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Untours Catalog, Fall 2009
Clay Cooper had always struggled to learn Spanish. It wasn’t until he studied in Guatemala at age 31 that he finally succeeded.
Untours Catalog Fall 2009
During that trip he also learned that hard work and education did not always pay off. With limited opportunities in Guatemala, even his university-educated tutor lived in poverty. That experience inspired (www.SpeakShop.com), an online fair trade language tutoring business Clay founded with his wife, Cindy Cooper.
Speak Shop gives language tutors the training and technology to become micro-entrepreneurs, reaching customers worldwide and teaching via webcam. While tutors improve their livelihoods, by setting their own rates and hours, people who hunger to learn a language log onto their website to take one-on-one lessons. These are only two of the many reasons Speak Shop was a finalist for the 2007 Project Enterprise Contest on PBS, which highlighted social entrepreneurs.
Untours Catalog Learn a Language for Good
Currently, Speak Shop’s tutors come from Guatemala, Nicaragua and Brazil. Cindy & Clay hope their business will grow to include many countries and generate a variety of cross-cultural connections. In addition, the software they have created will be usable by other businesses that address poverty.
“For me, the true benefit of an immersion program was developing a friendship with my tutor,” said Clay. “I now care deeply about what happens in Guatemala. I hope that through Speak Shop we can share this experience at a global level and increase cultural awareness and concern.”
Check out the website at www.speakshop.com, and try a free lesson!
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Speak Shop Leads the Industry in Social Performance Standards by Becoming the First Language Instruction Provider to Achieve B Corp Certification
PORTLAND, Ore.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Speak Shop, http://www.speakshop.com, a pioneer in online language tutoring via webcam, reported today they have been certified a B (Benefit) Corporation. B Corporations are a new kind of company that uses the power of business to solve social and environmental problems. The certification performance standards are comprehensive and transparent. They measure a company’s impact on its employees, suppliers, community, and the environment. Certified B Corporations meet higher standards of social and environmental performance and accountability.
Created to fight poverty and to connect people around the world for face-to-face language lessons, Speak Shop offers customized, one-on-one Spanish lessons which customers can reserve and take at their convenience using their computer and a webcam. Speak Shop is the only company that strategically invites low-income tutors in developing countries to teach online as micro businesses owners. Speak Shop’s global customer base has provided tutors with sustainable income, and Speak Shop teaches tutors new computing and business skills.
“B Corporation certification represents what we believe in. We want to be
part of a community of businesses that are committed to solving social and environmental problems. We also like embedding these values into our governing documents to ensure clarity and common purpose within the company and with investors and other stakeholders,” says Co-founder, Cindy Cooper.
About Speak Shop
Speak Shop was founded in 2004 to increase access to cross-cultural foreign language education and to generate economic opportunity for people in developing countries. Speak Shop makes it possible to schedule, purchase and take one-on-one Spanish lessons by webcam with tutors in Latin America. Connected to a world market and empowered as micro-entrepreneurs, tutors move from poverty to prosperity. Customers are able to take personalized, cross-cultural lessons at their convenience using a computer and high speed Internet connection. For more details visit http://www.speakshop.com.
About B Corp
B Corporations are a new type of corporation which uses the power of business to solve social and environmental problems. B Corporations are unlike traditional responsible businesses because they: meet comprehensive and transparent social and environmental performance standards, institutionalize stakeholder interests, and build collective voice through the power of a unifying brand. For more details visit http://www.bcorporation.net/.
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Skype Blog, April 13, 2009
by Howard Wolinsky
Back in 1998, Clay Cooper took an immersion Spanish class in Antigua, Guatemala. He was impressed with the effectiveness of the method.
But he told me he was stunned to discover that his tutor, a university-educated man, lived in poverty. He told me that the tutors were paid low wages and had few students in the off-season.
Cooper told the Miami Herald: “I felt that the only thing preventing him from earning more money was just not enough [year-round] demand for his services.”
Cooper and his wife Cindy, of Portland, Ore., decided to set up an Internet-based business that would link tutors with students year-round and that would pay them a fair wage. Their company is called Speak Shop.
He said that Skype proved to be an effective method to deliver lessons on video or audio. He said even tutors in Guatemala and Nicaragua who had not previously used computers found Skype to be easy.
Students go to the Speak Shop website to pick a tutor and schedule a class. They pay tutors $7 to $10 per hour–about twice the going rate locally. Plus, students pay Speak Shop a monthly stipend based on how many lessons are taken per month.
