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  • Mary Anne Quiroz of St. Paul is a swirl of colors and feathers as she performs a traditional Mexica dance for youngsters at the keynote event of the Young Writers Conference Wednesday at Bethany College. John Cross

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  • Carla Bode leads youngsters from Jordon Elementary School through some warm-up exercises in the dance and choreography session she was leading at the Young Writers Conference Tuesday at Bethany College. John Cross

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March 10, 2010

Young Writers Conference gives space to learning

Aztec dance and searching for extraterrestial life

By Tanner Kent Free Press Staff Writer

MANKATO — On any other Wednesday afternoon, ninth-grader R.J. Tollerud would have been sitting in class at Montgomery-Lonsdale High School.

But instead, his mind was in outer space.

Among more than 700 students from across south-central Minnesota to participate in the Young Writers and Artists Conference at Bethany Lutheran College, Tollerud spent the day participating in creative writing and fine arts classes — including one on extraterrestrial communication.

The class was led by Carol McCormick, a former teacher who is passionate in her pursuit of information about UFO sightings and alien communication. She shared with students some her own experiences and talked about the evidence supporting the notion that humans are not alone in the universe.

For McCormick, the class is an exercise in expanding the mind through storytelling. For Tollerud, the class represented a rare opportunity.

“We get different knowledge here,” said Tollerud, who’s interested in the topic of extraterrestrial life and does believe humans will make contact with aliens in his lifetime. “We wouldn’t learn this kind of stuff in school.”

The two-day conference is organized by the South Central Service Cooperative and funded through a grant from the Prairie Lakes Regional Art Council. Students in grades 3-9 were able to participate.

The keynote performance for the event came from Kalpulli Yaocenoxtli, a group of Aztec dancers from St. Paul that also led classes about traditional drumming and dancing while incorporating the history and culture of the Mexica people.

With more than 30 sessions available, students could choose to scrapbook with members of the Betsy-Tacy Society, learn to draw or learn calligraphy, make a graphic novel or greeting card, create lyrics to a song or play acting games.

“We can appeal to a student’s individual tastes and we can offer it all in one place,” said Mary Hillmann, a program coordinator with SCSC.

In addition to sessions for students, the conference also included training opportunities for teachers. Because many chaperone the event anyway, Hillmann said, the SCSC organized two staff development sessions: one on writing activities for English-language learners and another on enrichment activities for gifted students.

There also was a book fair with local authors on hand to sign copies.

Books were provided by The Book Shelf, an independent bookstore in Winona. Chris Livingston, who owns the store, said he totes hundreds of books to several such youth events throughout the year, in part to stay competitive with chain and online bookstores and also to share the joy of books with the students who read them.

Hillmann said the goal of the conference was to provide something of interest to all participants.

“You name it,” she said, “and we’ve got it.”

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