Welcome! Yachay Simi (Wise Language) was founded in 2008 by linguist Susan Kalt to partner with the language reclamation and documentation efforts of Andean researchers, educators and community members. In 2015 Yachay Simi became an affiliate of the non-profit Endangered Language Alliance.
Our current associates include Gaby Vargas Melgarejo, Carlos Flores Quispe and Jonathan Anthony Geary, all featured on the Team education page.
Founder’s info is below:
- BA, Brown University (Hispanic Studies)
- MA Ed, University of Massachusetts at Boston (English as a Second Language)
- MA, PhD, University of Southern California (Applied Linguistics, Linguistics)
E-mail Sue_Kalt@yahoo.com Curriculum vitae
Susan Kalt is an award-winning linguist and language curriculum designer whose research focuses on the sequential language acquisition of Quechua and Spanish. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities Documenting Endangered Languages Program, American Council of Learned Societies and Andrew Mellon Foundation, the Foundation for Endangered Languages, London and the Community College Humanities Association.
She has taught Linguistics and Spanish at Boston College and the University of Massachusetts at Boston, as well as ESOL and English composition for non-native speakers at U Mass Boston, Boston University and the University of Southern California. She is a tenured professor of Spanish at Roxbury Community College, where she coordinated the language laboratory from 2006-2015.
She enjoys cultivating playful learning for all ages. In 2010 and 2011 she resided for a month in a rural highlands school in Peru to develop a series of activities called Yachay Q’ipi (Wisdom Bundle) loosely based on the curriculum kits of the Boston Children’s Museum. The Pachakuti Runakuna Research Community was an outgrowth of this work, spearheaded by Martín Castillo and María del Carmen Bolívar in partnership with teachers at rural schools in Cuzco.
Yachay Simi (Wise Language) 