Community leaders join to promote ‘Talking is Teaching’

Building strong interactions between family members and their babies can increase brain development and foster life-long academic and emotional skills in children. Teaching parents these activities can be easy and fun is the goal of the Talking is Teaching: Talk, Read, Sing campaign led by the National Too Small to Fail campaign. This campaign launched locally on Jan. 22 at Malaga Elementary School with a celebration attended by educators, administrators, students and families of the Fowler Unified School District, as well as community leaders.

The campaign is working to address the problem of “word gap.” Research shows that by the time children enter kindergarten some will have heard 30 million fewer utterances of words than other children. Parents who talk, sing and read to their children can decrease this word gap, improving the changes of student success and quality of life.

The community launch featured a panel of speakers, including Superintendent of Fowler Unified School District Eric Cederquist, Fresno County District Attorney Lisa Smittcamp, Director of Community Development of Granville Homes Kendra Rogers, Senior Manager Too Small to Fail Kara Dukakis, Managing Director of The Children’s Movement of Fresno Linda Gleason and Fresno County Superintendent of Schools Jim Yovino. Rogers presented a $100,000 check on behalf of Granville Homes President Darius Assemi to benefit the campaign.

For more information on Too Small to Fail and Talk, Read, Sing, please visit www.toosmall.org.