Tag Archives: Teacher Authors

Award-winning author Jacqueline Jules also works as a school librarian

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Virginia school librarian and teacher Jacqueline Jules has earned acclaim as an author of children’s books. Photo Credit: Jacqueline Jules

There are many excellent educators who have earned success in endeavors outside of the classroom. This is true of Jacqueline Jules, a school librarian and teacher from Virginia who has has earned acclaim as an author of children’s books.

Jacqueline was born in 1956 in Petersburg, Virginia. As a young woman, she earned her Bachelor’s degree with a major in Creative Writing from the University of Pittsburgh. In 2001 she earned her Master’s degree in Library Science from the University of Maryland.

Currently, Jacqueline works as a school librarian at Timber Lane Elementary School in Falls Church, Virginia. She also works as a storyteller and as a guest speaker at schools. She has also taught religious school, led Tot Shabbat services, and has experience as a writing resource teacher. Her career as an educator has spanned a total of 28 years. She credits these experiences with her success as an author. “It actually wasn’t until I became a school librarian that I had enough ideas for writing children’s books,” Jacqueline confesses. “My years as a librarian fueled my writing rather than stalled it. Working in a school taught me what children enjoy and what was missing from library shelves,” she continued. “I could never do the writing I do now without having been a teacher,” she concludes.

Jacqueline’s work has appeared in over 100 publications. She has authored more than 50 children’s books, including The Grey Striped Shirt; Once upon a Shabbos; the Zapato Power series; the Sofia Martinez series; Unite or Die: How Thirteen States Became a Nation; Duck for Turkey Day; Never Say a Mean Word Again; Feathers for Peacock; The Hardest Wor; and Pluto is Peeved. Also a poet, Jacqueline is the author of Tag Your Dreams: Poems of Play and Persistence.

For her work as a children’s author, Jacqueline has earned many accolades. She garnered the Arlington Arts Moving Words Contest twice, in 1999 and again in 2007. In 2009, she earned the SCBWI Magazine Merit Plaque for Poetry, and 2008, she received the Best Original Poetry Award from the Catholic Press Association. She has also garnered a citation for Notable Books for Young Readers from the Association of Jewish Libraries in 2002, and that same year she was named a National Jewish Book Award finalist.

To learn more about this amazing educator and author, visit www.jacquelinejules.com.

California’s Eliza Robbins Crafts was a pioneer educator and local history author of the Wild West

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Eliza Robbins Crafts was a pioneer educator and local history writer in the early days of San Bernardino County, California. Photo Credit:

There are many intriguing stories about intrepid pioneer educators who helped to settle the Wild West during the late 1800’s. One of them was Eliza Robbins Crafts, a teacher and writer who had an unmistakable impact on the settling of the San Bernardino area of Southern California.

Eliza was born Eliza Russell on Nov. 29, 1825, in Unadello Center, Otsego County, New York. As a young girl, she attended Madam Willard’s Female Seminary. She graduated from the school in 1847. The education she earned there was far greater than the typical young woman of her day. Once she completed school, Eliza migrated to New Orleans, Louisiana, where she worked as a teacher on a sugar plantation. There she met and married Ellison Robbins, a fellow educator from her home state of New York. Before long, the couple relocated to Santa Clara, California, where they taught school for three years. In 1858, the couple was persuaded to relocate to San Bernardino, where they were hired to lead the school system. The system was comprised of two one-room adobe structures that were built next door to each other. One was named Washington and the other was named Jefferson.

Unfortunately, Ellison succumbed to pneumonia in 1864. He was only 43 years old. Shortly thereafter, Eliza married Myron Harwood Crafts. But that marriage did not last long, as in 1886 Myron also succumbed to pneumonia. At the time, Eliza was 61, and found the estates she inherited from Ellison and Myron too much for her to handle. She sold her assets and moved to Redlands to live with her daughter, Rosabelle. During the next few years, Eliza authored a local history book entitled Pioneer Days in the San Bernardino Valley, which was published in 1906. The book contained a description of life in San Bernardino County in the early days, the disastrous flood of 1862, the Civil War years, the assassination of President Lincoln, and how the residents defended themselves when they received news that a marauding band of Southern sympathizers was headed their way.

Eliza Robbins Crafts was 85 years old when she passed away in February of 1910. She is interred at Hillside Memorial Park in Redlands, California. She will always be known in the San Bernardino area as a pioneer educator and local history author. To read more, click on this link to the online article published about her by the Redlands Area Historical Society.

