I repeatedly go through examples of the proper ways to join two sentences (comma and a conjunction OR a semicolon but NOT just a comma).

Run-on sentences! I don’t know why this is so hard, but they write comma splices all the time. What's a common problem/issue that your students have and how do you address it? I’m always improving my own writing through teaching my sixth graders, and I’m always discovering more about what they like to read through our discussions about books.

and well, several manuscripts later, I finally found a publisher!īecause I teach middle school English and write middle grade and YA, the two careers actually go really well together. It was a long slow process, but I finally got a few pieces published and then decided it was time to try novel writing. That got me started on writing for magazines for children. About eight years into my teaching career, I decided it was finally time to dust off my writing ambitions, so I took a correspondence course in writing for children through the Institute for Children’s Literature(ICL). That did not diminish my desire to write, though. My dad convinced me there was no money in writing, so I went for the teacher track! At Marquette University (where I went for undergrad), I had a choice between being an English Education major and an English Writing Intensive Career. Through my grade school and high school years, I wavered back and forth between wanting to be a writer and wanting to be a teacher. Would you start by telling our readers how you became a TeachingAuthor ? How do you balance teaching and writing?

Her goal in both writing and teaching is to empower young people so that they may live extraordinary lives filled with heart and hope. She has also been published in numerous children’s magazines and Chicken Soup for the Soul books. Her newest novel, the middle-grade mystery Seven Riddles to Nowhere, releases from Vinspire August 31, and tells the story of a boy trying to save his school from closing. Her debut young-adult novel Angelhood (Vinspire Publishing) won a Gold Medal in the Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards and an Honorable Mention from Readers’ Favorite Book Awards. Cattapan is a bestselling author, speaker, and middle school English teacher living in the Chicago area.

7 Riddles to Nowhere by A.J. Cattapan