Writings of author Betty Tesh

"The Handy-Dandy Desktop Mentor"
New teachers need mentors to advise them about teaching techniques, classroom management,lesson plans, problem students, stress reduction, and other educational matters. Many state departments of education don't offer mentoring programs for initially certified teachers, and school administrators have limited supervisiory time, so beginning teachers must find their own educational support systems.

"Future Perfect"
At forty-seven, Carrie Melton is a woman in crisis. As she puts it, "Everything I thought I had nailed down had come loose - the most surprising being the flood of emotion I felt when I saw his name on the roster." The name is Jackson D. McKeithan, Carrie's long-lost first love, and the roster is the class roll for a course she will be teaching - at Greensville Correctional Center, one of Virginia's maximum-secuirity prisons. This is an insprirational romance with a decidedly untraditional cast of characters.

"May I Help You Said the Counselor?"

It's football season in West Deerfield and the town's in a frenzy: Will the high school's Golden Bucks reclaim their former glory? For Sevi Norwood, WDHS' newest counselor, the pigskin panic is but a noisy backdrop as she struggles to find her place on a hostile faculty and prove herself a worthy replacement for their former counselor, the recently deceased and highly venerated "Miss Ola" Leonard.

When her beleaguered principal attempts to force her into "virtual dismissal," when a mysterious girl commits suicide on her front steps, and when a student aide reports nightmares of the perfect "Miss Ola" burning in hell, Sevi attempts to do what all good counselors do: make it better. Will she succeed, or will her first year as a school counselor be her last?

"Raising Sand"
I had just come back from my retirement dinner when my sister Emmaline called to say that God had spoken to her. "I know you won't believe it," she said, "but I was sitting here fretting myself to death about Mama and Aunt Beam, and, as clear as anything, God announced, right out loud, 'Kate is available.' " "What did God say I was available for, Emmaline?" "Why, to move back to Shady Springs, of course. He doesn't think it wise for those two precious lambs to live alone any more." I wanted to tell her God was sitting in my kitchen that very minute, telling me that she must of been conversing with somebody else, because never in a million years would He call Aunt Beam a 'precious lamb,' but I kept my mouth shut, since I knew she'd insist God would definitely rather talk to someone who is the church secretary, a women's circle leader, and the head of the missions comittee than someone who hasn't seen the inside of a church since Easter Sunday, 1992.

Unable to argue with both Emmaline and God, I packed two suitcases, locked the doors of my comfortable little Cape Cod cottage with its recently renovated kitchen and top-of-the-line Majestic patio room with three -season livability and committed myself to become chief care-giver for the Queens of Shady Springs.

How was I to know I was driving straight into a political, environmental, and emotional tempest?

"A Beckenskill Christmas"
A Beckenskill Christmas is a magical story about ten-year old Abigail Beckenskill whose parents leave without explanation on December 22, 1957, turning Abby over to her Uncle Andrew and Aunt Ophelia for the holidays. At the insistence os her snooty Aunt Ophelia, Abby is sent away to spend Christmas in Scuppernog, North Carolina, with her Great Aunts, Lottie and Poloma Beckenskill.

These two strange and wonderfully eccentric women welcome Abigail their home and immediately set out planning one of their famous Christmas Extravaganzas, but as the days progress, Abby begins to wonder if this is going to be her best or wrost Christmas ever.

Woben into the story are three other stories: The best and/or worst Christmas memories from each of the great-aunts and from Abigail herself.

"Georgia of Collins Beach"
Georgia, an imaginative, shy twelve-year old. lives with her family in a train on the shores of the Albermarle Sound (North Carolina). As the United States enters the Great Depression, she learns to face her fear of the "rail-riders" who come SDouth looking for work, and in so doing, finds the courage to turn one of her dreams into a reality by creating a community park for her neighbors to enjoy.