7:45

Got it, got it.

SPEAKER_03 7:46

Is STEM a highly desirable kind of field of study for these students? Or is it, you know, is it hard to get into, or how do they get started?

SPEAKER_00 7:53

I think it's a targeted field.

SPEAKER_03 7:55

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 7:55

The institutions focus on it and they designed all of their coursework around what's called the grand challenges of Egypt. So the practical application. If teachers are trained in STEM, they can then better prepare students in STEM thinking, which will then ultimately help Egypt solve many of their grand challenges that they have is how they approach it. Wow.

SPEAKER_03 8:16

Uh-huh. That's pretty cool. Imagine that, career applications.

SPEAKER_00 8:19

Real life, real world, absolutely. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:22

I'm sure your classes have some of that in it too. But do you think that they do a better job of bringing their STEM fields up to speed because they're doing so much immersive work?

SPEAKER_00 8:33

I think the fact that their classes are actually STEM focused.

SPEAKER_02 8:37

Yeah, it's huge.

SPEAKER_00 8:38

Is one of the benefits. Yeah. I teach science methods, I teach math methods. I may have students in both science methods and math methods, but they're separate approaches. In these classes, they're learning how they're connected to begin with as well. Which is huge because nothing's really done in isolation.

SPEAKER_02 8:56

You're right.

SPEAKER_03 8:57

If you could bring back one aspect of the way that students either learn or behave or the way it's taught, bring it back to Shippensburg, what would you bring

Ramadan, Motivation, And Classroom Resources

SPEAKER_03 9:05

back?

SPEAKER_00 9:05

I think the one thing that surprised me most, and I'm not saying my students aren't dedicated, they are very dedicated, but just the fact that education is what they're doing at this point, and they significantly value anything they can get in the educational process. And I'll give you a quick example. I was there during Ramadan. They actually shortened their class times as part of Ramadan because of when they fast and when they don't fast. And the first week, my co-teacher that I was working with looked at the class and said, We will have class on Wednesday night. And I just kind of sat there like, okay, they rescheduled class. Like I and I said to her later, I said, Oh, do you reschedule classes? And she says, No, I'm just not simply done with the content. So we will have an extra class. And my first thought was, hmm, I'd be called to the dean's office long before I got back to my office in the US. Yeah, you would. And there they all showed up. And she would randomly ask them questions as part of this and they would answer. So they were on, they were participating because I think they really look at the education is something that they're provided that's a value to them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:12

Okay. So what would be the reverse of Tony's question? What would you take from here to there?

SPEAKER_00 10:17

From here to there, I think I would take some of the strategies over. While they know the strategies, we have a lot more materials to demonstrate the strategies there, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 10:29

That does make a lot of sense.

SPEAKER_00 10:30

So the resources that would allow them to actually conduct more of the activities in class or the strategies in class would be something. We're very fortunate in the US that we have lots of materials in class. We have a lot of consumable materials. And I think that's one thing that is very different. And when things were brought into class, even if they were simple sticky notes to have them do a bar chart, it gets them up. It gets them more active.

SPEAKER_02 10:55

Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting being, you know, in in the States. And a lot of our young people and older people haven't really been outside of the country to see just how fortunate we are. Even our most unfortunate areas seem to be a little bit more fortunate when we do those kinds of things.

SPEAKER_00 11:11

I think that's fair. The culture and the the people and the universities, they're all very traditional. We look at it. They have classrooms. They look different than ours, obviously. But I think one of the main differences is we put up more things in our classrooms. We like to have that the decorations and those features. And in the classrooms I was teaching in there, it was a standard classroom. The students sat in tables, they worked together. It wouldn't look any different if you didn't zoom out and see the rest of the room.

SPEAKER_01 11:43

That's kind of cool. I

What A Fulbright Really Is

SPEAKER_01 11:45

have a question about the Fulbright scholarship. My question is just to understand it more from a background standpoint. Like if I if we hadn't been talking on this podcast, it was not something that was on my radar before. So for our listeners, could you just tell us a little bit more about that? Maybe just the general premise. It to me, it it sounds like it's almost an educator exchange program where you're able to, you know, travel and and and learn at the same time that you're also sharing learning. But that's my 10,000-foot view. So could you share a little bit about that, please?

SPEAKER_00 12:15

So the program I participated in was the Fulbright Scholar program. It allows people in the US to go to other countries. We apply, we identify a project we want to do. And then with the Fulbright programs in those countries, different people are selected to participate. The one I applied for is largely for higher education. There is a K-12 teacher exchange type of Fulbright program that's a shorter period of time where teachers will go and work with other teachers in other countries. So there's a K-12 version and then there's a higher ed version as well. The opportunity for the college people, it can be teaching based, which is what I was doing, research-based, or a combination of teaching and research.

SPEAKER_01 12:56

A follow-up question. And the follow up question is a systems question. I imagine that all of this is planned out. It sounds like it's something that's obviously known. It's done in higher ed. But in the case that you encountered where you had to leave and come back early because the world kept rotating and things were happening and you know, you came back early. So what does that look like then from the part of Fulbright? And then what does it look like, I guess, as far as Chippensburg is interested? Do you, you know, are you now on a beach somewhere and you're relaxing until it's time to come back? Are you do you jump back into where you left off? How does that work?

