First annual TEDxBellingham kicks off Tuesday at the Pickford

Tickets for this Tuesday’s TEDxBellingham at the Pickford Film Center are already sold out, but you’re welcome to join the webcast viewing party in Syre Auditorium at Whatcom Community College.

The theme of volunteer-run TEDxBellingham, which runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Nov. 5 at 1318 Bay Street, is “Here by Choice.” The event features seventeen local speakers giving short talks about “our unique sense of place, and each individual’s Here by Choice life,” according to its Facebook page. Talks will range from a just few minutes to eighteen minutes long. Here's the first video entered into the #HereByChoice contest to promote TEDxBellingham.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3_pxDInHv0

Live viewing parties will be held at WWU, WCC, Downtown Bellingham, and in Ferndale.

• Western Washington University: Viking Union MPR, 516 High Street
• Whatcom Community College: Syre Auditorium, 237 W. Kellogg Road
• Downtown: The Upfront Theater, 1208 Bay Street
• Ferndale: The Silver Reef Casino Event Center, 4876 Haxton Way

Speakers on Tuesday include Swil Kanim, the Bellingham violinist who performed at WCC on Tuesday last week as part of Dreams Unlimited.

If you’d prefer to watch at home, you can tune in to the live webcast at http://live.tedxbellingham.com from your home computer, laptop, or mobile device. In a month or so, the talks will be uploaded to YouTube so you can catch up or revisit the talks.

TEDxBellingham organizer David Wiggs was interviewed last Monday, Nov. 4 on Progressive Talk Radio KBAI AM 930. The 23-minute spot on The Joe Show included how the event is supported and how it came together. He talked about sponsors for the event, about the different speakers you’ll see, and why he wanted to organize it in the first place.

“We are fortunate to live in a very special place, with incredibly talented people, and I look forward to seeing, hearing and feeling how each speaker interprets our Here by Choice theme," Wiggs said in an official Bellingham Whatcom County Tourism press release.

Earlier this year, another independently-organized TEDx event was held at Western Washington University on June 1.

TEDx events are required to include two pre-recorded TED talks from other events, so the two talks are in the schedule for Tuesday. See a list of all the recorded talks on the TED website.

The schedule for Tuesday, from the TEDxBellingham Facebook page: ACT ONE: 10:00-12:00 PM SWIL KANIM - The Gift of Presence PAUL AKERS - Creating an Innovative Culture RHONDA GOTHBERG - Creating a Life of Plenty:40 Acres and a Milk Goat JASMINE WILHELM - She Rises: A Story of Grace PHYLLIS SHACTER - Not Here by Choice TED TALK 1 THE GALLUS BROTHERS - Performance TOM MALTERRE, MS, CN - Broccoli: The DNA Whisperer ACT TWO: 1:15-3:00 PM GALEN EMANUELE - Improv to be a Better Human Being DUSTIN MORROW - Better Living Through Music SANDI DOUGHTON - Shake, Rattle - and Rebound TED TALK 2 COLLEEN HAGGERTY - Forgiving the Unforgivable ROBBYN PETERS BENNETT - Violence - A Family Tradition NASEEM RAKHA - Remember to Live 3:00 PM - Break ACT THREE: 3:30-5:00 PM MARK KING - Three Reasons to Take on a Big Project SCOTT SONNON - How We Suppress Genius and Create Learning Disability DANIEL KIRKPATRICK - Making Education Matter HEATHER McKENDRY - Dark is the New Light CELESTE MERGENS - What Are We Not Asking? Simple Solutions for Global Impact

Community Garden in Jeopardy as Development Spreads

Alice Bell has seen the Cordata Community Gardens grow since the community-run project was started in 2009, but the garden might not continue in the wake of new development at the end of Cordata Parkway.

The current phase of construction on the land just to the east of the gardens, at the dead end of Cordata Parkway, began this past August and is expected to continue for a few more weeks. Caitac USA owns and runs commercial properties throughout Bellingham, including the north end of Cordata Parkway. The road, currently a dead end, points northward toward the construction site and an open plain of grass behind the other developments at the end of Cordata Parkway. Caitac allowed a section of this land to be used for the garden when it began five years ago.

“We had the most beautiful quiet spot until they [started to] develop that area,” said Bell, coordinator of the community garden. Now, she is unsure whether the garden will keep its spot two years down the road. Caitac’s property has been approved for development since 2005, says the Bellingham Planning and Community Development Department. The area in question has remained an open, grassy field since then, and is now a portion of a plot slated to become a new subdivision with 428 planned residential units. A Planning and Community Development employee noted the project’s progress, saying infrastructure for a phase of the development is currently underway.

A construction permit concerning stormwater was filed through the Washington Department of Ecology, with a required public notice given this July. The owner of Larabee Springs, Inc., a planned development owned by Caitac, filed the permit. The area listed on the permit was the north end of Cordata Parkway. Construction commenced August 15 and expected to continue through October of next year, according to the permit.

Cordata has been one of the fastest-growing residential areas in Bellingham. Until 2010, Cordata was delineated under the Guide Meridian/Cordata Neighborhood. Geographical proximity and major roadways keep the two neighborhoods connected despite their diverging interests. The increasingly developed Cordata attracts new properties and developments, with several senior living communities built recently. Alice Bell lives in El Dorado Condominiums, along with Beverly Jacobs, co-president of the Cordata Neighborhood Association (CNA). Cordata Community Gardens is governed under CNA.

