One of the “Teach the Andes” participants of the Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad program has been featured in their local newspaper, the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript! Diane Goodman, an elementary school teacher at Marlborough School in New Hampshire, will be featured in a 10-part series in the paper, titled “Along the Way”, which will detail her experience during the month-long “Teach the Andes” program.

View part 1 of the series here.

The deadline to apply for the “Teaching the Andes” program is Friday, January 13, 2017 at 5:00 p.m. EST.

All applicants will be notified of selection results in early February.

During the first week of December, CLAS staff traveled to Washington D.C. to promote the “Teaching the Andes” Fulbright-Hays GPA program at the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) annual conference.

We collaborated with the Consortium of Latin American Studies Programs’ Outreach Committee to sponsor an exhibit booth that disseminated K–12 materials on Latin America to more than 400 conference attendees. Educators, please visit the CLASP website for more information on curriculum resources, workshops, study abroad programs, lending libraries, and much more for teaching Latin America

NCSS is the umbrella organization for elementary, secondary, and college teachers of history, civics, geography, economics, political science, sociology, psychology, anthropology, and law-related education.

We are excited to continue promoting the “Teaching the Andes” program to K-12 educators and encourage you to share this opportunity with educators who may be interested!

SPRING VALLEY – As part of The Tandana Foundation’s year-long campaign commemorating the 10th anniversary of the foundation receiving its non-profit status and celebrating its first decade of changing people’s lives through its work in Ecuador and Mali, Tandana recently organized a 10th anniversary trip for some of its Board of Trustees members and staff members to Ecuador.

This trip provided board and staff members with an opportunity to see the impact that Tandana’s work has had on rural communities, work alongside community members on projects, and celebrate Tandana’s momentous milestone with local friends. Eighteen individuals participated in this celebratory trip. One of the participants was Spring Valley resident and Tandana’s Board President Hope Taft.

“It was wonderful to see the community projects Tandana groups have helped communities accomplish. There was hardly a community that does not have a project or two to show off,” Taft said.

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The Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad (GPA) Program in the U.S. Department of Education has awarded a $90,859 grant to the Center for Latin American Studies. The grant will be used to fund a seminar for K-12 educators, titled “Teaching the Andes: Redefining the Common Good and Reclaiming the Public Square.” The seminar will be led by Terrell Morgan, director of the Center for Latin American Studies and a professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Ohio State, and Michelle Wibbelsman, an assistant professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Ohio State.

This project will take 12 K-12 educators in various disciplines to Ecuador and Peru, June 17 – July 16, 2017, and will include a pre-departure orientation, four weeks of overseas travel and post-travel summary activities. The scope of the seminar includes Otavalo, Ecuador and Cusco, Peru, as well as their respective highland and lowland landscapes and cultures, emphasizing the shared values and interaction along the Andean corridor and across regions.

Fifty-seven percent of the total cost of the seminar program is funded through the GPA, with the remaining 43 percent funded by nongovernmental sources. Activities begin November 1, 2016 and end January 16, 2018.

The project will take advantage of innovative programming and cutting-edge research happening at Ohio State on the Andes and Amazonia that point to the benefits of an interdisciplinary approach to teaching and studying the region.

Ultimately, the goal of the project is to equip teachers with multidisciplinary content, curricular resources and methods of inquiry for deploying that approach themselves in their K-12 classrooms, creating an innovative model to K-12 education.