From the time Stephen Currie was a little boy, he dreamed of being a writer. As a child, Stephen was forever creating stories, although many of them, he says, proved to be excuses for making long lists (e.g., presidents of the United States, friends in his neighborhood, etc.), which kept creeping into and filling up his tales. At the urging of a professor while he was a student of history and German at Williams College, Stephen wrote a scholarly essay called “Zachary Taylor: Plantation Owner.” The piece was an analysis of original letters, which the college owned but had never examined, written by the 12th president of the United States to his plantation manager in Rodney, Mississippi. When it was published in Civil War History, Stephen’s writing career was officially launched.

Upon his graduation in 1982, Stephen landed a position teaching kindergarten at Poughkeepsie Day School and has been a member of the faculty ever since. It was while teaching a combined 1-2 classroom (1989-2000) that he became known within the PDS community for his daily celebrations of “birthday people.” Stephen used the child-friendly device to introduce his students to a wide-variety of famous—and infamous—individuals (including such diverse notables as Plato, Ulysses S. Grant, Calamity Jane and Scott Joplin). Interweaving their particular claims to fame (acting, scientific research, cooking, etc.) into classroom activities, he gave his students memorable snapshots of the people who helped shape world and cultural history. And it was his birthday people concept that resulted in The Birthday A Day Book (Good Year Books, 1996).

Among the many directions in which Stephen’s writing has taken him, a significant one has continued to flow from his work with children at PDS. Women Inventors (Lucent Books, 2001) stemmed from his interest in history and storytelling and also from his birthday people days here. It also caught the eye of producers at the History Channel, who contacted him last fall about their plan to do a documentary on the very same theme.

Stephen was flown out to Los Angeles for an all-expenses-paid interview and taping, a major portion of which was included in the History Channel’s "Mothers of Invention," which aired last Saturday, March 27 as part of its programming for Women’s History Month. In it he discussed Margaret Knight, who invented a machine that made brown paper bags, and Madame Walker, the first African-American female millionaire, famous for her hair-care products for black women.

“It was great fun talking to the History Channel folks,” says Stephen. “They liked that I could tell stories about these women, unlike many of the scholarly people they often contact for programs like this. They wanted someone who could explain things in a way that most people could understand and I was able to do that for them.”

As the part-time lower school math specialist at PDS for the past two years, Stephen has been able to continue doing what he loves most: teaching and writing. The time “off” from PDS allows him to write nonfiction children’s and young adult books (he has more than two-dozen to his credit) as well as publications in the less creative but quite lucrative textbook and related educational-materials area.

In his capacity as the lower school math specialist, Stephen works closely with teachers and students three days a week. One of his favorite responsibilities is introducing the Problem of the Week to the 3-4 classes as a way to help students apply the skills and concepts they are learning within a larger, more complex context. He also has created Math Tubs, a collection of math resources which each student within the lower school takes home for a weekend as a fun and challenging enhancement to their in-school math work.

Want to know more about our lower school program? Please visit our lower school section of this Web site or contact lower school head Mary Ellen Kenny.