I do work in family literacy, I focus on showing parents how to read to their children.

I've always been a good reader.

I would read to my friends in the park right across from my house, I just assumed that I could teach everybody.

And so I got this bright idea that I could have a Saturday school.

My daddy was a part time barber.

So I knew I would have a captive audience because all the boys would come on Saturday morning.

And then if the boys were trying to wiggle out of my class, I would tell my daddy.

My daddy would say, “Son, can you read?

” And they would say, “No, sir ”.

And then he said, You have to come to my school.

that's how I got into teaching I was the youngest uncertified teacher in Dougherty County.

The experience that you all are getting is fantastic because you get a chance to see the whole school year I feel that it's my duty and responsibility to make sure that I help students understand how they can work with families and children.

We do have to show teachers how to talk across race lines and class lines.

but the question becomes how do you relate that to practice?

And that's how I went down to Donaldsonville, Donaldsonville is about 40 miles from Baton Rouge.

It's about 50 miles from New Orleans.

what I discovered at this particular school, the black parents was saying the teachers didnt like them because they were black.

And the white parents were saying the teachers, didnt like them because they were poor.

And nobody was getting along.

And I told them that illiteracy was odorless and it was colorless and that it didn't make a difference if you were black or white and you didn't know how to read.

I only had $500 and I created a national model.

The Parents as Partners program.

Having teachers learn about families and having families understand what schooling is about.

Teachers and parents have to figure out how theyre going to get along together.

Otherwise, children fail in the process.

It's like a seesaw.

You cannot be on a seesaw unless you have a partner.

You won't have that balance.

Anything you want to know about teaching has been developed in Erickson Hall.

We've had faculty members that have written things that have shaped the way we think about teaching and learning all over the world.

I pinch myself as this little black girl that grew up in the Deep South that was teaching in my backyard and to think that now I'm on the level where people are now thinking about me in the way that I thought about some of the giants in the field has made me feel like I have made a difference Being named a University Distinguished Professor is very humbling.