Caitac started in Whatcom County by running an apparel manufacturing facility for ten years, ending in the year 2000. The company now owns and manages properties throughout Bellingham. Properties it owns in North Bellingham include the North Bellingham Golf Course, the Meridian Holiday Inn Express location, and Pacific Meridian Plaza, home to two restaurants and a gym. Caitac also owns a commercial building on Stuart Road, which houses the Washington State Department of Transportation and Madrona Medical Administration.

Other community gardens in Bellingham are run by the City, not community members directly. Cordata Neighborhood Association is the first neighborhood association to run a community garden on its own.
Surrounded by a wire fence in the middle of the grassy field, the garden consists of 50 raised beds. Each year, community members are able to join at a cost of $40 for the next season. This fee “covers water, use of tools, and everything,” said Bell.

The relationship between the developers and the garden has meant members are kept informed of the construction process. The contractor has worked with gardeners to update them on the progress. Bell said, “they accidentally cut the water line” to the gardens once, but soon “got it going again.” The garden is mostly closed for the winter, and she says they’ll start again in the spring.

Bell expects the construction to cease “in the short window before the weather turns.”

“It used to be this pristine place,” she said, “but no more.”

Dreams Unlimited at Whatcom Community College

This Tuesday night, Whatcom Community College is hosting two inspirational visitors. Tay and Val, independent filmmakers, have traveled around the US over the past three years, gathering the dreams and hopes of the people they meet. They'll be speaking at Syre Auditorium at Whatcom Community College, and collecting photos of attendee's dreams for an installation at Village Books.

Tay and Val were speakers at TEDxWWU on June 1, an independently-organized version of the famous annual conference. The two are women from Singapore but have traveled 11 countries, according to the introductory video on their website. After arriving in Bellingham in June, they made contact with Ciao Thyme, Village Books, and Whatcom Community College Leadership Institute. They wrote a blog post about their journey in Bellingham so far on their website.

1123 Productions, a Bellingham production company, made this video after interviewing the two women.

Dreams Unlimited will be accompanied by Swil Kanim, a violinist from the Lummi Reservation. Here's a video of him performing at WWU, and an article written about him in Klipsun Magazine.

Tickets are $10, or $5 for students. The proceeds will go toward what the Dreams Unlimited website describes as a "public art installation" at Village Books. The installation, to be unveiled November 9, will be made of the photos collected at Tuesday's event. Proceeds will also go toward Fractured Atlas, the non-profit charity sponsoring Dreams Unlimited.

A Look at Shuksan Middle's Demographics

If you haven't heard of Katie Brown by now, you should know she's the impressive English Language Learning (ELL) specialist who won Washington State's 2014 Teacher of the Year. She's been at Shuksan Middle School since starting as a language arts teacher 2003, and for the last two years she has been the ELL Specialist. Each school in Bellingham has an ELL Specialist assigned to it - Cordata Elementary has its own Kristyana Mansfield.

When we have ELLs in class, we need a way to make sure they can understand what their teachers and classmates are saying. I found this document issued by the Bellingham School Board of Directors in 1994 that describes what its goals are with ELL instruction in the Bellingham School District.

Watch this video to see a short introduction to the basis behind ELL instruction.



Below, you can see the demographic data from OSPI Washington State Report Card over the last ten years. The increasing diversity of Bellingham schools is reflected in the number of minority students and Transitional Bilingual students (English Language Learners).

In the years since the 2002-03 school year, you can see the slow shift in demographics. In 2002, White students made up 73.4% of the population and Hispanic/Latino of any race (the largest percentage out of the minorities) made up 12.4%. But last year, White students made up 53.8%, and Hispanic/Latino students made up 23.3%. You can check out all the details in the table below.

School Year	Student Count	Free or Reduced-Price Meals	Transitional Bilingual	American Indian/Alaskan Native	Asian/Pacific Islander	Black	Hispanic/Latino (of any race/s)	White
2012-13	652	61.3%	10%	1.8%	11.2%	1.8%	23.3%	53.8%
2011-12	659	63.9%	10.9%	3%	10.9%	4.4%	24.7%	56.9%
2010-11	810	56.4%	8.2%	1.8%	11.2%	1.8%	23.3%	53.8%
2009-10	607	59.8%	11.4%	3%	10.5%	3.8%	23.4%	59.3%
2008-09	575	53.4%	8.9%	3.3%	8.9%	3%	22.3%	60.2%
2007-08	557	53.3%	8.3%	3.1%	9.3%	2.9%	20.6%	62.1%
2006-07	537	55.2%	8.1%	3.5%	8.8%	3.9%	18.4%	62.8%
2005-06	561	54.6%	7.2%	3.9%	10%	3.7%	16.2%	64.5%
2004-05	591	52.2%	8.9%	4.1%	10%	3.2%	14.9%	67.2%
2003-04	522	50.8%	6.6%	3.8%	10.2%	2.5%	12.8%	70.7%
2002-03	507	45.3%	0	3.6%	8.9%	1.8%	12.4%	73.4%

Welcome to Cordata Neighborhood News

Welcome! I am a journalism student and I'll be covering the Cordata Neighborhood in Bellingham, Washington this quarter. I want to voice the concerns and opinions of the people, not the politicians, of the area.

I began my venture into learning more about the neighborhood by researching primary documents such as the Neighborhood Plan, Cordata school websites, and other information found on the City of Bellingham website.

Throughout the quarter, I'll be updating Cordata Lately with articles about recent events and issues, under "News Events." I'll also have shorter blog posts, under "Word on the Street."

I encourage you to comment on posts - I'd love to hear from you. I'm always available by email at retaskc@students.wwu.edu.