Jade is 13. She’s been obsessing for a good while about how to get a cell phone. She wants to fit in with all the “cool” girls at school who are always chatting and texting and snapping pictures of one another. No use asking her dad or her mom though. He sells ice cream from a cart and barely makes enough change to pitch in with what Jade’s mom brings in from her laundry work.

Then Jade hears from one of the...

So there you are, scribbling in your notebook and maybe even half-listening to the lesson when all of a sudden a handful of “guardias” marches in, grabs your teacher and drags her out of the classroom before anyone even gets a chance to say “What on earth?”

You might have witnessed such a scene as a student at the UNAN or at the UCA in Managua during the late 1970s. And you would have known your teacher had...

“Miss Fanny showed me things that I didn´t know: how to place your fork and knife, how to place your cups and saucers, your plates, and other things you need on the breakfast table like the butter dish and the mugs for water and juice.”

Mayolet McCoy referred like this, to some of what she learned in Miss Francesca Weather´s Bed and Breakfast Workshop, held last January during FADCANIC´s 2012 Cultural...