Susan O'Connor
Susan O'Connor has taught English and speech and drama in grades 7-12 for many years. She has presented her ideas to teachers on the local,
state, and national levels. Her first book, Dance of Language, is a comprehensive language arts text for secondary students and is currently
in use in classrooms in Houston, Texas. A master teacher at the Rice University Summer School for Middle and High School Students
for fourteen years as well as a writer of curriculum for three school districts, Susan has a keen awareness of the varied needs of teachers
and their students and continues to offer creative solutions through writing books and articles and presenting workshops and lectures.
She has directed fiction writing workshops for middle school students for fourteen years, resulting in over a hundred regional
Scholastic Gold and Silver Key awards and twenty national Scholastic awards, honoring students at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.
and currently in New York City's Carnegie Hall. Her second book, Shakespeare by Any Other Name, a collection of plays for teenagers
based on five Shakespeare comedies, will come out in 2012, and she is now working on a grammar-for-writing text for 2013.
Awards include The T. H. Rogers School Teacher of the Year, Houston Independent School District's Elizabeth Brand Teacher Excellence Award,
and the first recipient of Harris County Department of Education's Susan O'Connor Teacher Excellence Award.