Over the years, I’ve taken Spanish, but feel stuck. I’ll see if my tutor, Osberto, can move me along with a little help from Skype. I’ll let you know it goes, amigos.
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Ode Magazine, April 2009
By Jill Replogle
Twice a week, Margo Griffin, who lives in Denver, Colorado, has a one-on-one Spanish lesson with her teacher, Mayra Juárez, who lives miles and miles away, in Antigua, Guatemala. Both attend from the comfort of their homes via the Internet, a webcam and an innovative socially responsible business called Speak Shop.
Mayra Juárez earns extra money by offering Spanish classes over the internet.
Antigua draws thousands of international students each summer to its Spanish schools. But in the off season, many teachers are out of work. Clay Cooper, founder of Speak Shop, noticed this when he took classes here in 1998, and thought the Internet could connect teachers and students year-round. From those roots, Speak Shop was born. Griffin schedules classes on Speak Shop’s Web page, pays online and “meets” Juárez at a specified time, either using the Internet communications tool Skype or Speak Shop’s Web-based software. Mostly, they talk and review exercises Juárez sent by email. But they can also check a word’s spelling via chat and its meaning with Speak Shop’s translator. “This is the ultimate program,” Griffin says.
Thanks to Speak Shop, Juárez, who also teaches at a Spanish school in Antigua, gets year-round business and makes twice as much an hour as she does at the school. She says Speak Shop has been a lifesaver during a time when tighter travel budgets and the country’s high crime rate are keeping visitors away. “Speak Shop has supported me since August,” says Juárez. “I didn’t have any students at the school, because there weren’t any.” Speak Shop charges $10 a class, plus a monthly membership fee of $9.99 to $39.99, depending on how many classes you plan to take. The class fee goes to the teacher.
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Boston Globe, March 26, 2009
by Jennifer Fenn Lefferts
Video technology links students, native speakers
When Jackie Spinos entered her senior year at Burlington High School’s evening academy this year, Spanish II was a top priority.
The 19-year-old needed the class to graduate this spring, but the school couldn’t afford to hire a Spanish teacher.
Jackie Spinos, a student at the Burlington Evening Academy, learns from a Guatemalan tutor via Skype. (JOSH REYNOLDS FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE)
The That meant Spinos would have to take an expensive online class, a community college course, or go to summer school – an option that would have delayed graduation.
Then school administrators discovered Speak Shop, a program that connects students to tutors in Guatemala and Venezuela. Students and teachers use Skype, a free software program that allows them to talk to and see one another one on one.
“It was a perfect fit for our evening academy,” said Burlington High principal Patrick Larkin. “We have a lot of kids trying to finish off high school diplomas. To sit with a native speaker one on one, I can’t imagine a better format. It’s also helping people in Third World countries gain a fair wage.”
The Burlington Evening Academy is the first school in the nation to use Speak Shop and is among the first in the state to take advantage of videoconferencing in the classroom, officials said.
Speak Shop was founded by Portland, Ore., resident Clay Cooper in 2005 as a way for people to learn Spanish from a native speaker without the cost of paying for an immersion program. Until this year, all his students were adults learning the language for work or travel, he said.
Superintendent Eric Conti of Burlington learned about Speak Shop through a relative and thought it might work in the evening program, which offers classes at night for students trying to earn enough credits for graduation.
There are about 20 students in the evening program, and each year there are new challenges, said Georgia Devine, director of the evening academy. Each student needs different credits for graduation, so the program has to be tailored to meet students’ needs. This year, five students needed art, for example, so the program hired an art teacher.
The students participating in the evening program have passed the 10th-grade MCAS exams required for graduation and typically have a year’s or two years’ worth of credits remaining, Larkin said.
Most are students who have to work during the day for financial reasons or who have struggled to keep up in a traditional seven-period day schedule, he said. The program has eight teachers but not all are used each night depending on the schedule.
But just two of the students had not met their foreign language requirement of two years. Thanks to the Speak Shop program, the two girls are taking Spanish this year and plan to graduate in the spring, Devine said.
“It’s difficult to meet that requirement because we are not going to hire a teacher for two students,” Devine said. “It’s been an incredible godsend.”
Each Tuesday evening, the two students each meet for 45 minutes with Milvia Vásquez, the Guatemalan tutor arranged through Speak Shop. The class is conducted in Spanish.
Spinos, one of the students taking the class, said she likes it much more than a regular class.
“It’s really different,” she said. “It’s more one on one and you can understand more.”
