Nora Corrigan: Creating and Exploring

by Chuck Cascio, Author and Former South Lakes Teacher

Nora Corrigan

Picture this: A 4-year-old living in Reston 45 years ago falls so in love with A.A. Milne’s book “Winnie-the-Pooh” that she acts out the stories, surrounds herself with toy animals, and wears Big Boots like Christopher Robin. Seven years later, her father brings home a copy of Bernard Miles’s “Favorite Tales from Shakespeare,” which she enthusiastically embraces and acts out the fencing match from “Hamlet” with her reluctant younger brother.

“My brother didn’t really understand tragedy, so when he was supposed to be dead, he kept jumping up yelling, ‘Oh, yeah? What about the nunchucks?!?’,” recalls Nora Corrigan, a 1994 graduate of South Lakes High School who, since 2008, has been a Professor of English at Mississippi University for Women (known as “W”), a public liberal arts college that, she notes, “admits men, too, despite the name.”

Nora’s love of literature grew steadily: “My mom has a PhD in English and we not only had lots of books in the house, but lots of books about books, so I absorbed a lot about how to write about literature; it didn’t seem like a weird, alien language.”

Nora appreciates the value of experiencing a range of studies throughout her education, including at SLHS where “we were encouraged to debate big questions about ethics and current events. That just doesn’t happen in a lot of schools in Mississippi both public and private, so a lot of our students seem flummoxed by the concept of class discussion when they get to college.”

At SLHS, Nora’s creativity developed in unique ways: “Spanish was my favorite class. I could make up surreal stuff and as long as the Spanish grammar was good, I got full credit. I remember we were assigned to create a diorama of our dream house and to tell people about it in Spanish. My house had a toilet, a Jimi Hendrix poster, and a pile of wood that could be used to build the rest of the furniture. I was astonished that I got an A for that…full marks for originality, I guess!”

Nora extends her love of creativity to her work at “W” where “there is a truly diverse student body with a lot of first-generation students and Pell Grant recipients, so you’re often widening people’s horizons like taking students to their first professional theater production or asking them to write a poem when they’ve never written one before.”

However, creative thought is something Nora fears may be fading in education today because of increased emphasis “on practical, vocational programs rather than arts, sciences, and humanities. That’s absolutely fine if that’s what students want to pursue, but it shouldn’t be the only thing they learn about.”

Nora’s drive to share diverse thoughts and actions has led her to engage her students in unique experiences such as the three times she took student groups to Ireland: “It was incredible. There was always at least one student for whom it wasn’t just their first time in another country, but their first time on an airplane.”

Currently, in addition to teaching, Nora is deep into developing a unique project: “It’s a role-playing game based on several 15th-century literary texts. I’d like to finish up my current round of revisions, get a few more people to playtest it, and work toward publication with the ‘Reacting to the Past Consortium’.”

Nora enjoys visiting her parents, who have lived in Reston for more than 50 years. She recalls Reston as a place where “you could follow the creek across the gas pipeline and through the woods to Lake Fairfax. There were always tadpoles, or crawfish, or little fish to look at, and one year, there was a beaver living up behind Lake Fairfax.”

A penchant for wandering helped sparked Nora’s adventurous spirit: “I’ll be turning 50 next year, so I would really like to visit some bucket-list places. I’ve never been to Africa, and the only part of Asia I’ve ever visited is Turkey, so maybe something on one of those continents.”

As Nora continues to expand her own experiences, she is committed to applying them to her work with her students: “I usually try to incorporate some creative writing into my classes, as well as some editing or performance activities. I think literature is most meaningful when you DO something with it!”

Perhaps something like playing all of the roles in “Winnie-the-Pooh” to make an impact!