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JoLLE Winter Conference and Atlanta Georgia


One of the highlights of my Fulbright has been the people I’ve met, and the opportunities to present in a variety of settings. I recently attended the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia to present a workshop about bilingual picturebooks as part of the JoLLE (Journal of Language and Literacy Education) Winter conference.  I focused on Māori-English bilingual picturebooks and the participants engaged well. My host while there was Dr. Petros Panaou who took this photo in which I look like I’m talking to Captain Cook as I gave a short history of Aotearoa New Zealand  prior to looking at the picturebooks. 



The next day I had the great pleasure of attending a plenary given by Dr. April Baker-Bell (Michigan State University) talking about her framework of an Anti-Racist Black Language Pedagogy. It was inspiring. On the Sunday I was leaving from Atlanta, and Petros and his family took me to do some sightseeing before I left. We visited the National Park dedicated to Dr. MartinLuther King Junior and the street where he grew up in Atlanta (see photo), and then took a trolley car ride around the main sights of Atlanta- a very vibrant city with many parks and facilities funded by the successive owners of Coca Cola.


The environment of Georgia seemed very familiar, and much more like home that the desert environment of Tucson. The trees, grass and cow made me think of home, and reminded me again of how lucky I am to be living in such a different  setting in Tucson, experiencing many things I wouldn’t otherwise have experienced.

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