This Side Of The Himalayas

The moment everything changed.

Some emails change your life. And sometimes, if you’re lucky, you don’t open them alone.

I clicked. I didn’t even get a chance to read it out loud before the screaming started.

My students knew I had applied for the FFT fellowship, as I used their input to write the grant. They also knew April 3 was the day fellows would be notified. I was waiting too, and by that point, we were all invested.

My second ELA block had just started, and the classroom was buzzing like always. Kids were grabbing books, sharpening pencils, heading to the rug.

Then came the familiar ding of a new email. I froze.

Sender: Fund for Teachers.

I didn’t open it right away. I looked at my students. They looked at me.

One of them whispered, “Is that it?”

And we all huddled around the smartboard.I froze.

My students noticed immediately.

“Is that it?” one of them whispered.

A few kids gathered around my desk. Then a few more. We all turned to the smartboard, holding our collective breath like we were waiting for lottery numbers.

I clicked.

I didn’t even get a chance to read it out loud before the screaming started.

Like, full-volume, joyful chaos.

My class went wild. I went wild. There was cheering. There were high-fives. One student yelled, “YOU’RE GOING TO NEPAL!” like he was announcing it to the United Nations.

It was one of those rare, magical classroom moments where the walls between “teacher” and “student” disappear, and you’re just people sharing something real.

This wasn’t just a win for me. It was a win for every single one of them. For the kids who’ve taught me about Bhutanese culture, for the ones who’ve translated Nepali words during morning meetings, for the students who’ve told me their family’s refugee stories in whispers.

It meant I would:

• Walk the same roads their parents and grandparents walked.
• Visit the two remaining refugee camps they’d only ever told me about in pieces.
• Sit with educators and community leaders in Nepal and listen to the stories that shaped entire generations.
• Bring those stories home and hold them up like a mirror so my students could see themselves in what we read, write, and learn.

That day, in the chaos of a regular 4th-grade classroom, something incredible happened. My students didn’t just witness that moment. They were in it.

And when I finally sat down after they left — after the noise and the smiles and the “Can you take us with you?”s — I just took a breath and thought: This is what it feels like to be exactly where you’re supposed to be.