by Dixie Goswami, BLTN Director, and Lou Bernieri, ABL Director

Since 1990, when Andover Bread Loaf (ABL) invited South African teachers to attend our summer workshop, ABL has had a vibrant international presence in its program. Although ABL has meager funding to support its work, ABL international alumni continue to work with each other and U.S. alumni over the wires and over the years through virtual exchanges and visits to each other’s classrooms. In addition, ABL has organized week-long international conferences in Pakistan, Tanzania, Kenya, and Haiti where U.S. teachers and teachers from host countries work together to offer professional development for teachers and writing and arts workshops for youth. Virtual exchanges connecting teachers and students around issues and ideas, writing and digital publishing are take-aways from the conferences. These BLTN virtual exchanges serve as models and guides for what has been described as “virtual diplomacy in action.” Planning for a 2015 conference in India is underway.

This video, produced at Bread Loaf in the summer of 2014 by Dana Olsen, Matt Lennon (MA ’13), and Benjamin Savard (MA ’14), gives a sense of the character of these exchanges, and alludes to a successful international conference held on campus in Summer 2014.

For a more detailed account of one set of classroom-to-classroom exchanges, view this short video account of Pat Echessa-Kariuki (Nairobi) and Tamar Paull (Rhode Island).

In this issue, you’ll find several dimensions of BLTN’s recent international work:

• An account of an exchange between Jennifer Coreas in San Salvador, El Salvador, and Mohsin Tejani in Karachi, Pakistan
• A description of “Travelogues Karachi, ” a writing initiative led and by Tejani
• Excerpts from journal entries by BLTN’s Rich Gorham composed during the ABL writing workshop held in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, August 2014
• A View from Kenya: David Wandera’s account of his academic publications drawing from several international exchanges
• Laura Benton and Chantal Kenol-Desmornes’ description of a planned collaboration among Haitian teachers and Kentuckians Benton and Matthew Haughton
• A BLTN international sampler: article citations and exchange descriptions from the BLTN Bibliography