Without it, Spinos said, she probably would have taken a summer class and would not have received her diploma this spring.
Larkin said it’s a pilot program that could be expanded to other areas of the school if successful. So far, all signs are pointing in that direction, he said.
The students are engaged and appear to be doing well, school officials said. The students were assessed at the beginning of the class and will take a test at the end to see how well they’ve progressed, Larkin said.
“I definitely think not too far down the road if we can show the quality of the instruction, we’d be crazy not to look at it from a variety of different angles,” Larkin said.
He said it wouldn’t take the place of the existing foreign languages program but could be used to supplement it and help as many students as possible meet requirements.
“We’re ahead of the curve on this, and we’re happy to be looking at it,” Larkin said. “It looks pretty promising.”
Cooper came up with the idea for Speak Shop after traveling to Guatemala to learn Spanish at an immersion school in 1998.
He was 31 at the time and wasn’t confident he’d come home speaking Spanish.
“I got the best instruction I ever could’ve wanted,” he said. “I thought, wow, if I can do this, anyone can learn a language this way.”
He talked to friends and family about it, many of whom said they would love to speak the language but couldn’t take the time to go or couldn’t afford it.
So Cooper founded Speak Shop as a way for students to use videoconferencing with tutors in Central America. Cooper said he has a partnership with an immersion school in Guatemala that provides the names of its best tutors.
Vásquez, for example, has more than 13 years of Spanish tutoring experience and has taken standard proficiency exams.
Students pay a user fee through Speak Shop and a tutor fee that goes to the tutors.
The monthly user fee is $9.99 for up to five lessons; $19.99 for up to 20 lessons; and $39.99 for unlimited lessons. In addition, students pay the tutors $8 to $10 an hour.
In Burlington’s case, the district is paying the cost for the students, Conti said. Hiring a Spanish teacher would have cost the district $35 an hour, Larkin said.
Heidi Guarino, a spokeswoman for the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, said the program appears to be a good way to tie new technology to global learning. She said the department doesn’t track what new programs are used in the classrooms, but that more districts are taking advantage of technology to enhance learning.
For example, several schools in Massachusetts take part in a program called Virtual High School, which allows students to take classes online. However, Speak Shop is different in that all learning is done live and one on one.
“Overall I would say this is a good use of 21st-century skills and if used appropriately allows students to benefit from the expertise of educators in another country at very little cost,” Guarino said.
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The Miami Herald, March 09, 2009
By Jill Replogle
Twice a week Margo Griffin, who lives in Denver, Colo., has a one-on-one Spanish class with her tutor, Mayra Juárez, who lives in Antigua. Both attend the class from the comfort of their own homes via Internet, webcam and an innovative business called Speak Shop.
Offering quality tutoring to students around the globe, the small U.S.firm employs struggling teachers in Guatemala.
’’I love the fact that our money is going to support that kind of program,’’ Griffin said.
Griffin schedules her classes on Speak Shop’s Web page, pays online and ’’meets’’ Juárez at the specified class time, either using Skype or Speak Shop’s own Web-based software.
They two women talk through headsets and review exercises Juárez has sent by e-mail.
They also use ’’chat’’ to work on spelling and use Speak Shop’s online translator to look up new words.
’’I think this is the ultimate program,’’ said Griffin, who tried Speak Shop when she grew tired of driving to group Spanish classes after work and never learning as much as she had hoped.
’’For less money, I can be in the comfort of my own home with a cup of coffee or whatever, enjoying the class,’’ she said.
SEASONAL WORK
The picturesque town of Antigua is home to dozens of Spanish schools where tutors like Juárez offer cheap, private lessons to foreign students of all ages from the United States, Europe and more recently from countries like Japan and Korea.
In the summer, the schools have enough students to employ hundreds of Spanish tutors. But in the off-season, many have no work.
Several companies have sprung up in recent years offering language classes – from Spanish to Potawatomi, spoken by the Native American tribe of the same name – via video conferencing. Since there are dozens of schools that operate in Guatemala, there is plenty of work for local tutors.
Online education, like that offered by Speak Shop, could solve some of the problems of traditional classrooms, said Michael Horn, executive education director of the nonprofit think tank Innosight Institute, which strives to use technology to solve social problems.
’’There are some really neat ways to customize your learning online that you can’t do in the traditional way,’’ he said.
Online learning programs also offer flexibility of time and place not possible in a normal classroom setting, Horn added.
