Today’s #TeacherTuesday is Charlene Crawford, a member of the Abington Education Association. Charlene is a first grade teacher at Rydal Elementary who is also a prolific author, whose titles include “The Boy Who Called Wolf retold by the Wolf,” “Number Lake,” “I Love Me,” Lucky the Lady Bug,” and “Adventures with Granny in the Garden.” Charlene’s books may be found in the Abington Library, at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
Charlene’s writing has been influenced by teaching – particularly “Number Lake.” Her students had a hard time with the concept of greater than, less than, and equal to. “I told my students a story about a fish named Hungary who was always hungry and lived in number lake,” says Charlene. “He opened his mouth to eat the number kelp. Each time he opened his mouth, it was the symbol. He was always hungry so he only opened his mouth for the biggest number. I told this story every year to my students when we got to this concept. One of my curriculum specialists was observing me teach one day and asked about my reference to Hungary. So the students told her the story. She said, ‘That’s a clever story. You should have it published.’ And that was the beginning of my love of writing for younger children.”