What is wealth?

Marty Martinson, the main character in VJ Smith's The Richest Man in the World is an unlikely hero. He worked at Wal-mart in Brookings, South Dakota. He greeted customers and engaged them in conversation when they were in his check-out line. But Martinson made an impression on Smith, and he made an impression on Grand Forks Public Schools activities director Todd Olson, yesterday's reader during Literary Lunches. It is from this non-fiction book that Olson read.

Olson read an excerpt explaining how Smith and Martinson met and how Martinson's engaging personality got Smith to write a letter to the head of Wal-Mart. Instead of offering up perfunctory greetings to his customers, Martinson talked with his customers and listened to what they said. The excerpt not only showcased Smith and Martinson but also the connections Olson shared during his reading...the kind of connections skilled readers make with ease.

Olson was a basketball coach for 12 years, a math teacher for 14.

A picture is worth a thousand words or so...

Free Technology for Teachers is a terrific blog for learning about online resources. Take a look at Snappy Words, a free online visual dictionary and thesaurus, profiled in a post at Free Technology for Teachers.

And if you're interested in visual dictionaries and thesauri (or is it thesauruses?) take a look at Visuwords.

Snappy Words and Visuwords both do really cool stuff with words. Try them out; the results will speak volumes...almost literally.

Professional philosopher in da house

"The choice to have an active mind is yours," UND philosophy professor Jack Weinstein told yesterday's Literacy Lunches audience.

What he read illustrate what an active mind considers. He read The Basho of Honk, a Nick Paumgarten New Yorker piece about turning responses to NYC's annoying car honking into short poems. Weinstein also read a Jacob Neusner speech from William Safire's Lend Me Your Years: Great Speeches in History. In Professor Jacob Neusner Defines the Social Contract Between Teacher and Student, Neusner argues that "Great teachers don't teach; they help students learn." In other words, great teaching is about getting people to think.

Weinstein, a native of New York City, is the director of the Institute for Philosophy in the Public Life.

A keeper of books

It wasn't just books and reading yesterday when Wendy Wendt direct or the Grand Forks Public Library spoke during Literary Lunches. She offered encouragement and advice to students.

"As you're thinking about your careers, think about what you really like to do," she said.  Wendt liked to read as a child but never thought anyone could work in a library, something she now does and loves.

Wendt read from The Last Book in the Universe by Rodman Philbrick, an author perhaps best known for Freak the Mighty.

And Wendt highlighted upcoming events such as The Big Read with an appearance by Tim O'Brien and a discussion with Lois Lowry about her book Crow Call. Students might be familiar with Lowry because of her book The Giver.

Take a look below at the scheduled events:

Great Conversation withTim O'Brien
Award-winning author, Tim O'Brien, will be appearing in Grand Forks to discuss his book, "The Things They Carried"
Event Location: Chester Fritz Auditorium, Grand Forks, ND 58201-6324

Date: Thu, Oct 14, 2010
Time: 7:00pm – 9:00pm

Book: The Things They Carried

Kids' Big Read Book Discussion of "Crow Call" by Lois Lowry

Story time for children of all ages. Features "Crow Call" by Lois Lowry, the story of a young girl who is reunited with her father after he has been away on military service for an extended time.
Event Location: 2110 Library Circle, Grand Forks, ND 58201-6324

Date: Sat, Oct 16, 2010
Time: 2:00pm – 2:30pm

Book: The Things They Carried

Looking at other worlds

Free Technology for Teachers continues to be an amazing resources for Web 2.0 tools for teachers.  Take a look at the hyperlinked text below.

Show World is an interactive mapping website that takes demographic, economic, environmental, and political data sets and creates maps based on those data. This can be done with Google Earth and Google Maps before, but Show World is slightly different.

Click here to look at Show World.  (It does take a bit for the page to load). Click here to hang out at Free Technology for Teachers.

The maps at Show World could help students gain background knowledge before they read about a particular country or countries.

Better late than never...

The word of the week for September 27 to October 1, 2010 is perseverance.

A glimpse at our professional development

Grand Forks Central special education teacher Kelli Henke (center) digs in with her GFC colleagues during professional development the morning of  September 28, 2010. The focus was vocabulary; teachers worked together in a large group, thinking and talking about how students best learn words. After the large group session, teachers went to breakout session led by the peers.

The professional development was planned by the Grand Forks Central Literacy Committee.