Starting Young
As a longtime early literacy educator, Dr. Jean Ciborowski Fahey, ???71, is passionate about the need to expose children??to reading at an early age in order to lay the foundation for optimal brain development.
Her efforts to bring that message to parents, notably through her 2014 book, Make Time for Reading, recently earned Dr. Fahey national recognition as the 2016 Toyota Teacher of the Year. The award, presented in conjunction with the National Center for Families Learning, brought with it a $20,000 grant to build on her literacy work.
???Initially I was surprised because I was going after what I thought was a long shot,??? the Yarmouth Port resident said. ???Then I felt really proud that I???ve been able to carve a unique niche??? in the early literacy field.
As director of the Reading Partnership program at South Shore Hospital, Dr. Fahey for the past 16 years has taught family literacy strategies to teachers, childcare providers, and others. She was spurred to take on that teaching work from her experience in a previous job helping assess young people with reading and other learning problems.????
???I thought instead of fixing the problem we should be preventing it,??? she said. ???We have technology now that helps us understand how the brain develops??? and the role reading plays.??
She said she wrote her book ???to translate the science to parents so they really understood it and could get excited about it.??? To make it readily accessible to her target audience of low-income parents ??? including nonreaders ??? she wrote it as a children???s book.
To date, 13,000 copies of her book, including some in Spanish, have been distributed to parents of newborns at South Shore Hospital, local Head Start programs, and a pediatrician???s office. The grant Dr. Fahey received will enable her to publish another 1,000 copies and translate the book into Portuguese.
In addition to the bachelor???s degree in history she earned at Bridgewater, Dr. Fahey has a master???s degree in special education from Boston College and a PhD in education from Claremont University??
She said her years at BSU, where she interacted with many aspiring teachers, set her firmly on her career path.
???I think that planted the seed,??? she said.
(To purchase or learn more about Make Way for Reading, go to www.readingfarm.net??or contact Dr. Fahey at faheyjean@aol.com)