What's Lori Reading?

Lori Forlizzi is one of our instructors, and her specialty is reading.

Lori is currently reading Freedom by Jonathan Franzen. Freedom is a novel that explores the relationships between family members and how they appear to each other and to people outside the family unit. Lori says she is reading this book because she liked one of the author's earlier books, The Corrections.

What's Chuck Reading?

Chuck Klinger is one of our instructors. His specialty subject is math.

He's reading The Bourne Legacy by Eric Van Lustbader. Chuck says he liked the Bourne movies so much that he's decided to read the book that have not been made into movies. He says they are fast-paced books that keep him reading to see what will happen next.

Chuck coaches his daughter's soccer team, so he is also reading Coaching Girls Soccer by John Dewitt. He says it is helping him to understand the fine points of soccer better, and also provides him with ideas for drills to use during practice.

What's Destiny Reading?

Destiny Long is our fearless leader! She is our program coordinator, as well as a distance instructor. Destiny is very, very busy and doesn't have much time to read books, but she does read magazine articles. She is taking Spanish classes and she is currently reading her way through an issue of People Magazine -- in Spanish!

What's Lisa U. Reading?

Lisa Urban is our Distance Learning Liaison for the eWorkSkills program. She enjoys reading Sue Grafton's "Alphabet" mystery series, and is currently reading T is for Trespass. The series centers around a female private investigator named Kinsey Millhone. Lisa says she likes these books because Kinsey is a smart, competent, and capable woman who always solves the mysteries and catches the bad guys! Lisa says, "It's fun to see what titles Sue will come up with as she works her way through the alphabet!" The next book in the series is U is for Undertow.

If you'd like to read Sue Grafton's mystery books, you might want to start with A is for Alibi.

What's Shannon Reading?

Shannon Mischler is our ESOL instructor.

She's been reading a lot lately, and she's been reading different genres and styles of books. She recently finished Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. Shannon says the topic was not something that would normally interest her, but the writing was "riveting." Shannon's father-in-law was a B24 pilot during WWII, just like the main character in the book, so she enjoyed being able to sit down with him and listen to his stories of flying during the war. Real-life experiences can sometimes bring a work of fiction alive!

Shannon has also recently finished Moll Flanders by Daniel Dafoe. She says, "I was astonished at the seventeenth century depiction of independent women. Truly one of the original stream -of-consciousness chick lit books!" Dafoe is an ancestor of actor Willem Dafoe (a bit of trivia!), and he also wrote Robinson Crusoe.

Shannon is currently reading The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. Wharton's works usually employed dramatic irony to portay the lives of the upper class. The Age of Innocence won the Pulitzer Prize in 1921 making Edith Wharton the first woman to win the prize.

What's Jen Reading?

Jen Wagner is one of our DLP teachers. We all teach all subjects, but Jen's specialties are science and math.

Jen says she doesn't have much time to read, but when she does, she reads Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. She loves the story and admires the main character, Elizabeth Bennett.

Jen also likes to read books by Nora Roberts. Her current favorite is the new Vision in White series.

She enjoys reading to her children. Favorite children's books include The Big Wide-Mouthed Frog by Ana Martin Larranaga, and The Little Mouse, The Red Ripe Strawberry, and The Big Hungry Bear by Audrey and Don Wood.

Jen says she loves to read and wishes she had more time to do it. When she does have time, she likes to read happy books.

Summer Session Begins Monday

Welcome back, DLP students! We hope that you are having a great summer and keeping cool during this heatwave. Our Summer Session begins Monday, July 18.

This blog has been added as a resource on our Moodle site.

If you have any suggestions for the blog, please email me at svanart@tiu11.org.

DLP on Hiatus

Congratulations to our students for completing another session and another year of classes! The Distance Learning Project will be on hiatus until mid-July.

Seward's Folly

Before the Civil War, Alaska was a Russian territory. Russia offered to sell it to the US, but the Civil War, and America needed to focus on that. When the war ended in 1865, US Secretary of State William Seward wanted to expand the US as much as possible. He wanted to go ahead with the purchase of Alaska from Russia, but he needed approval from the US Senate and Congress. They laughed and called the purchase "Seward's Folly" and "Seward's Icebox." They believed the land was useless, full of ice, snow, and frozen land.

Seward's purchase of Alaska was approved by one vote. Settlement was slow until 1898, when gold was discovered there. Since then, other Alaska has found to be a wealth of natural resources, such as oil.

Did you know that Alaska is closer to Russia than it is to the US? The Bering Strait, which separates the two countries, is only 2.5 miles wide! Alaska is about 500 miles away from Washington, it's closest American neighbor! Alaska's entire land border is next to Canada.

Alaska is also the largest state. Its land mass is about 1/5 the size of the rest of the United States. The second largest state is Texas, which is about half as big as Alaska.

PAACE

I'm at PAACE this week.

Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan

On March 3, 1887, Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan met for the first time. Helen was 6 years old and Anne was 20.

Helen Keller was born in 1880 to a Confederate Civil War veteran and his wife in Alabama. When she was 19 months old, she contracted an illness which left her deaf and blind. Her parents, who wanted her to have as normal a life as possible, contacted Alexander Graham Bell, who was an authority on deafness. Bell also invented the telephone. Bell told the family about the Perkins School for the Blind, near Boston. In turn, the school recommended Anne Sullivan as a teacher for Helen.

Anne Sullivan was born in 1866 in Massachusetts, and was a student at the Perkins School. Because she has a severe visual impairment herself, she had some understanding of Helen's feelings of isolation and frustration.

Anne tried to teach Helen by using her finger to spell out words in the palm of her student's hand. Helen did not understand what her teacher was doing, and resisted, sometimes violently. A breakthrough came one day when Anne held Helen's hand under running water, and spelled out the word "water" in her other hand. At last, Helen understood! From that day forward, she wanted Anne to teach her everything she could.

Helen's love of learning flourished she was able to complete high school and go on to Radcliffe College in Cambridge, MA. She was the first deaf-blind person to receive a Bachelor's degree. She graduated from college with honors in 1904.

Helen and Anne became inseparable. Anne accompanied Helen to college and continued to help her to communicate and study. This only ended when Anne died in 1935.

Helen became an author and a public speaker. She published her first book, an autobiography called "The Story of My Life," in 1902. She was a strong advocate for the deaf, the blind, and racial equality.

Helen Keller died at her home in Connecticut in 1968 at the age of 87.

Apologies and Call for Suggestions

I have been very lax this month in posting. The new year has been very busy, but I promise to try to get back to posting on a regular basis, even if it's just weekly.

If you have any questions, or something you'd like to know more about, please comment on this post, or contact me directly.

Happy New Year!

We at DLP hope that you all have a safe and wonderful 2011!

The PA DLP blog has been dormant for the last several weeks, but I'm ready to get rolling again! I hope that you enjoy the blog in the coming year!