Sunday, February 28, 2010

Good Greef! Clark Wins Award!

Josie Clark received a 2010 Robert J. Greef Award as Missouri Western's outstanding BSE English graduate at this year's Write to Learn Conference for English educators held at Osage Beach, Friday, February 26. Josie was one of 12 recipients honored at a luncheon for the Greef winners. Each outstanding teacher education graduate also received a one-year membership in the Missouri Association for Teachers of English. Josie was selected because of her outstanding scholarship and service. She has been on the President's or Dean's list during her entire tenure at Western. She is a member of Sigma Tau Delta English Honor Society and Kappa Delta Pi Education Honor Society and President of Western's Student Affiliate of the national Council of Teachers of English. She was Western's SNCTE 2008 and 2009 NCTE National Conference Delegate in San Antonio and Philadelphia. While at Western, Josie also worked as a workshop leader tutoring developmental writing students and as the literacy paraprofessional for Prairie Lands Writing Project. This semester, she is student teaching at St. Joseph Central High School.

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Foster's Open Mic Draws More New Readers

Bill Church reports "Last night a record number of writers--twenty-three--took the mic at Foster's to celebrate New Lit Out Loud, the first reading of the new semester. Readings ranged from a high school poet and a first-time reader to a weathered community country song writer satirizing city politicians. The readings offered a tremendous variety of works: a fifteenth anniversary poem; a spoken word piece decrying the murder of a child; a short prose piece in which the married speaker recalled nearly joining the mile-high club with an imperfect stranger who "told me I had a beautiful mouth." If the applause was an accurate measure, the audience thought everyone who read, sang, or performed also had beautiful mouths--delivering words that celebrated our humanity."



Our next display of beautiful mouths will be Wednesday, March 10 at 7 PM at Foster's. Come share your writing.

Thanks to Jess Wilkinson for the pictures.