Robert Needlman, co-founder and board member of Reach Out and Read, was the SLJ Fostering Lifelong Learners keynote speaker. Photos by Carolyn Sun
Robert Needlman, a pediatrician at the MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland and cofounder of Reach Out and Read, keynoted this year’s annual Fostering Lifelong Learners: Investing in Our Children daylong program, presented by School Library Journal and sister publication The Horn Book Journal, at the Cuyahoga County (OH) Public Library outside of Cleveland on September 19. There, over 100 librarians, early childhood educators, and various stakeholders came together to learn and discuss how to best serve the literacy and other early learning needs of children. Needlman titled his address “Partnership with Pediatricians” and put forward (in his PowerPoint slideshow) to the crowd that the “single most important activity for building the knowledge required to eventual success in reading is reading aloud to kids.”
“We never know the promise that is in those little people,” he said about his daughter, Grace, whom he cited during his speech several times with great pride, along with children at large.
He spoke about how Grace had one day asked him how people can read “when the words are always moving on the page”—the moment he realized she had dyslexia—and how she went on to not only graduate from college but earn her Master’s degree. In addition, he offered insight into the number one mistake he sees as a pediatrician with regards to reading to a child: reading a book verbatim. Reading, said Needlman, is an opportunity to initiate conversations, ask questions, and provide explanations.
“You don’t have to be a good reader to have a conversation about a picture in a book.”
Dr. Needlman co-authored “Dr. Spock Baby and Child Care 9th Edition.”
The co-author of Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care, Ninth Edition (Gallery Books, 2012) recounted his travels to Thailand after the 2004 tsunami and how he’d brought a pile of books with him. “The kids were simply fascinated [by the books].” His post-tsunami travels, he shared, reminded him of the role of books beyond literacy. Books restore a sense of normalcy and health to post-disaster situations, and he used the story to segue into another “post-disaster situation”—Cleveland—where he serves as a professor of pediatric research at the city’s Case Western Reserve University of Medicine. According to figures released by the U.S. Census Bureau on September 18, Cleveland’s poverty level is at 54.4 percent for children and 36.9 percent for residents (both adult and children). Some places are an ongoing disaster, said Needlman, citing these figures.
“[Reach Out and Read] is not a panacea… it takes all of us working together if we want to get those underprivileged kids to start school where they are performing at the level where they need to.” Needlman showed figures illustrating reading scores of low-income children following their participation in “Reach Out and Read” clinics. The scores were higher and exceeded those of other reading clinics that served the same communities—but, he pointed out, the children were still not even achieving an average score (100) in reading.
The keynoter covered a swath of topics—from how reading helps a child form attention and language development, two skills needed to perform in schools; to how learning changes the brain (called brain plasticity) so that children who suffer from dyslexia, who use both left and right sides of the brain to read, can be trained to use the left side of the brain (what non-dyslexic people use to read) before entering school.
Needlman also revealed the effects of toxic stress—or when kids are subjected to stress beyond their ability to cope—which changes kids’ brain in a negative way: a destruction of the prefrontal cortex, which is used during executive functions, including making decisions and considering alternatives; and the enlargement of the amygdala, the emotional center for feelings such as rage or lust. Non-cognitive abilities, he revealed, such as self-control, planning, and the ability to delay gratification (and to think things through before acting) are lost through the atrophication of the prefrontal cortex and the overactivity of the amygdala. These non-cognitive abilities are all crucial for success in school and in life, said the Ohio pediatrician.
After his keynote, the crowd approached Dr. Needlman with questions.
While he didn’t offer a cure-all, the early literacy advocate offered hope: “The two worlds [of cognitive and non-cognitive abilities seem to] come together when reading aloud to young children… Language creates communication, and that creates self-regulatory speech and brings behavior into line… the ability to master language supports the sense of competence, and story builds self-awareness.”
He also expressed delight that the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) published “Literacy Promotion: An Essential Component of Primary Care Pediatric Practice” this past June, which contains the recommended AAP policy that parents read to their children from birth, as reported by SLJ on July 3.
“I hope it moves us closer to the time where books are essential.”
Using the phrase professional autism, or the tendency for professionals to concern themselves solely about the work within their professional peripheral vision, Needlman spoke adamantly about the need for professions to venture out of their own fields and collaborate with other professions. With “early childhood literacy we have to think about the meaningful interactions that exist.”
“Libraries could function as training sites for doctors on a regular basis.” He recounted a recent visit to a public library where he watched healthy children play with each other for two hours. He intends to send his pediatric residents to the library for child/parent observation.
Needlman also spoke of the day when parents and children can visit a doctors’ office, and with the click of a mouse, the doctor can order a specific learning program for the child that parents can obtain in libraries. While this collaboration between the two professions does not exist yet on a widespread basis, the conversation, he said, is happening.
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