Miscellany

Coordinated by Stephanie West-Puckett, Tar River Writing Project's LEEAP (Leadership for Equity, Excellence, Achievement and Partnership in the 21st Century Classroom)Team has partnered with Northeast Elementary (NES), a K-8 Beaufort County School in Pinetown, NC to provide high-quality professional development to assist instructional staff in meeting the standards of the newly adopted NC Teacher-Evaluation Process.  Made possible with funding provided by the North Carolina English Teachers Association Project Grant, National Writing Project's Teacher Inquiry Community Network Grant and support from both ECU's Department of English and the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, the LEEAP team is facilitating a year-long, high-quality in-service experience that promotes and supports teacher inquiry and research as a viable means to paying down our educational debt and improving literacy skills across the curriculum.  Over the course of the 2009-2010 academic year, the LEEAP Team is providing 30-45 hours of direct contact and ongoing virtual support for seven teacher-research participants at NES, providing 12 hours of CEU credit and an incentive package to includes books, research materials, and personal technologies.  Teacher-researcher participants, in turn, are exploring and engaging in equity-focused action research projects to build and share a region-specific, teacher-initiated body of knowledge of teaching to diversity in NC Schools.  LEEAP team members also include current ECU English Department Graduate Student Celestine Davis as well as ECU English Department Alumna Danielle Lewis Ange (MA ’02). 

On Monday, October 19, Greensboro poet Rhett Iseman Trull gave a poetry reading in Bate 1031 to an audience of students, faculty, and area poetry fans. Trull is best known for her 2008 Anhinga Prize winning collection The Real Warnings. This is Trull's first published collection of poetry. Her poetry has also been featured in The American Poetry Review, Best New Poets 2008, and The Southern Review. Trull received her MFA in poetry from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro where she was a Randall Jarrell Fellow. She also publishes the literary journal Cave Wall with her husband. Trull read several of the poems from her first collection, covering many topics, ranging from, perfect names for newborn children to how she met and fell in love with her husband. Trull also read two unpublished poems, including "Cowboys Ride With One Hand on Their Holsters." After the reading, several of Trull's fans had an opportunity to talk with her and get an autograph

The Scholar-Teacher Brown Bag was held on October 21, 12:30-1:30 pm, in the Faculty Lounge. Will Banks spoke on "Daybooks as Critical Inquiry: Intersections of the Visual and Verbal in Children's Literature"; Slobodanka Dimova spoke on "Pick, Enjoy: English in Macedonian TV Advertising"; and Ken Parille spoke on "Nineteenth-Century Boyhood and Modern Comics."

EGSO sponsored their first Creative Reading on Thursday, October 29, at 7pm in Bate 1010.  Brian Lampkin, Will Angel, LaTasha R. Jones, Celestine Davis, Matt Finch, Virginia Smith, Jennifer Sheppard, Jim Kirkland, and Stephen Jackson read from their work.

On Thursday, November 5, from 8:30-9:30 pm, Dean Tuck performed original songs at the Tipsy Teapot accompanied by Bob Siegel on woodwinds.

On November 2, at 8 pm in Bate 1031, Nancy Mitchell read from her poetry. Mitchell is the author of The Near Surround (2004) and Grief Hut (2009). Her poems have appeared in Agni, Poetry Daily, Salt Hill Journal, Great River Review, and have been anthologized in Last Call (1997). She teaches English at Salisbury University on the eastern shore of Maryland.