SPEAKER_00 13:31

So I was on sabbatical at Shippensburg University this semester. And my sabbatical was focusing on global education. Fun. So part of that was I was going to be in Egypt for it with the Fulbright. With everything that's happening in the world, I joke half-heartedly, although I'm not, I'm very sad I'm back, but the best decision was to return. And I tell people it was the adult decision at this point, although adulting was the last I wanted to do. So I would have to reapply for a different Fulbright if I wanted to do that again, because they're in the process of selecting the ones for next year. This was really a year-long process of selection. And then I was going in one semester. So I knew in August of 25 that I would be there this spring. So it's ultimately a two-year process. So I could apply again. I do know that I will go back and visit my students and visit my colleagues and see more of Egypt again, whether it's a Fulbright or not. But I'm still on sabbatical. I'm still doing my global studies. I'm not on a beach anywhere. I'm in Newburgh. And although I have been complaining quite a bit that it is much colder here than it was in Egypt. So that is what I've been picking every time somebody says, well, I'm like, Egypt was warmer.

SPEAKER_03 14:44

So Dr. Royce, you piqued my interest now because this would be something I would love to do. I had to read the smartest kids in the world and where they come from book for one of my education classes along the way. And I just thought that was so neat how the different countries around the world just treat teacher prep courses and the way that that's run. So I think this would be an unbelievable opportunity, especially for the K-12 world, because we never, you know, we're never allowed to leave our silos of our classroom. So I think this is definitely something that we should look into.

SPEAKER_00 15:08

I would encourage anyone to actually

Perspective Beyond Your Own Classroom

SPEAKER_00 15:10

try and seek out those opportunities. Anytime you can get out of your own classroom or your district, you learn more about not only where you're going, but about yourself.

SPEAKER_02 15:19

Totally agree. I think you learn more about where yourself than you do about where you're going. It's a pretty eye-opening experience to be somewhere where you're not comfortable.

SPEAKER_01 15:26

And the reality is for all educators that you don't have to go to Egypt to be able to change your perspective. It could just be another classroom within your same school. It could be a neighboring school, it could be a neighboring district. Any of those things will change your perspective. And sometimes local is actually better. It depends on what you're looking for, right? Kind of if you're going for more of a global perspective, you want to get into that global space. If you're looking for more local or intentional drive, then you want to you want to stay a little closer to home. But I I think that the takeaway for me is that anything is better than just getting locked into the same space. You want to be able to have perspective because it allows you to make more informed decisions and even have a better idea of what's happening within education. Because a lot of students, a lot of educators will go to school. They will intentionally learn all of these techniques and have Dr. Royce for all of those fun, exciting classes. And then they're in their own classroom and they're just doing it. Unless you intentionally design a way to continue to have that perspective, you can almost get locked into for any of your students that have you now, 2026 perspective and thought process and philosophies on education. But if they're still in education in 2066, things might have changed a little bit. So if you're not out there doing it on your own, I think that's the value that you're bringing in that idea and that concept. Because suddenly it went from you're in education, we're we're giving you all of this. Is it what you say you want to do? And then now you're you're like a lighthouse on your own, right? You're the one who's now providing the beacon of light, not not walking towards the beacon of light.

SPEAKER_00 17:01

That's a nice way of saying it. I I agree with that. It could be a classroom, it could be a conference, it could be a social media channel that you follow where people are sharing resources. It could be a podcast, such as this one. Anytime you actually start to hear what other people are thinking, it generates thoughts on your own.

SPEAKER_01 17:19

Yeah, it really does. Yeah, so I would encourage our listeners to just start and start small, and then it actually snowballs, and all of a sudden you find yourself in Cairo and you didn't know you were going to start there. But that eventually is where things will lead because of this desire to continue learning and to continue exploring and being curious and understanding more about education. And really, I think the reality is that the more we know, the more we learn that we don't know things. So it's it's like a revolving circle. You're inspiring, certainly to Tony and myself. Yeah, and Patrice.

SPEAKER_02 17:54

And Patrice. Thank you.

unknown 17:55

Yeah.

Second To Last Final Thoughts

SPEAKER_01 17:56

I can tell you this, Dr. Royce. Before we started, we took a vote, and two of the three hosts think that we should get rid of the second to last final thought.

SPEAKER_02 18:05

For the next season.

SPEAKER_01 18:07

Yeah. So since we're still in the season three, and we have no official data. We would love for you to give us a second to last final thought. It could be an inspiration, it could be philosophical from your experience, or just looking forward at what you see in education. But we would love to hear a second to last final thought from you.

SPEAKER_00 18:28

Hmm. This is kind of like my last lecture, right? Oh no, that's wrong. Um I think my second to last final thought would be take the opportunity to explore the world we have, because the world we have today is not the world our students will enter tomorrow. So we actually need to understand today to help them prepare for tomorrow.

SPEAKER_03 18:51

That was really good. Andrew, beat that now. So this is why we said not the final thoughts, because they always have better things. They always have better thoughts.

SPEAKER_01 18:58

Yeah. I mean, I would start off by saying ditto. This is exactly what I was thinking. And I think for our listeners, I would say that you get what you're looking for. And if you're not looking for anything, you're going to find just that. So we need to always have our eyes, as you said, on the horizon, looking at what's next, but not just from a standpoint of where we're guessing what that is, where we're actually getting ourselves out of our own comfort zone to model that for our students, how they can continue to grow and learn, as well as all the other great things that you said. And I wrap that all up, and that's the final pot.

SPEAKER_02 19:30

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_03 19:31

Well done.