How much do you spend a week for your take-out coffees? When you figure that a latte costs well over $2.00, and even a Dunkin Donuts small costs $1.25, it adds up, right? Now, I would never suggest that you give up your morning coffee; I'm just prone to weighing the cost of extra things I buy in terms of my own daily caffeine-centric expenditures. All this is to say that for the price of a few lattes at Pete's (or, dare I say it... Starbucks) you can get a subscription to one of the most invigorating and well-prepared resources for approaching social justice issues in the ABE classroom: The Change Agent newspaper.

The Change Agent is a publication of the New England Literacy Resource Center (NELRC) based at World Education in Boston, and is most competently and inspiringly edited by Angela Orlando. (Note: the most recent issue on housing was guest edited by Deborah Schwartz.) The Change Agent focuses on issues relevant to our students' lives and to our own. According to Angela, the main goal of the paper is to "explore causes and solutions to challenging, provocative issues and begin building a more just world." Past issues have included such topics as economic justice, civic participation, food, language and power, teaching and learning across differences, and work.

The Change Agent works on many levels. Through well-researched and well-written articles contributed by teachers, students, and community activists, it informs us with background information, statistics, historical data, and facts. You will also find poetry, interviews, reviews, and cartoons. The paper helps us to translate complex material into practical classroom strategies without watering down the content. Pre-reading and post-reading activities accompany many articles, and if you want to explore a particular topic in more depth, you will find web and print resource listings.

A yearly subscription, for only $10.00, gives you two 24-page tabloid sized, user-friendly, content-rich issues. I love to open it up and see, balanced with all the print, a suitable amount of white space and lots of appropriate graphics and illustrations. Though The Change Agent is primarily intended for intermediate level ESOL, ABE, and GED students, some of the material can be adapted for lower levels, especially the graphs and illustrations.

What better time than now to enliven our teaching with such a high-quality publication? Sub-scriptions also make a thoughtful and tasteful gift for your ABE colleagues committed to social justice, or curious about trying new teaching approaches.

I know this is an unabashedly positive review, transparently biased. But sometimes you just have to write from your passions and your heart, especially when it comes to reflecting on social justice.

To subscribe: Call 617-482-9485 and ask for Change Agent subscriptions or print a subscription form from their Web site: www.nelrc.org/changeagent

Lenore Balliro is the editor of Field Notes. She can be reached at: lballiro@worlded.org.