ESL etc.

It’s not ESL specific, but I found a lot of relevant ideas in McKay Jenkins’ recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. In it, he argues against focusing on preparing students for competition in the global marketplace. Instead, he suggests helping students understand and explore the problems of the marketplace, problems that are becoming [...]

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Slavery Footprint is a visually engaging survey that roughly determines how many slaves were involved in producing the goods we consume. It’s similar to carbon footprint calculators in terms of the questions it asks, asking about your home, electronics, diet, clothing and so on. On several of the questions, it allows you to really delve [...]

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One of the fundamental problems with capitalism as it is currently practiced in many countries around the world is that it relies on continual growth. Obviously, this is not sustainable. The Center for the Advancement of Steady State Economy (CASSE) is an organization that seeks to explore the true costs of growth-based economics, as well [...]

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Global Eye is a (now defunct) magazine aiming to bring global issues to primary and secondary schools. Thus, the language is pretty accessible and a lot of it could be used with English language learners. As a magazine, the materials are primarily readings and pictures / graphics, but there are some writing activities in there, [...]

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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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Take Our Jobs is a project by the United Farm Workers offering harvesting jobs to unemployed Americans. The idea is to contend the allegation that illegal immigrants take “our” jobs, while also raising awareness about the food chain. Asking students to look at this initiative could be a great way to bring up issues of [...]

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Teach UNICEF is a new website that shares a bunch of UNICEF teaching materials by topic and grade level. Topics include child labor, armed conflict, poverty and sanitation, to name a few. Most topics offer materials for grades 6-8 and 9-12, and some include K-2 or 3-5. You can also browse by media type. I [...]

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