LeoNora Burle Marx Cohen was born in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania on January 11th, 1944.She is the daughter of Fannie Foreman and Walter Burle Marx. Nora’s loving mother was aregistered nurse. Her father was a renowned Brazilian pianist, conductor and composer. At age 2, her family moved to Brazil, where her father became director of the Municipal Theater of Rio.Living in Rio for two years, she learned Portuguese as a second language.
Upon returning to the U.S., Nora lived on a farm in the Catskills where she developed a love fornature. Her family moved to Philadelphia, where she attended Simon Muhr Elementary Schoolfollowed by Philadelphia High School for Girls. This is where she started to study Spanish.
After high school, she attended Temple University for one year, then finished her bachelors inthe Honors College at University of Oregon. For her honors thesis, she went to Cali, Colombia with a team of 13 students to study rural-urban migration. She lived with a family with six children on the outskirts of the city. No one spoke a word of English, so this was baptism by fire and she REALLY learned Spanish. Nora’s focus was on the process of urbanization—how people gave up rural customs when they get to the city. This research experience led Nora into schools; soon becoming an elementary educator.
Nora taught upper grade elementary school in Philadelphia at Masterman Laboratory and Demonstration School. She learned so much from her remarkable students, including Kevin Bacon in her 1967 4th grade class and again in 1969 for 6th. (You all know the game, 6 degrees from Kevin Bacon. Now you can say 2 degrees!). That class went to Mexico with Nora to learn more directly about the social studies subject for the year—Latin America.In 1971, she travelled to Mexico to study painting and silver making at the Instituto Allende inSan Miguel de Allende. While in Mexico, she and her roommate travelled to Guadalajara to buy pottery in Tonalá. Waiting for their room to be painted after the long, dusty bus ride, Mickey Cohen, her future husband, asked if he could join them for coffee. He was smitten. He and Nora were married in 1973.
Nora started gifted programs for Philadelphia Schools that same year, but during a budget crisis, her position as coordinator ended and she returned to the classroom. Sensing she could reach more teachers to help them focus on the gifts and talents (TAG) of all their students, she began her doctoral studies at Temple University in 1980, completing her EdD in 1985. She was awarded the Phi Delta Kappa dissertation of the year and Temple University’s dissertation of the year as well.
Nora became a mom to Max in 1976 and Elizabeth in 1979. The years with her little ones were wonderful but so busy, as she was also working and completing doctoral work. Her own children taught her so much about children’s interests, one of her research areas, about coping, another research area about infant-child development.
Her family moved to Eugene in 1985 where she took a job as assistant professor at University ofOregon. She taught in the TAG Institute, focusing on gifted, talented, and creative learners. Itwas a wonderful opportunity to teach her passion. But in a taxpayer initiative in 1990,Proposition 5, the major teacher preparation programs at the three big public universities inOregon were closed down and the faculty was scattered to the winds.
Nora and family moved to Australia at the end of 1990, where she taught TAG at the University of Melbourne and did extensive consulting throughout this amazing country. But kids there have to choose careers at age 15 and her children were wide open to whoever was a great teacher. She decided to return to Oregon where they could have a liberal arts university experience and make their choices when they were more ready.
The family moved back in 1993, where Nora got a job at Oregon State University in Corvallis, teaching a wide range of courses and serving as program lead for the elementary education andPhD in education programs until retirement in 2011. Rumors were that another major budget crisis was impending, so Nora took a job as Chair of Curriculum and Instruction at University ofAkron. She returned to Oregon a year later, as administration had changed. She served as major professor to 27 PhD students in her various universities and served on numerous other doctoral committees as well.
Upon retirement in 2011, Nora and her husband visited San Miguel de Allende for a couple of months, where Nora began volunteering in schools. She was teaching English with a group of Americans and Canadians in Los Ricos de Abajo when Nora began to write her books. The 5th /6 th grade curriculum on the garden was pretty dry and Nora decided to create a curriculum based on the song, “I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly.” Instead of all the animals, the old lady wanted a salad, so had to grow a garden.
This launched her kids’ book writing. She has 24 published children’s books on Amazon, all bilingual and another half dozen in progress.All royalties from the sale of the books benefit various NGOs in and around San Miguel. The stories are often inspired by the mission of the particular non-profit. Nora invites young artists, usually high school age, to create the pictures, mentoring them to become book illustrators.
More on Nora later.
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