Translating Citizen Media for the World What is it? “Global Voices is a community of more than 700 authors and 600 translators around the world who work together to bring you reports from blogs and citizen media everywhere, with emphasis on voices that are not ordinarily heard i

How a General Strike in Peru Represents What I Love about This Country (Written on September 26, 2013) I was working in my hotel room today because there is a general strike in Cusco, meaning transportation to the office would be impossible. I am here to coordinate a study on Intercul

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 Work with UNICEF Peru – Part 1 In June 2013, I began a six month position as a Junior Professional Consultant in Education Research at UNICEF Peru in Lima. The position is part of the UN Professional Placement Program with the United Nations Association in Canada. My terms of

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

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

How Language Teachers can Promote Social Change At Esperanza Education, we believe strongly in the importance of bringing together language learning and social justice education. In fact, we believe that this kind of education is important in all aspects of life. But what is social ju