Grades K-4: Herman's Journey with Karen Engel and Jamina Carder

Wed. November 10

Herman's Journey is the true story of two friends and a caterpillar. The tale began on a beautiful day in the last part of May 2008. A road trip to Chattanooga turned into a real adventure for a hitch-hiking caterpillar, and an amazing experience for his two traveling companions. The two friends were startled to discover Herman, a bright green caterpillar, had ridden in the car with them along their journey. Herman the caterpillar was their companion throughout the day as they visited friends, stopped in local shops, and attended the celebration.

As the friends laugh and share on their travels to a kirtan (a traditional musical celebration from the land of India), Herman is hard at work on an adventure of his own...becoming a beautiful butterfly and inspiring the friends to spread their own wings and fly. With this surprise ending, this videoconference presentation will incorporate elements of storytelling, dance, and illustration to entertain your students.

TIMES:

We offer two sessions for each Vanderbilt Virtual School videoconference: one session at 9:00 AM CENTRAL TIME and one session at 10:00 AM CENTRAL TIME.

COST:

The cost for a videoconference session is $75. This charge covers some of our expenses in preparing your videoconference and testing and delivering your videoconference.

FORMAT:

All videoconferences are approximately 45 minutes in length. The format is about 25-30 minutes for the presentation and 15-20 minutes for an interactive question and answer session with the students and presenter.

Please see the Virtual School website for information and lesson plans for each videoconference topic: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/virtualschool/

REGISTER online: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/virtualschool/registration.htm

Patsy Partin, M.Ed
Director, Virtual School
Vanderbilt University
2007 Terrace Place
Nashville, TN 37203
(615) 322-6384

www.vanderbilt.edu/virtualschool

Grades 7-12: Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen with Author Susan Gregg Gilmore

Thurs. November 4

What young girl growing up in a small town doesn't dream of something bigger, especially a preachers daughter? Sometimes you have to return to the place where you began, to arrive at the place where you belong. It’s the early 1970s. The town of Ringgold, Georgia, has a population of 1,923, one traffic light, one Dairy Queen, and one Catherine Grace Cline.

The daughter of Ringgold’s third-generation Baptist preacher, Catherine Grace is quick-witted, more than a little stubborn, and dying to escape her small-town life. Every Saturday afternoon, she sits at the Dairy Queen, eating Dilly Bars, dreaming big, and plotting her getaway to the big city of Atlanta. Finally, at the age of 18 and with the help of a family friend, she moves to Atlanta to make her dreams come true. Yes, Catherine Grace packed her bags, leaving her family and the boy she loves to claim the life she’s always imagined.

But before things have even begun to get off the ground in Atlanta, a horrible tragedy brings her back home to find that her preacher father had secrets that could tear her world apart As a series of extraordinary events alters her perspective and sweeping changes come to Ringgold itself, Catherine Grace begins to wonder if her place in the world may actually be, against all odds, right where she began.

TIMES:

We offer two sessions for each Vanderbilt Virtual School videoconference: one session at 9:00 AM CENTRAL TIME and one session at 10:00 AM CENTRAL TIME.

COST:

The cost for a videoconference session is $75. This charge covers some of our expenses in preparing your videoconference and testing and delivering your videoconference.

FORMAT:

All videoconferences are approximately 45 minutes in length. The format is about 25-30 minutes for the presentation and 15-20 minutes for an interactive question and answer session with the students and presenter.

Please see the Virtual School website for information and lesson plans for each videoconference topic: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/virtualschool/

REGISTER online: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/virtualschool/registration.htm

Patsy Partin, M.Ed
Director, Virtual School
Vanderbilt University
2007 Terrace Place
Nashville, TN 37203
(615) 322-6384

www.vanderbilt.edu/virtualschool

Grades 7-12: "Rendered Invisible" with author Dr. Frank Dobson

Thurs. October 21

"Thirteen dead black men, and nobody knows it happened," so says Johnny Smith, who sets out on a quest to make things right in the powerful novella that begins this collection - a masterpiece of collaged voices. Voice is urgent and significant--Dobson focuses throughout on the invisible and the unvoiced-he brings them to center stage, where they speak their pain and frustration. "Maybe we can revise history," one of his characters says; Frank Dobson's book does just that.

