I was a teacher of teachers in a university full time for 24 years teaching teachers how to teach reading and writing and also teaching teachers themselves how to write, which was wonderful and great fun.
So the passion of my life now as a retired university professor is…stalking parents all over the world I guess you could put it like that and begging them almost on bended knee to read to their children everyday for 10 minutes or so everyday between birth and five.
Because the children who’ve been read to who have learned to love books, who know how to turn pages, who’ve seen print, who’ve talked about pictures, who’ve had conversations with adults, endless conversations about what they’re reading…those children bond with their parents. Their parents bond with them. They all bond with books. The children grow up happy because they know that they’re loved because their parents actually take time to be with them every single day. Their brains develop in a most fantastic way.
So pediatricians are begging children to be read to, begging parents to read to children. Speech pathologists are begging parents to read to children. It’s not just me. I’m not on some kind of mad high horse with some, you know, great hobby going. It is a hugely, hugely important thing to be doing.
But I know from having been an educator of teachers for 24 years that nothing is as important in learning how to read than being read to everyday from birth to five. So that’s my passion and that is really who I am.