 

Teacher Pearle Ludwig continued to contribute, even after retirement

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Elementary school teacher Pearle Ludwig continued to tutor, train student teachers, and author books, even after her retirement. Photo Credit: Legacy.com

Many dedicated educators continue to teach and contribute to the profession, even after retirement. One of these is Pearle Ludwig, an elementary teacher from San Bernardino, California.

Pearle was born on Feb. 28, 1928, in Boston, Massachusetts, and raised at Waveney Farms in Framingham. She attended elementary and high school there. As a high school graduate, she enrolled at Framingham State University, where she earned her Master’s degree in Education. Then she relocated to Southern California, where she accepted a teaching position in the San Bernardino Unified School District. She taught first at Parkside Elementary and then at Arrowhead Elementary.

Upon her retirement, Pearle continued to work with students at the Learning Center at Belvedere Elementary School in Highland. “Nurturing a child’s self-esteem and fostering and recognizing the dignity of a person is the single most important thing a teacher can do for a student,” Pearle once said. “This I feel is the most important funciton of a good teacher and a good school.”

In addition to tutoring, Pearle also volunteered with the Humane Society teaching groups of children about wildlife, especially bears. She supervised student teachers at California State University, San Bernardino, and she fostered the growth of colleagues through her membership in Delta Kappa Gamma (DKG), a professional organization for women educators.

In addition to her work with students and teachers, Pearle authored Excellence for Kids, a professional text on educational pedagogy published in 2009. She also wrote children’s books, including Safari, inspired by a vacation that Pearle and her husband, Glen, enjoyed in Kenya. She also penned Sammy the Cricket and Green is Growing.

This amazing educator passed away on Jan. 29, 2022, in San Bernardino. She was 93 yers old.

 

Math teacher M.B.W. Tent also writes books for young people

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Many fine educators have also earned a name for themselves as published authors. One of these is M.B.W. Tent, a math teacher who has published several books for young people.

M.B.W., whose first name is Margaret, was born on Nov. 2, 1944. She was raised in western Massachusetts. As a young girl, she graduated from Amherst Regional High School. Following high school, she earned both her Bachelor’s degree and her Master’s degree at the University of Alabama, Birmingham.

For many years, M.B.W. taught school at Altamont High School in Birmingham, Alabama. She has said she has enjoys bringing the history of mathematics into her teaching.

M.B.W. has published a number of educational books about mathematicians for students of elementary school age. Her works include Emmy Noether: The Mother of Modern Algebra (2008); The Prince of Mathematics: Carl Friedrich Gauss (2009); Leonard Euler and the Bernoullis: Mathematicians from Basel (2009); Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: The Polymath who Brought us Calculus (2019). She also published A 1928 Road Trip from the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts to the National Parks of the West (2011).

As an author, many of M.B.W.’s books have earned favorable reviews from professional organizations such as the Mathematical Association of America and the Association for Computing Machinery. In addition, her books are frequently cited in academic publications, and they have garnered praise from such renowned mathematicians as Charles Ashbacher, William Dunham, Peter Neumann, Peter Lax, and Cathleen Synge Morawetz.

NY teacher Bonnie Shimko earns acclaim as Young Adult author

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Retired elementary teacher Bonnie Shimko of New York has earned acclaim as an author of Young Adult novels. Photo Credit: Amazon.com

Often talented educators also earn acclaim as authors. One of these is Bonnie Shimko, an elementary school teacher from New York who has published five novels for young adults.

Bonnie was born in Plattsburgh, New York, in 1941. She taught school in upstate New York from 1963 to 1994, a career that spanned 33 years. At the time of her retirement in 1994, Bonnie was teaching second grade at Peru Central School.

Upon her retirement from the teaching profession, Bonnie authored five novels for teens and young adults. Her first novel, Letters in the Attic. The book, published in 2002, earned a prestigious Lambda Literary Award. Her other novels include Kat’s Promise, published in 2006; The Private Thoughts of Amelia E. Rye, published in 2010. This third book was named a 2011 Best Book for Young Adults and received two starred reviews. Her fourth book was You Know What You Have to Do, published in 2013, and her most recent novel is Stony Lonesome Road, published in 2015.

“Unlike most authors, I never wanted to be one,” Bonnie once confessed. “Years later, when I retired, I didn’t have enough to do, so I bought a computer, took a class to learn how to use it, and starting writing books. My first novel was published when I was sixty!” she concluded.

To learn more about Bonnie Shimko, see her author page at amazon.com.