ESL etc.

A few months ago, I had the pleasure of going to a talk on campus by L. M. Bogad. He is a professor at UC Davis and spoke on the topic of performance-based activism. He’s been involved with number of groups, including Billionaires for Bush and The Yes Men. On his website, he has video [...]

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In case you can’t tell, I’ve been on a bit of an academic article kick recently. I just found a new journal: Green Theory and Praxis: The Journal of Ecopedagogy. There isn’t an ESL / EFL focus, but a lot of what they discuss fits well within content-based instruction or critical pedagogy. Their archive is [...]

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Developing a Global Perspective for Educators (DGPE) is a website based out of the University of Ottawa that has a bunch of K-12 lesson plans created by students in the education program. These include a handful of thematic packages, which are sets of lesson plans spanning multiple grades that cover similar themes. A lot of [...]

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I just became aware of two documentaries that would fit nicely into a unit on happiness. The first is The Economics of Happiness. This documentary links a number of global issues (climate change, terrorism, etc.) with personal issues (depression, loneliness, etc.). I haven’t seen the whole thing, but the trailer brings up a lot of [...]

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Products of Slavery is a deceptively simple website: a gray world map dotted with yellow numbered circles. Each of these circles corresponds to a country, each number to the variety of products produced in that country by child or forced labor. Click on a number and it bursts into a collection of icons depicting the [...]

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Facing the Future is offering Buy, Use, Toss, a 10 lesson unit on consumption, for free download. It looks very good, and features some old favorites like The Story of Stuff and Chris Jordan. It’s aimed at grades 9-12, and seems like it would be perfect for adult ESL learners. The lessons ask students to [...]

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The Choices Program has just published a free lesson on the Gulf oil spill based on political cartoons. I love using political cartoons with students, as they are often very efficient ways to understand complex issues. The lesson includes a handout on analyzing political cartoons, a slideshow of the eight cartoons, and links to a [...]

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Dancing Rabbit is an intentional community in northeast Missouri that is dedicated to living sustainably. They eat (and grow) local, organic food, practice natural building techniques, and host educational seminars. I stayed there for three weeks a couple of years ago and loved it. It is truly something worth supporting. Their website also features past [...]

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EarthPulse is a great website by National Geographic that provides an overview of many global issues. It starts with a series of essays by Thomas Hayden. He takes a much more strongly anti-consumerism stance than I expected from National Geographic. …here we are, too far into the new century to pretend any longer that a [...]

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Af-flu-en-za n. 1. The bloated, sluggish and unfulfilled feeling that results from efforts to keep up with the Joneses. 2. An epidemic of stress, overwork, waste and indebtedness caused by dogged pursuit of the American Dream. 3. An unsustainable addiction to economic growth. 4. A television program that could change your life. Affluenza is a [...]

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