Local playwright remembers her youth in writing

Kathy Coudle-King wrote the first short story that's part of her book, Wannabe, for a UND Writers Conference open mic. Then, the summer just after the 1997 flood, she wrote more, early in the morning each day, making herself assignments to write about the first's for the characters in the novel. At yesterday's session of Literary Lunches, she read an excerpt from that novel, Kissing 101, a sort of primer on kissing delivered by the young girls of the work.

The girls King hung out with when she was growing up in Cuban-American neighborhood in New Jersey served as the models for the characters in the novel, though she said in novel the characters are about 25 percent non-fiction and 75 percent fiction.  These girls, King said, sort of raised one another, because their parents worked long hours. As a result, those girls, "grew up very, very fast."

She said of the girls she hung out with, "We started out at strong girls, but as we grew up, I watched the girls lose their voices. It took them a long time to get their voices back again."

Still, King, typically a playwright, said, "I never set out to write a novel..."

King, who teaches writing and Women's Studies at UND, has a BFA in playwrighting from NYU and an MA in English from UND.

Education news resource

We live in a rapidly changing world, which requires us to learn and adapt on an ongoing basis. Having been nudged, dragged, prompted and coached on my own path from Luddite to a tech competent and tech curious Baby Boomer, I’ve spent some time thinking about what it is that scares us and inhibits us about mastering the various new technologies we encounter. (Bill Williams on technology at The Washington Post)

The above comes from The Answer Sheet at The Washington Post, a terrific resource for news about education. To learn more about this resource, click here.

Taking flight through reading

Former Grand Forks Central Diane Odegard told yesterday's group of students and teachers at Literary Lunches that  it's "always a delight" to read from The Flight of the Odegard, a book by Patrick A. McGuire about her late husband John D.Odegard, founder and dean of UND Aerospace at the University of North Dakota. 

Below is a bit of background on the UND Aerospace program. Click the text for more.

A department which began with only two donated aircraft and two faculty, the John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences has grown into one of the nation’s most widely respected aerospace education programs under his leadership. During his career as an aerospace educator, Odegard’s reputation for leadership earned him industry respect and many honors.(from the Flight of the Odegard website)

Ms Odegard read a section that chronicles when her husband went to Rushford, Minnesota to help in the celebration of the new airport there. Rob Bunke, father of Jim Bunke, one of the early students in the aviation program, was responsible for the opening of the airport.

"Early students were so very close to John," she said.

McGuire interviewed some 165-175 people to write the book, including Ms. Odegard herself.

Here is an excerpt from the book. To read more of the excerpt, click the text. 

People will say about Odegard that when he walked into a room he instantly became the dominating presence. In a space as confined as a cockpit, that same mix of reputation and charisma could easily intimidate a student. One former student who knows that first hand is Diane Odegard, who took flying lessons from John and even accumulated some hours.

Resource for literacy education

About the Alliance: The Alliance for Excellent Education is a Washington, DC-based national policy and advocacy organization that works to improve national and federal policy so that all students can achieve at high academic levels and graduate from high school ready for success in college, work, and citizenship in the twenty-first century. The Alliance focuses on America’s six million most at-risk secondary school students—those in the lowest achievement quartile—who are most likely to leave school without a diploma or to graduate unprepared for a productive future. (from the Alliance for Excellent Education website)


Click the above text to learn more.

The Alliance has published a number of important reports, among them Reading Next ,Writing Next and Writing to Read.

Reading and writing and thinking...

Engage your students in online literacy learning with these interactive tools that help them accomplish a variety of goals—from organizing their thoughts to learning about language—all while having fun. (from ReadWriteThink)

Here at ReadWriteThink, our mission is to provide educators, parents, and afterschool professionals with access to the highest quality practices in reading and language arts instruction by offering the very best in free materials. (from ReadWriteThink)

ReadWriteThink has a number of interactive resources. Check out the above excerpts of linked text above to learn more.

A book that continues to be read

At yesterday's session of Literary Lunches, Grand Forks Public Schools school board member Cynthia Shabb read from a text familiar to many Grand Forks Central students: The Giver. This Lois Lowry book follows Jonas as he learns about his new role in a community virtually devoid of choice, a community that is completely ruled by sameness.

Shabb, a former English teacher, read the section in which Jonas hears the rules that will govern his new role. She always read a section in which Jonas gets a memory of and experiences snow.

Lowry was at the Empire Theater Friday October 29, 2010 as part of the Greater Grand Forks Big Read. Her picture book, Crow Call, was selected for the Little Read component of this event, because it addresses war. (The Big Read book is The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, a book that focuses on the Vietnam War.) At Friday's event, Lowry recounted how she got the idea for The Giver.

The following, from a 2004 interview with Lowry, then 68, does the same.

Lowry, 68, got the idea for "The Giver" years ago when she was traveling regularly to visit her parents, who were in a nursing home. Her father was still in decent physical health, but his memory was failing. Her mother was very ill physically, but her memory was intact.

"I would travel home with that in my mind, and I began to think a lot about the concept of memory. When it was time for me to begin a new book, I began to create in my mind a place and a group of people who had somehow found the capacity to control memory," Lowry said. (Karen MacPherson at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette online )

Unexpected Sparrow flies in

Jim Sparrow, Captain Jack Sparrow's "better looking brother," not only read at Friday's session of Literary Lunches, he also played guitar to a packed house (room 159). The younger Sparrow's reading selections were How I Became a Pirate and Pirates Don't Change Diapers both written by Melinda Long and illustrated by David Shannon.

Sparrow was in full pirate regalia and had with him his trusty mate, a Martin guitar. And while he read, his ship "The Great Gatsby," was docked on the Red River near Applebee's. Sparrow also explained that his brother Jack is more well-known because of the trouble he gets into. Jim's relative anonymity is the product of his good behavior, including a dry ship.

Toward the end of the second lunch session, one of Sparrow's crew members showed up, a mate that suggested that the Dr. Seuss classic, Green Eggs and Ham, is a cookbook.