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 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

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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