Author Biography
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Sue Haynes |
author photo by Debbie McGarr |
Sue began her teaching career as the teacher/director of The Newtowne Nursery School in Cambridge, MA. after receiving a B.A. from Tufts University and a M.S.ed. in special education from Wheelock College. Following her two years at the nursery school, she spent a year as a play therapist at Children's Hospital in Boston where she consulted with T.Berry Brazelton M.D. (author of a number of child development books) about the specialized growth needs of failure-to-thrive and battered children. When her youngest of three sons was eight, she returned to teaching as a special education teacher at Mount Desert Island High School in Bar Harbor. In 1987 Sue completed a Masters in Literacy at The University of Maine. Two years later she taught kindergarten at the Blue Hill Consolidated School in Blue Hill, Maine. Following her kindergarten experience, she taught teacher education courses for five years at The College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine. From that time until a few years ago she has combined private tutoring with part-time special education teaching on outer islands off of Mount Desert Island (where she has lived for the past twenty-nine years). She is currently doing private tutoring and facilitating study groups for parents and teachers on "Exploring Authentic Teaching and Learning."
Throughout her teaching career, Sue has focused on empowering her learners to achieve their inner potential through honoring and encouraging their strengths, interests, and creative expression. Many of the students in her classrooms, and the vast majority of students she has tutored, have been students who have struggled with standardized education. Often they have been mislabeled "learning disabled" or ADD. Through honoring their individual uniqueness, Sue witnessed their highly creative orientation and began identifying them as "creatively gifted." She discovered that instead of being dysfunctional learners, they were truly beacons of authentic learning. Sue has spent the past six years writing Creative Mavericks: Beacons of Authentic Learning to inspire education transformation.
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