Four rich years in organizing I came back to British Columbia in 2014 after living abroad, and jumped into political organizing. Now I feel myself being drawn back towards teaching. Books I have read lately – and one in particular – affirm this old/new direction. In these last four ye
Online Resources for the Progressive Spanish Teacher At Esperanza Education, we are always looking for ways to share and promote resources that bring together language learning and social justice education. For the busy teacher, finding age- and level- appropriate resources for the la
Authentic Cultural Materials for Spanish Teachers and Learners What is it? Zambombazo is a self-described “explosion of language and culture”. It is a website which offers hundreds of activities for Spanish learners and teachers that are based on authentic cultural materia
Practical Resources for Progressive Education What is it? Rethinking Schools is a publisher of education materials that is “committed to equity and to the vision that public education is central to the creation of a humane, caring, multiracial democracy”. They put out a be
A Fun Activity for Progressive Spanish Students While living in Vancouver, I ran a monthly Spanish for Social Justice Conversation Group – a space for students to practice conversational Spanish while discussing social justice issues and solidarity with Spanish-speakers. One of
Simple Social Justice Lessons from the Spanish Classroom In earlier blog posts, Mary and I have described what we mean by Progressive Language Teaching and Social Justice Education. Today I would like to share a few examples of how I teach Spanish for social justice. It’s actually qui
My Favourite Social Justice Organization and Their Work to Improve Public Education in the Americas In 2007, I was on my way back to Canada after a year of living in Spain. I wanted to find a way to bring together my passions for Spanish, education, and social justice and I thought th
Have we innovated a new conjunction? Does anyone care if my cousin comes and visits slash stays with us Friday night? I spent all day in the UgLi [library] yesterday writing my French paper slash posting pictures of cats on my sister’s Facebook wall. I went to class slash caught up on
Avoiding Sexist Vocabulary in a Gendered Language In Spanish, all nouns and adjectives are assigned a gender, also referred to as grammatical gender. We have grammatical gender in English as well (for example, we say “he” or “she”, “boy” or “girl”, etc) but in Spanish even inanimate o
Esperanza Education aims to provide and foster “progressive” language education. It’s something we pride ourselves on. But what does that mean, you might ask. In my mind, it means that the education is not an end in itself. For example, if I am tutoring someone in English, the learnin