50th Wakita High School Biography

 

Karen Kyle Roberts Dahlem
2733 SW 116th Place
Oklahoma City, OK 73170
405-691-2936 (H) 405-503-3224 (C)

John and I have been married 51 years.

We have two children.

Stephanie Lynn Pounds is married to Jeffrey Pounds and they are the parents of Alex and Brian.
 Stephanie, a graduate of OU, is Learning Program Manager at Hewlett-Packard.
 Jeff, a graduate of Florida Institute of Technology and an Air Force veteran, is a captain with Continental Airlines.
 Alex has a degree in Exercise Science and trains professional athletes at one of the three Plex facilities in Houston.
 Brian lives in Austin, is a musician (check out iTunes for his latest), is studying accounting at Texas State at San Marcos and works as an intern with a booking agent.

*Stephen Paul Dahlem is an Emmy award winner and Senior Creative Designer for Dallas based Corporate Magic. He was a performer at Disney World, on Broadway, in Japan and Germany before he went to the creative side of entertainment. His shows have included the Oklahoma Centennial, the Boy Scouts 100th Anniversary, and the grand opening of Opryland and the Dallas Cowboy’s Thanksgiving halftime show for national TV for the last 9 years, (among others).

• I graduated from Enid High School in 1961, Kansas State of Pittsburg with an Arts and Science degree in English in 1967 and a Masters degree in Library Science from Northwestern Oklahoma State University 1972.
I taught English or was library media specialist in Goodland, Kansas, Fairview, Geary and Seiling, OK. In 1984, I was elected as the first full-time Vice President of the Oklahoma Education Association and elected President in 1986. I called the 4 day teacher’s walk-out in 1990 that resulted in the passage of House Bill 1017, the education reform act of 1990. Upon finishing my term in office, I was an elementary library media specialist for 10 years in the Moore, OK district. In 2000, I was hired as the Director of the Teacher Education and Minority Teacher Recruitment Center for the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education. As such, I was liaison with all of the public universities in Oklahoma. I retired in 2008 but was asked to come back as the interim Associate Chancellor of Administration for the State Regents in 2009 and retired again in July of that year. I am now the Executive Director of the Oklahoma DaVinci Institute, Oklahoma’s creativity think tank. I have spent 44 years in education.
I love teaching!! I was teacher of the year in 4 different districts. I was a member of the National Education Board of Directors, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards and was an original member of the Oklahoma Commission for Teacher Preparation. I was honored as an Outstanding Education Graduate of Northwestern OSU in 2000 and was inducted into the Oklahoma Educator’s Hall of Fame in 2010.
I teach Sunday School, give the children’s sermon nearly every Sunday and sing in the choir at Southern Hills United Methodist Church in OKC. I tutor a 3rd grade Hispanic student in reading every week.
• John retired as principal of Westmoore High School in 2003 after 39 years of coaching and teaching. He then was a realtor for 6 years before re-retiring the same year I retired—2009.
• We love to travel, Turkey, Greece, Egypt, Malta, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Japan, China. In the states, we visit our children and grandchildren, all Texans,, family in Maryland and California and points in between.

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