Biography
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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 live with my husband in a coastal bush community
in Alaska
Education
- graduated from prep schools Grace Church School and Friends
Seminary in New York City
- BA 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
- MA in special education under Barbara Bateman from the
University of Oregon
- PhD 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 University
- 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
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Photo Courtesy of
Swarupa Toth |
Honoraria
- Lifetime Achievement Award, 2020, from the Standard Celeration Society for "a scientific career devoted to standard measurement and monitoring of behavioral frequencies and celerations in experimental research and application."
- Various listings in Who's Who.
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
- Behavior Analysis in Practice, 4(3)
Writing
My lifelong interest in writing began before I started school: I hid in my closet and wrote fanciful tales about the big house on the hill where I lived with my large, extended family.
- 80 published poems
- 49 published articles, monographs, & book chapters 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 (2013/1995)
- nonfiction books—The Night Orion Fell (2012), a commercial fishing disaster and Coast Guard rescue; Change Your Feelings (2009), how to change thoughts, feelings, and urges; The Soul of My Soldier (2015).
Short Biography
Some facts are plain—I grew up in New England and New York City. I have a family and a PhD. I live in Alaska surrounded by two extraordinary wonders—Tongass Rainforest and Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve. I have university degrees and have worked fulltime my adult life.
The rest does not delineate itself so clearly. Some days I’m a school psychologist and educator who specializes in behavioral science, inner behavior and precision teaching research. Other days I venture into a more untethered world of trees and oceans, poetry and characters in novels or nonfiction. In the silence of my study, I have conversations with these characters whether a monk from twelfth century Kiev Rus, a fisherman caught in the trawl reel of his boat, or soldiers having unspoken, leftover feelings. What I write usually possesses me and won’t let go. I dream it, walk it, shower with it, and my husband knows when I’m in “that place.” In addition to writing and consulting, I also garden, can, knit, laugh, walk, and enjoy the company of others.
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