John C. Turnbull

John Turnbull is an English as a Second Language Specialist at the University of Texas at San Antonio and a freelance author, anthologist, and editor. He earned the MA TESOL in the Department of English at Northern Illinois University, the Master of Divinity at Columbia Theological Seminary, and the Master of International Affairs at Columbia University, New York. John has now worked for ten years as a teacher among and as an advocate for Latin American communities in the United States, México, and South America. In Atlanta, John worked for the nonprofit organizations Literacy Volunteers of Atlanta and the Latin American Association. In Popayán, Cauca, Colombia, he served as a six-month volunteer for a teacher’s union, La Asociación de Institutores y Trabajadores de la Educación del Cauca (Asoinca), providing curriculum and teacher-development resources for public-school K-11 English teachers. He was also a peace accompanier in the Urabá region of Colombia. In Chicago, he volunteered with Universidad Popular, a community center in La Villita, and additionally has worked with English-language learners in Lithuania, Cape Verde, and Thailand. His writing on soccer has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Work on the edited collection The Global Game: Writers on Soccer helped lead to his second career as an ESL instructor and researcher in second-language acquisition. After publication of the anthology, he was invited to lecture on several occasions, and these appearances and other media interviews helped gain interest for the book in the ESL instructional community.