As the third set of lesson plans for Just Fine the Way They Are (“Writer’s Craft”) is posted and ready for you teachers out there to download, I realize how much I like the illustration my graphic designer chose for the “button” that clicks you to those lesson plans: A car in motion…a car obviously… [Read More]
If Kids Can’t Read
July 25, 2011 By
If kids can’t read, this writer is out of a job. Which is why this writer was up bright and early last Friday morning to greet 100 students who, at the end of their third grade year, were not reading at grade level. If kids can’t read by the end of their third grade year,… [Read More]
Fighting for Democracy in the Bagel Shop
July 5, 2011 By
My assignment: An article on the Development of Democracy covering ancient Greece, ancient Rome, and the years surrounding the Revolutionary War in the U.S. Length: 1400 words First draft delivery date: Four weeks I commandeer my usual table at the Fifth Street Bagel Shop and set to work. I start with the ancient Greeks to… [Read More]
Twenty Years
June 27, 2011 By
Twenty years ago, my husband and I, our four children, and our basset hound, Wobegon closed the door to our house in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania for the very last time and drove to our new home in Richmond, Indiana. I was sporting a full leg cast (a skating accident…don’t ask!) so I had to sit in… [Read More]
Tree Calculations
June 13, 2011 By
When I was ten years old, I climbed a tree with my best friend every day of the summer. Its lower branches (all seven of them) began spreading within a foot or two of the the ground and each of them was thicker than the circumference of the two of us when we hugged each… [Read More]
Connie Wooldridge Will Speak to the National Stanley Family Association
June 6, 2011 By
When: Saturday June 25, 2011 Location: Earlham College – 801 National Road West, Richmond, Indiana 47374 Event Description: National Stanley Family Reunion – You are welcome to a weekend of Stanley family fellowship, entertainment, history and interesting family stories and historical sites. Topic: Saturday Evening: “The Story Behind the Stories” by Connie Wooldridge About the… [Read More]
A Green Truck
May 23, 2011 By
When I traveled out to Wyoming back in 1998 to do research for When Esther Morris Headed West, I was stunned when I got off the plane in Cheyenne. It was so unlike anyplace I had ever been I thought I might have landed on the moon. I walked across a brief stretch of tarmac… [Read More]
Fairy Tale
April 18, 2011 By
I taught first grade at an English-speaking school for foreigners in Seoul from 1975-1977. Korea was a poor country at that time and the walk each morning from my small, Korean-style house to Seoul Foreign School was dusty and colorless. Animal carts and bicycles pulling heavy loads shared the road with cars and it was… [Read More]
Thinking Hard
April 4, 2011 By
At an early age, I came to the notion that there was something to be understood in the world out there and that it would take some hard thinking to get to it. I did my first thinking on a wooden rocking horse with metal springs. Things to think about would pile up, I’d climb… [Read More]
A Real Writer
March 28, 2011 By
It’s 1990, I’ve just had my first few stories published in Highlights for Children and Cricket, and I’m wondering if I’m a Real Writer now. The editor of a Cricket story about the legendary King Canute, who ordered the tide not to come in, is intrigued about a plaque in Southampton, England commemorating the event. … [Read More]