Stefania Shaffer

Stefania Shaffer traded a successful career in corporate America for the middle school classroom as an English Language Arts teacher in a bold move for a second career.

She taught 2,700 seventh graders the art of reading and writing well, and everything else to 100 more third graders before she retired to the country.

She writes middle-grade fiction. Her first novel pays homage to extraordinary teachers through the eyes of an underdog student in Heroes Don’t Always Wear Capes; then bridging empathy and redemption she wrote The Mischief Series, about a posse of fifth grade mischief-makers, following their antics in and out of the classroom as they navigate a crooked path through middle school, each of the five books spanning a different grade level.

Stefania also writes nonfiction for adults with the memoir 9 Realities of Caring for An Elderly Parent: A Love Story of a Different Kind, based on her experience caring for her mother with dementia, the hardest job she’s known—and her greatest privilege. This topic led to invitations from SF Talk Radio with powerhouses Ronn Owens/KGO and Michael Krasny/KQED. The Book of Mormon In Laman’s Layman’s Terms is her ninth book. Decoding the scriptures was born of a desire to help her investigator husband study the Book of Mormon. The more questions he had, the more she wrote, hoping a seed would be planted. It took root.

She has been a national keynote speaker for over seventy-five education and leadership conferences, most notably GatesEd, inspiring 500 teacher leaders about the connections we make in the classroom, as well as The Aspen Institute, helping congressional leaders understand the 21st century learner.

She lives in Northern California with her beloved husband where she remains equal parts exhilarated and exhausted chasing her dreams.