"I speak to . . .": Student Poems on Solitude and Connection
Posted on December 21, 2020
Last January, this blog published teaching suggestions for a poem about solitude that has become only more relevant over the past year of the pandemic.
6 Tales of Magic in Hard Times
Posted on November 24, 2020
Who couldn't use a little magic this fall? Toward that end, we've pulled together six global stories that combine realism and fantasy. Each story features a young person facing real-world problems, and finding support in the form of a slightly magical intervention. Travel with us to the Middle East, East Asia—and an unnamed village somewhere in the Spanish-speaking world, sometime in the future.
Just Published: Liberty, Hope, and Climate Change
Posted on November 08, 2020
U.S. President-elect Joe Biden has said that one of his first acts will be to re-enter the U.S. into the Paris Climate Accord. To help students understand what this might mean on both a global and an individual level, you might have them read the stories, poems, essays, and graphic literature recently published in the recent Climate issue of the magazine Words Without Borders.
Teaching Beyond Melancholy, Part 1: The Clichés of Reading in Translation
Posted on October 29, 2020
This was not the situation I had expected last summer when I first proposed a mini course for graduate students called “Writing for Words Without Borders.” The course was to meet for five three-hour stretches on consecutive Wednesdays, starting March 18, 2020. As it turned out, this meant our first class would be held exactly a week after our university president announced that all of UM would switch to remote teaching for the rest of the winter term. I happened to hear his announcement on the radio as I was driving around Ann Arbor running before-the-sky-falls errands.
Join Us for #TeaGlobally THIS Thursday the 29th @ 5 pm EDT: Empowering Students in the Covid Era
Posted on October 21, 2020
How can we build students' confidence in their own voices and global understandings -- especially in the middle of a pandemic? Words Without Borders invites you to discuss this and other questions at our next live-streaming meet-up: #TeaGlobally, Thursday October 29th at 5 pm Eastern.