Barbara lives in Texas with her husband, pianist Brady Millican, and their cat, Piper.

Bee: Welcome to Bookpleasures.com Barbara, thanks for taking part in our interview.

Barbara: It’s a pleasure. Thank-you for the invitation.

Bee: Using the title Dragons In My Classroom, as an acrostic, describe your work or yourself.

Barbara:To describe myself I created this acrostic:

Driven 

Inquisitive 

Mindful

Compassionate 

Bee: What is your favorite scene in the book? Why?

Barbara: One of my favorite scenes in the book takes place in late October 1998. I took a trip to the Lake District during a school break. While I was there, I became caught in a life-threatening situation. 

I love this scene because, it actually wrote itself. I think it’s one of the best and most palpable scenes in the book.

Bee: How long did it take you to write this book from concept to fruition? 

Barbara: 7 years. I started in 2015 after retiring from teaching and it will be published on June 14, 2022

Bee: When did you first have a desire to write?  

Barbara: I knew I wanted to write when I was about 10 years old.

Bee: How did this desire manifest itself?

Barbara: I wanted to write because of the books I read or those that were read to me. I remember my grandmother reading Anne of Green Gables to me when I was 8 or 9. My parents were also big readers. Growing up in the fifties, as a family, we didn’t watch tv at night; we read books.

Bee: How has your up-bring influenced your teaching and writing?

Barbara: My family was full of teachers and writers. Still is. My parents were in many ways my best teachers even though teaching wasn’t their profession.

It was the examples they set that influenced my teaching practice: being organized, sticking with something even though it’s really hard and learning from my mistakes. These are all traits I took with me as a teacher into my classroom.

Bee: Do you have any advice for new teachers?

Barbara: Yes!

I encourage new teachers not to get too carried away with all the things that they hope to do in their classrooms. We teachers are experts at doing too much, especially when it’s our first, second, or even third year of teaching.

We want to give students everything that we can and more. In doing so we exhaust ourselves and our students. So, despite how excited you are about your new classroom, don’t do too much.

There are two ways you’ll know if you are! Your students will appear listless and disinterested. To be sure these behaviors can also be the result of other things.

 But before you call home, look at what you’ve been doing in the classroom that may have overwhelmed them. Then you need to examine how you feel. Are you exhausted all the time? Are you taking too much work home?

Have you lost the enthusiasm you once had for a particular lesson plan or even for teaching itself? When you can identify any one of these circumstances, it means that you’re doing too much a.k.a. you’re becoming a perfectionist.

Take it from a perfectionist who struggled for 35 years in the classroom to constantly learn how to dial it back over and over. Teaching is the noblest of professions and the most exhausting. Don’t burn yourself out.

My second bit of advice is connected to the first one. You will make mistakes and some of them will be your own doing because you tried to do too much; you were disorganized that day, or you weren’t feeling well etc.

Learn to recognize how you feel, why you feel that way and give yourself a break. When I felt overwhelmed with what I had created for my students, I gave myself and them a 10-minute silent reading break.

I had a book in my desk and so did the kids. We loved these moments when together we could put everything aside and read. All teachers make mistakes; the best thing you can do is to acknowledge them.

In calm and honest language apologize for your mistake and move on. Your students will be far more ready to forgive you than you are to forgive yourself, another lesson we teachers learn from our students.

I’ll be thinking of all of you as you head into the summer and especially as you prepare to teach in the fall.

Bee: What writers have you drawn inspiration from?

Barbara: Many, but here’s a short list: Shakespeare, Jane Austen, May Sarton, Thomas Mann, Czeslaw Milosz, Thomas Hardy, TS Eliot, Simone Weil 

Bee: What was your first job?

Barbara:  A cook at a beach club on Long Island

Bee: What are you currently working on?

Barbara: Another memoir, a chap book of my poems, and a book on teaching Shakespeare.

Bee: Thanks again and good luck with Dragons in My Classroom and whatever comes next for you?

Barbara: I enjoyed our interview! Thank-you!

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