Horn said he thought programs like Speak Shop were likely to expand to in the future. ’’There are a lot of people who want to crack this space,’’ he said.
However, economic conditions in many Spanish speaking countries prohibit teachers from buying the computers that could provide them with steady work. ’’It makes it difficult for tutors to earn a consistent living,’’ said Clay Cooper, who founded Speak Shop in 2004 with his wife, Cindy.
Cooper saw this firsthand while taking Spanish classes in Antigua in 1998. He visited the home of his tutor and was shocked to discover that the university-educated man lived in poverty. ’’I felt that the only thing preventing him from earning more money was just not enough [year-round] demand for his services,’’ Cooper said.
He thought the Internet could be a way to help connect tutors and students even in the months when most students had to be at home attending classes and most professionals had to be working. Six years later Speak Shop was born.
Speak Shop currently employs 11 tutors – nine in Guatemala and two in Nicaragua. Before they begin teaching for Speak Shop, the tutors learn how to use webcams and videoconference. They also learn to solve basic technical problems.
CONFIDENCE GROWS
’’At first it was difficult,’’ said Juárez, who didn’t have much experience with computers before she started working with Speak Shop. “But I began to lose my fear as I realized it wasn’t as complicated as I first thought it was.’‘
Now she has mastered talking with her far-away student through her headset, simultaneously typing clarifications into a chat box and clicking to another folder to look for the day’s homework.
Tutors set their own price for their work, which now varies between $7 and $10 per hour. Speak Shop takes none of these earnings. However, tutors who use the local Spanish school’s facilities to give online classes pay a small fee for the space.
Four of the tutors in Guatemala now work from home using their own equipment.
’’The fact that they can have a computer and Internet at home is really concrete evidence of the economic change,’’ Cindy Cooper said. Tutors use Speak Shop’s software and online scheduling system for free, while the company makes money from a monthly membership fee charged directly to students—from $9.99 to $39.99 depending on how many classes the students take. Still, lessons turn out to be cheaper than most language classes available in the United States.
Although still small, Speak Shop is growing rapidly. A total of 6,000 hours of lessons were offered in 2008 compared to just 3,700 the year before.
JOB-SPECIFIC CLASSES
Speak Shop also offers specialized programs for various professional fields and is accredited by the California Board of Registered Nursing to offer continuing education credits for nurses wanting to learn Spanish. No nurses have yet tried out the program.
Speak Shop has won recognition for focus on social responsibility. In 2005, the program won a prize for the ’’Best Social Return on Investment’’ from the SET Inventors Challenge: Social and Environmental Technology for the Developing World, a business plan competition for companies that generate social or environmental benefits in developing countries. It also was a finalist in PBS’s Project Enterprise Contest in 2007. The contest recognizes creative, social entrepreneurship around the globe.
The Coopers admit that trying to run a socially responsible business has been challenging.
’’We could do this the easy way and just bring on tutors who are in the United States, or in developed countries who speak English, have access to the Internet and so forth,’’ said Cindy Cooper. “But we’re doing it the way that will have the most social impact.’‘
Juárez now works from home, has a job year-round and makes about twice as much money per hour as she does at the Spanish school in Antigua where she still teaches during tourist season. She said Speak Shop has been a lifesaver at a time when tighter travel budgets and the country’s high crime rate are keeping visitors away.
Her student, Griffin, said she’s sold on the price, flexibility and individually tailored lessons, plus the chance to learn about another culture and have a personal relationship with her tutor. ’’While you’re expanding your vocabulary, you’re also creating an incredible bond with someone in Guatemala,’’ Griffin said.
Posted in Fair Trade, Guatemala, Spanish Lessons, Spanish Tutor | Tagged Conversational Spanish, Learn Spanish, learn spanish online, learning spanish online, lessons spanish, online spanish, spanish grammar, spanish lessons online, spanish tutor, to learn spanish | Comments Off
San Francisco Chronicle, February 22, 2009
By Susan Fornoff
Judging from comments on last Sunday’s “Five Places” list of oceanfront hotels, readers want cheap options. “Outside of a campground for not-so-rich weirdos, where can you stay by the ocean for under $79 a night?” one asked. Another reader commented: “I know a really good seaside place that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg, but I’m not telling you where it is. So there.”
Now children. Please share – that’s what readers of Spud Hilton’s extensive package of information on learning language are doing; some of their many SFGate.com comments and e-mails appear below.
For another look at the stories and more comments, visit sfgate.com/travel.
– “Find a local restaurant where the target language is spoken by native-speakers.”
