Cultural Educator of the Year
Farriel Khan - Fla. Cultural Educator of the Year
“The ability to learn about another culture and the adventure of living in another country through the medium of education is an experience that will live with me forever. I have grown as an educator and have acquired a broader outlook to teaching and learning. If you are up for an adventure, change of environment and travel, VIF makes it attainable.”

Farriel Khan • South Africa South Africa
Florida Outstanding Cultural Educator

Math teacher
Ocoee Middle ▪ Orange County Schools, Florida

This South African educator, in her second term as a VIF teacher, finds innovative ways to teach her seventh-grade students at Ocoee Middle School about her country and culture through math lessons. During a lesson on geometric shapes, for instance, Khan’s explains that in some communities in South Africa, people live in round or square mud huts. The Ndebele tribe decorates their huts by drawing and painting precise geometric shapes and colors, using techniques and traditions passed down from generation to generation. At lesson’s end, Khan’s students have the chance to design their own patterns using geometry.

Living and teaching in the U.S. has also given Khan an opportunity to learn about a culture different from her own. She has adapted to the U.S. units of measurement (South Africans use the metric system) and to concepts like daylight savings time. Ocoee students have accepted their international educator with open arms, often sharing with their parents and other teachers what they’ve learned in Khan’s class about differences in customs, math, clothing and schools in Africa.

Mary Jo Schwartz, Math Department Chair, Ocoee Middle:

“Farriel has incorporated diversity into her instruction by sharing the traditions and practices used in her own country. She has shared these similarities and differences with her students.”

Debbie Nostro, language arts teacher, Ocoee Middle:

“We have been blessed to have Farriel become a member of our faculty. She has brought new insight to another culture that many of us had little knowledge about or understood. It’s also been fun to watch her adapt to our culture.”