AUTHOR HIRED: Caitlin Hamilton Summie • Media campaign: print, online media, broadcast to Trades (Publishers Weekly, Booklist, etc)., Washington Post, media for teachers and education professionals, Dallas Morning News, Boston Globe, Boston Herald, WGBH, WBUR, Radio Boston, WWR, KERA, CBN, Christianity Today, selected women’s media and websites, alumni/university media, selected book bloggers and bookstagrammers, possibly media around career development, PR staff at The Dragon School • NetGalley • Content marketing • Targeted Ads • Marketing collateral • Social media • Events in Dallas, Boston, and possibly elsewhere, in bookstores or at festivals, churches, with associations or at teaching conferences, women’s groups, libraries, etc. • Author will be the guest speaker at Highland Park United Methodist Church on November 9, 2021.

Author has connections in Boston, Massachusetts, and Dallas, Texas. She lived in Boston for 30+ years for the majority of her career. She currently lives in Dallas, where she's part of the Dallas Writers Group and has already scheduled events in her community. The author also has connections in Oxford, England, where her memoir takes place. 

As a young book lover with dyslexia, Barbara found the solution to her reading struggles in Miss Gluding, her first grade teacher, who showed compassion for her student’s plight—and knew how to help her. From that time on, Barbara knew what she wanted to be: a teacher, just like Miss Gluding.

Unfortunately, Barbara also had some bad teachers in the years that ensued—including her sixth grade teacher, an exacting woman who called attention to Barbara’s learning disabilities in front of classmates. Still wanting to follow in Miss Gluding’s footsteps in 1964, Barbara vowed she would be a better one than her sixth grade teacher; instead, however, she became very much like her, with unattainable expectations for her students and herself. After seventeen years in the teaching profession, she realized she had to either change her teaching style or change careers. By providence, right as she stood at this crossroads, she was offered the opportunity to teach overseas at The Dragon School in Oxford, England, for a year—an opportunity she jumped at.

In the year that followed, Barbara would rely on her faith in God to give up a lot of what she knew about teaching and learn to do it differently—ways that wouldn’t have room for her perfectionism. In short, she would have to begin again.