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Who is Tim Graves?
Tim Graves is a committed early childhood educator and father
of two adult children. During his career, he has served children
directly through full-time work in early childhood programs as both
a teacher and a director for eighteen years, spent fourteen years teaching early childhood courses on a full- and part-time
basis at several community colleges, recently completed a year working with families
of children with developmental delays in an early intervention system.
Tim has returned part-time to the college classroom while growing
and expanding training and consultation services he provides through
Training Wheels.
Professional Activities
Graves provides on-site workshops and consultations
as well as a website service and newsletter service for early
childhood programs through
his company, Training
Wheels for Early Childhood Education. He has presented frequently
on a variety of topics in the midwest,
northeast, and Texas. Graves has been a member of the
National Association
for the Education of Young Children and local affiliate groups
since 1978. He served on the
 Governing Board of the
New York State
Association for the Education of Young Children as editor of the
association's newsmagazine, the Reporter. He served on the Board of
the St. Louis
Association for the Education of Young Children and the Bennington
County (VT) Child Care Association and was a member of the Vermont
Children's Forum. Tim was recently selected to be included in the
annual edition of Who's Who Among American Teachers for a
fourth
time. He currently serves on the board of the
Holy
Family Child Care and Development Center.
Tim's Talk, on Graves' Training Wheels for Early Childhood Education website
features his writings. His articles have also been featured in the
NYSAEYC Reporter, the International Democratic Education
Conference magazine, and on
www.gokid.org, a San Francisco
guide for parents. Graves tends to blend his personal and
professional lives together in his writing.
Personal & Family
It is obvious by the use of the photographs of his children
in
 his printed materials and the personal parenting stories he uses
liberally in his classes and presentations that his family is
important to
Graves. Graves and his wife, Maggie Sebastian, an ordained minister of the
Christian Church
(Disciples of Christ) have been married for twenty-eight years. Rev. Sebastian
is senior pastor at the
First Christian
Church in Wheeling, West Virginia.
Isaac, home schooled himself (after
experiences in a variety of public and alternative schools including
the Albany
Free School, was involved in the
2003 International
Democratic Education Conference, was an intern at the
Alternative Education Resource Organization,
and has also traveled to Israel, Spain, Puerto
Rico, India, Thailand, and New Zealand as part of his self-education.
As part of his senior year of home schooling, Isaac traveled
around the world for five-months. He has
been published three times in the
Disciples
World magazine. Currently Isaac teaches full time at
Harriet Tubman Free School in Albany, New York.
Jessica is a graduate of Hiram
College in Ohio. Jessica is a talented writer majoring in Creative
Writing/English with a minor in Religious Studies. She was the
winner of the
Ralph
and Marion G. Kroehle Foundation Award in Creative Nonfiction
and the Barbara Thompson
Award for Short Fiction. She also was the 2005 winner of
the Howard Seymour
Bissell Scholarship in recognition of excellence, based on
merit, talent, achievement and promise. Jessica is currently
working with teen mothers at Florence Crittenton in Wheeling, West
Virginia. Crittenton is a residential facility. Jessica is
also the artist of the Professor Tim cartoon that has become Graves' alter-ego.
The Story Behind the Cartoon.
 While
in Montreal with his family in 1996 or 1997, Mr.
Graves' then-twelve-year old daughter amused herself
while waiting for a pizza by drawing on the back of the placemat. She drew an early
beardless* version of the
cartoon with Mr. Graves as Indiana Jones, as a ballerina, as an Olympic
athlete, and doing karate. Somehow, the image caught on and has
gradually become Mr. Graves' alter-ego. (It is unclear why the drawings were
beardless as Mr. Graves' had a beard at the time.)
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