– “The public library has lots of language learning resources, books, audios, etc.”
– “Local evening schools. Italingua has a great series of Italian classes (including one for pre-vacation, ‘postcards from Italy’). Alliance Francaise likewise does wonderful French. I’ve heard that the Goethe-Institut is great for German.”
– “Absolutely nothing beats two weeks at www.reginacoe li.nl/eng/index.html”
– “The best way to learn is to take language classes in the country you are visiting.”
– “Centro Latino in the East Bay (Berkeley) is a great place to learn Spanish. Small to very small classes and excellent native speaker instructors (also Portuguese).”
– “The best method for adult learners working on their own is the Pimsleur series of audio CDs, based on drills and prompted recall, with repeated review of previously learned material.”
– “Live, online native speaker tutors with video conferencing, which is almost like being in the same room as the tutor, but at a much lower price… All you need is a Webcam and a headset (or microphone and speakers).” (Recommended: Interlangua.com and Speakshop.com)
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Lisa Monforton, Calgary Herald
Published: Saturday, February 21, 2009
Hablas espanol? I can’t count the number of times of I’ve gone to Mexico and vow the next time I return, I’ll be able to converse with a cabbie or utter more than “Cerveza, por favor.”
Night classes or Spanish for Dummies DVDs can be helpful but it doesn’t compare to learning one on one with a tutor.
Clay Cooper, CEO and founder of speakshop.com discovered this in 1998 when he went to Antigua, Guatemala, and took private Spanish lessons from a tutor. “I never thought I’d learn a language, but I got pretty fluent.” It was then that he formulated an idea that was not quite technologically ready for prime time. But by 2005, the technology was in place for him to create speakshop.com, a website that uses video-conferencing software enabling people to learn Spanish from the comfort of their home from live tutors in Guatemala or Nicaragua. What makes Cooper’s service more remarkable, however, is its philanthropic edge. Students can choose from 15 to 20 tutors based out of two well-known language schools, which Cooper has partnered with: Probigua in Gautemala and Ave Nicaraguita in Nicaragua. Typically, these tutors might make $1 to $2 an hour, and their meagre incomes are susceptible to the ups and downs of the tourism trade. Teaching for Cooper’s service has given them the chance to become tutor-entrepreneurs, where they can set their own rates and schedules, a fair trade arrangement that works for everyone and allows them to participate in the global economy.
The first time Calgary radio personality Robyn Adair met with her teacher online, she was given a webcam tour of the school where the tutor works and learned a bit more about the impoverished city where the literacy rate hovers around 50 per cent.
Adair, of Calgary’s Country 105’s Odd Squad morning show, is just one of Speakshop’s online students. Several weeks ago she signed up for five hour-long sessions, which cost around $20. “I did a trial lesson, and I liked it,” says the DJ who couldn’t find the time to take a Spanish class because she’s in bed by 7 p. m. so she can be on air for the 5:30 a. m. show on Country 105.
“This is way more flexible. She’s there and she’s live and you get one-on-one attention,” says Adair, who took some Spanish in university, but now wants to brush up on her skills for an upcoming trip to Nicaragua. Each week, Adair can request what she’d like to work on, whether it’s past tenses or casual conversations. “She’s been very flexible. It’s a really cool idea.”
Adair chose her instructor based on biographical information and her interests. Each tutor has a posted bio, like single mom Arlen from Granada, Nicaragua who took a two-year course to learn how to teach Spanish to foreigners. With the money she makes from tutoring, she hopes to one day become a lawyer.
Cooper says he’s looking at introducing Portuguese classes and maybe a few more in the future.
To learn more go to speakshop.com, where there are also opportunities to help the communities where the tutors live.
Posted in Guatemala, Spanish Lessons | Tagged Conversational Spanish, Learn Spanish, learn spanish online, learning spanish online, lessons spanish, online spanish, spanish grammar, spanish lessons online, spanish tutor, to learn spanish | Comments Off
Free Spanish Lesson
Categories
Word-of-the-Day
- Learn Spanish Online by taking a Spanish Course at http://www.SpeakShop.com. Study Spanish and Speak Spanish with a Spanish teacher in Guatemala.------------------7 hours ago
- Take a Free Spanish Lesson with Milvia Vasquez, the teacher who wrote today’s word of the day, at http://www.SpeakShop.com------------------7 hours ago
- English translation: Kids, please do not push.------------------7 hours ago
- Example: Niños, no empujen por favor.------------------7 hours ago
