Sunday, January 22, 2012

Get to Know This TpT Teacher-Author...

What grade level(s) and/or subject(s) are you currently teaching? What grade levels have you taught prior to this year?   
          I just retired and am now writing curriculum. For the past 13 years, I taught English 12, Creative Writing 1,2 and 3, and Journalism 1, 2, 3, and 4.

If currently in the classroom, how long have you been teaching? If not still in classroom, how long did you teach?    
          I was in the classroom for 30+ years.

When did you join Teachers Pay Teachers as a Seller? What made you decide to become a seller?    
I joined TpT in 2006 while I was compiling a book of all of my teaching ideas to offer to educational publishers. TpT offered a great resource for me to publish my lesson plans, unit plans and Power Points. My postings have so exceeded the length of my original book, titled, Setting the Pace, I chose to stay with it. Meanwhile I’m still tossing around ideas for revamping the book. There is so much that I want to include, I've decided to break the material into separate categories.

One piece of advice you can give to a beginning teacher & one piece for a veteran teacher:     
            I'd like to share the advice given to me by the principal when I accepted my first contract job (in a boys' reform school) because it has guided my teaching throughout the years: "Be firm, but fair." Another bit of wisdom, from Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest has helped me through many a stressful situation: in the classroom, at faculty meetings, in the teachers' lounge and in my personal life, "You lose your laugh, you lose your footing," (paraphrased).

Something unique about you both as a teacher and outside of the classroom:
            I am a published author of a YA book, A Fine Line, which has been used by a number of schools in conflict mediation classes. I wrote it as a novel for teenagers after one too many young ladies came in to my classroom black and blue from a fight with her boyfriend. Teen dating abuse is frightening and very real, unfortunately.

(Connie sent me a pic of her cat looking at her novel!)

What other bio information would you like to share?
         I've been married for 42 years to a wonderfully supportive man, have two adult children and two incredible granddaughters. Our Newfoundland dog, Tommy, and two cats, Charlie and Hank, are my writing muses. When I'm not working on TpT and my website, www.teachitwrite.com, I read, read, read. In my spare time, I am revising my contemporary romance novel, A Lighter Shade of Bimbo. My husband and I love to travel, also. My whole family are avid Pittsburgh Steelers fans; in fact my son was due on Super Bowl Sunday, 1976, but was polite enough to wait until the Steelers won to enter this world.

Are there any other sites you’d like posted for others to access?

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