Former Contributor to the Huffington Post
Vicki Cobb's Blog
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I'm a teacher.  Can you tell?  I started out as a scientist-- a biochemist and took a lab job right out of college.  I gave mice cancer, then I gave them drugs, then I measured the cancer to see if the drugs worked.  Not my cup of tea.

So I went back to school and got a masters in secondary science education.   I also got married.  It was hard to get a teaching job in those days because I had an advanced degree, which meant they had to pay me more; I was inexperienced, so they had no idea what kind of teacher I would be and I was married, which meant I would get pregnant and leave.  I was also very young, 21, and my husband was off in the army.  Finally, I landed a teaching job for 7th, 8th, and 9th grade science.  I was told to teach modern atomic theory to the 8th grade.  They gave me a terrible, boring book to teach from.  I noticed the door was closed.  No one was watching, so I went to the library and got a bunch of books with titles like, The Story of the Atom.  That's the way I taught, using  appropriate children's nonfiction  for that unit and all the others.  At the end of the school year  I gave my students two days of test prep for the "achievement test" in science.  They did fine. Those were the days when teachers had autonomy.  Today, if you teach as I did, you'd be called subversive. 

After 2 1/2 years I got pregnant and they made me quit teaching. I still had three months to go before Theo would arrive.  There was an ad in the NY Times for teachers to write educational materials.  So I went to Brooklyn for an interview.  The publisher was in a storefront with the slogan "Simplicity Is Worth Millions."  (Wishful thinking).  He asked me if I could write a high school chemistry text. I said I thought  I could.  He asked me to write a chapter, "but it has to be simple." I went home and wrote a chapter which he handed back to me with the statement, "It's not simple enough."  So I rewrote the chapter and brought it back.  "It's still not simple enough," he said.  After the third try, he gave me the contract!  I discovered what cloud #9 feels like!  Then Theo was born and I wrote the book with him in his infant seat at my feet.  My name was never going to be on that book, I was paid a flat fee, and in the long run, it was never published.  But I had found my calling.  I could do something  interesting at home while I raised my kids.

And so I wrote, and wrote and wrote while life happened.  My kids grew up, even my grandchildren grew up and here I am today still writing about science, and interesting nonfiction for kids, and the love of learning.   In 2008 I was asked to contribute to a group blog called "Interesting Nonfiction for Kids"  (INK!)  I discovered my inner blogger.  Then I blogged for a newspaper called Education Update.  In 2013, I started blogging for the Huffington Post and became a Contributor in 2016.  Finally, now, I'm on my own.

I invite you to enjoy your time with me.  

Links

The Nonfiction Minute
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​iNK Think Tank website

​Vicki Cobb's Kids' Fun Page

We Dare You Videos


Company

iNK Think Tank, Inc. is a nonprofit with the mission of using nonfiction children's literature in classrooms

Contact

vicki@inkthinktank.org
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© 2019


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