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Increasingly, professors take students to the "field" as part of a course, study abroad, service-learning experience, or summer field school/internship component. However, anthropologists have reservations regarding a bounded notion of a field "out there" and their academic lives back "home." This article reflects on the collaboration between a class of MA level International Development students, a grassroots NGO working in Mexico and Guatemala, and the NGO's partner communities. Working collaboratively, the authors, including NGO staff and former fellows, graduate students, and the class professor discuss ways that the classroom, NGOs, and communities can interactively dialogue from a distance through case studies, Internet conversations, and continuous feedback over time. The article debates the ethics and power dynamics that develop in this dialogic process. For example: whose voices are heard and how can these interactions serve to increase the representation of community members in the field? The article assesses the rewards and challenges of incorporating students from a distance into development and NGO projects in the field as the NGO and communities simultaneously talk back. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper examines the Zapatista schools which arose in 1996 in the state of Chiapas in Mexico as a pillar of Zapatista autonomy and also as a result of the indigenous communities’ dissatisfaction with the government''s bilingual education programme. Based on ethnographic field work, the author reveals the objectives of the schools as being the protection of indigenous culture, values, languages and rights, the promotion of sexual equality, the gearing of education towards the rural context and the strengthening of communities’ independence of external organisations. The author finds that despite the political, financial and didactic obstacles they face, the schools are succeeding in making progress in fulfilling their objectives and building an alternative to the neoliberal development model. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]