The narrative of the .22-Caliber killings in Buffalo in the novella’s first story is little known to most Americans. The lives of blacks and whites caught up in those tense days makes for suspenseful, compelling reading. “Race is all around us, man, choking us.” The black and white worlds of Johnny Smith and Bill Reilly have been turned upside down by a serial killer determined to incite a race war by slaying black men. Amidst the chaos, Bill reaches out to help Johnny find his missing wife and daughter. Can they bridge the racial divide? Rendered Invisible takes you inside 1980’s New York and the true-life racial turmoil and communities in crisis. The personal search for common ground in spite of race, gender and class are illuminated in six critically recognized short stories in “Rendered Invisible” by Dr. Frank Dobson.

Few writers translate our current daily challenge with cultural diversity as Dr. Frank Dobson offers in Rendered Invisible as he explores race and life in America. These narrative stories of fascinating characters of blacks and whites enmeshed in circumstances that compel and delight makes for suspenseful and convincing reading. The plot of the stories is richly textured clearly rooted in an earlier moment but connecting those issues to urgent ones in our present. Frank Dobson makes us look outward and upward while gazing deeply back and down inside ourselves. The writing is easy to read and draws you into the story where you end up finding yourself shaken up by the events.

TIMES:

We offer two sessions for each Vanderbilt Virtual School videoconference: one session at 9:00 AM CENTRAL TIME and one session at 10:00 AM CENTRAL TIME.

COST:

The cost for a videoconference session is $75. This charge covers some of our expenses in preparing your videoconference and testing and delivering your videoconference.

FORMAT:

All videoconferences are approximately 45 minutes in length. The format is about 25-30 minutes for the presentation and 15-20 minutes for an interactive question and answer session with the students and presenter.

Please see the Virtual School website for information and lesson plans for each videoconference topic: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/virtualschool/

REGISTER online: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/virtualschool/registration.htm

Patsy Partin, M.Ed
Director, Virtual School
Vanderbilt University
2007 Terrace Place
Nashville, TN 37203
(615) 322-6384

www.vanderbilt.edu/virtualschool

Grades K-4: Peace Dragon with author Linda Ragsdale

Linda Ragsdale is an artist/author/ illustrator/ designer who will teach your students about connecting their hearts with their art. She will teach your students to draw dragons using simple shapes of the alphabet, to tell the story, to sing the song, to create peace within your school and neighborhood. Come join the fun at the Dragon Doodlies and see how the alphabet can build the basics of a dragon with only a few strokes. Students can later choose from the endless palette of colors in pen, pencil or paint; the endless textures of clays, papers or fabrics; and mix and match the solid and stolid independent shades with the regulated and random patterns and CREATE!

There is a story floating around which offers hope for humanity through the observations of monkeys on an island. As the story goes, yams were placed on an island beach to note the behavior of the local monkeys. The monkeys did not like the sandy condiment, so one washed off the sand in the water. As monkeys began to emulate this behavior, one by one, the monkeys began washing off their yams. By now, you are surely wondering what yam eating monkeys could have in common with hope for humanity, but indulge the story for one more moment…

After the one-hundredth monkey washed a yam, the washing behavior jumped from island to island, not through monkeys being transported, but by the power of thought. Monkeys all over the world wash their food because this thought registered in the monkey’s behavior! Do you see where the hope lies? Transfer this story from monkeys to humans and instead of washing yams, drawing peace dragons – peace as the universal thought! Aha! Now do you get the picture?

So let’s create the first one hundred dragons and not stop there. Let’s create millions, billions! Let this be the energy to fuel the entire galaxy with thoughts of peace to endure the lengths of time. Let us be the stars and this effort be the starlight…However you envision peace, show the world.

TIMES:

We offer two sessions for each Vanderbilt Virtual School videoconference: one session at 9:00 AM CENTRAL TIME and one session at 10:00 AM CENTRAL TIME.

COST:

The cost for a videoconference session is $75. This charge covers some of our expenses in preparing your videoconference and testing and delivering your videoconference.

FORMAT:

All videoconferences are approximately 45 minutes in length. The format is about 25-30 minutes for the presentation and 15-20 minutes for an interactive question and answer session with the students and presenter.

Please see the Virtual School website for information and lesson plans for each videoconference topic: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/virtualschool/

REGISTER online: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/virtualschool/registration.htm

Patsy Partin, M.Ed
Director, Virtual School
Vanderbilt University
2007 Terrace Place
Nashville, TN 37203
(615) 322-6384

www.vanderbilt.edu/virtualschool