A Comeback Tour
For many reasons, the most obvious being pre and post COVID, I have not been speaking to students or educators or to parents as I have in past years - as I should be.
Add to that, there are many new teachers and teaching assistants, new administrators and parents who might look at my name and imagine a surging old hockey player.
So to take a step back...
My career is that of a teacher/administrator, first on the prairie, then in British Columbia. Somewhat unintentionally, about 30 years ago, I started writing. I have never been a strong reader but I have always lavished stories. Writing has allowed me to access the world of story telling, of story tellers.
I lived through my school years struggling with disabilities and expectations that created unforgiving stress. If this reflects your experience, I hope you are fortunate enough to have Raven as your guide, as I do. I learned to adapt. I learned to offset my weaknesses with my gifts.
I was and remain creative.
That creativity has allowed me to author several books with my Grandmothers as my guides. My Grandmothers live in my DNA, as yours, dear reader, live in yours. I have authored a significant number of books on Prairie life, on Chinese cultural events, on succeeding in spite of overwhelming challenges and on animals and on Indigenous traditions and values and the list is long.
My creativity has also allowed me to question educational practices, specifically those attributed to the teaching of reading. My learnings led to my writing the Gift of Reading and For the Love of Reading.
Promoting literacy should be our collective focus from before our children are born until they leave secondary school. Teaching children to read and to love reading is the shared responsibility of every teacher, administrator and parent. My two books focus on how to turn our homes and our schools into environments rich in literature and how we can model the love of reading for our children and our students.
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To complement my writing, I began speaking. I started sharing my learning with students, educators and parents. I spent 28 years speaking the world over to over a million people. Here is a link to some feedback: https://davidbouchard.com/speaking/testimonials
Today, I am speaking. I am writing. I am anxiously awaiting three new books as I travel, inspiring kids and adults as it pertains to reading, to their many unique gifts and to the importance of stories, both hearing and writing them.
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