Biography

Photo Courtesy of Sean Neilson

Abigail B. Calkin

• born in Boston, Massachusetts
• grew up at the family home in Framingham Centre, Massachusetts and in New York's Greenwich Village
• lived also in New Hampshire, Maine, Nova Scotia, Colorado, Scotland, Oregon, Washington, and Kansas
• now lives with her husband in a coastal bush community in Alaska

Education

• graduated from prep schools Grace Church School and Friends Seminary in New York City
• B.A. from the University of Colorado with a double major in psychology and philosophy
• studied philosophy for two years at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland
• M.A. in special education under Barbara Bateman from the University of Oregon
• Ph.D. in educational administration and school psychology from the University of Kansas under Ogden R. Lindsley

Career

• special education in Colorado
• in 1965 set up the first learning disabilities classroom in Oregon
• faculty of Western Oregon College
• school psychologist
• special and regular education administrator for the Topeka, Kansas Schools
• consultant for Morningside Academy in the U. S. and Canada working with schools in academic difficulty
• chair of Og Lindsley's Archives Committee
• member and past president of the Standard Celeration Society, member of the Association for Behavior Analysis International, and the National Association of School Psychologists

Photo Courtesy of Swarupa Toth

Honorary Compendia Listings

• Who's Who of Business and Professional Women
• Two Thousand Notable American Women
• Who's Who of American Women
• Who's Who in Child Development
• Outstanding Teachers in Special Education

Former Editor

• Journal of Precision Teaching and Celeration, consulting editor
• The Behavior Analyst, consulting editor
• Inscape, a literary journal, editor
• European Journal of Behavior Analysis, consulting editor, vol. 4

Writing

Her lifelong interest in writing began before she started school: She hid in her closet and wrote fanciful tales about the big house on the hill where she lived with her large, extended family.

• 40 published poems
• 40 articles in the educational and behavior analytic fields of precision teaching and precision inner behavior
• education books—Pebbles, Mops, and Thimigs (1974); Eating with a Spoon (1975); Toilet Training: Help for the Delayed Learner (1978)
• novels—Nikolin, (1994) short-listed for a Benjamin Franklin Award; The Carolyne Letters (1995)
• nonfiction—The Night Orion Fell, a commercial fishing disaster and Coast Guard rescue; Change Your Feelings, how to change thoughts, feelings, and urges.