From Montgomery County, Maryland, to the far reaches of the globe, Chris Murray ’05 has spent over 20 years in classrooms. While his current home base is teaching social studies at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School, he spent two weeks in Peru this June as part of the Fulbright Teachers for Global Classrooms Program.

The Fulbright Program, supported by the U.S. State Department, is the nation’s flagship international educational exchange program, providing hundreds of thousands of students and educators the opportunity to study, teach, and research in partner countries around the world for the last 80 years. That includes both Americans traveling abroad and international students, teachers, and professors coming to the United States.

Typical Fulbright scholarships can last for three to six months, but the condensed Teachers for Global Classrooms Program is geared towards secondary educators to minimize the impact on their classroom responsibilities stateside. Murray was part of a cohort that began a fortnight in Peru in the capital of Lima, networking with Peruvian Fulbrighters, learning about their education system, and making site visits to schools across the city. During the second week, the American teachers were split up and sent to schools across the country. Murray and a colleague from Mississippi spent time with a secondary school (similar to an American high school) in the coastal city of Chiclayo.

“They were pretty excited to meet us and show us their culture,” Murray said of the Peruvian students. “You think of the Spanish influence, of course, but Peruvians still have a very rich and vibrant indigenous culture and language, so they were very proud to show that they’ve kept that alive and embedded that into their lives.”

Chiclayo is not a popular tourist destination, so the students got a rare opportunity to practice their English-language skills with a native speaker. Murray was asked to judge a spelling bee of English phrases the students had been learning—and made a point of giving Randolph-Macon pencils to the winners.

It’s fitting because Murray’s drive for international educational and cultural exchange began at Randolph-Macon. Already a busy student-athlete juggling student teaching at Hanover High School and pitching for RMC Baseball, he made time for a January Term trip to China that inspired him to keep pursuing global experiences.

After graduating with a History degree and minors in Education and Asian Studies, he taught English at a summer camp in Beijing before starting his teaching career in his home of Rockville, Maryland. Later in his career, he taught for two years in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

“It was instilled in me at an early age at Macon­—getting out of the Center of the Universe, exploring the world, studying abroad, learning a second language,” Murray reflected. “It was a really rewarding and enjoyable way for me to experience history, experience culture, see education, and work with kids.”

Ultimately, these international experiences serve to make Murray a more effective teacher for his own students, who, in a suburb of Washington, D.C., come from a diverse set of backgrounds.

“I’ve taught over 100 nationalities in 20 years,” Murray said. “So as many opportunities as I can to get out of the area and to immerse myself [in different cultures], I think it rubs off when I get back into the classroom in terms of the way I interact with my students, to make them feel comfortable that their differences are a net positive for our community and our classroom.”