J.L. Slipak
My World
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LIGHT OF DARK
Published January 3rd, 2008
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awritersconnection@msn.com
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WOVEN IN TIME
To Be Published In Summer 2009
Fantasy Genre
To Be Published In Summer 2009
Fantasy Genre
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DIAL 911-DEAD
To Be Published in Summer 2009
Supernatural Thriller Genre
DIAL 911-DEAD
To Be Published in Summer 2009
Supernatural Thriller Genre
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My World Of Business
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My World Of Business
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My Future Books
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My World Of Katie
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www.finessedancestudioinc.com
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My World Of Politics
My World Of Politics
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My World Of Education
PUBLIC SPEAKING:
SPEECH GIVEN AT OAKWOOD PUBLIC SCHOOL
Port Colborne - February 24, 2009
"Literacy In Our Schools and Homes And My Life"
First, I’d like to thank Oakwood School and its staff for having me here tonight to speak to you all about literacy in our schools and homes and how literacy played an important part in my life and in my careers, one being a published author. I believe literacy is crucial to the success of students in both their career aspirations and their quality of life. A strong understanding that literacy is more than a basic reading ability can only serve to help our children and then our future adults, function better in society and succeed in life.
The world we live in today is vastly different from that of a generation ago. Technological change has transformed the way in which we achieve our goals, either on a personal level or a career level. Having a population that has strong literacy skills also places a country in a better position to meet the complex social challenges that it faces. This is why literacy should be a fundamental learning process in schools. But not only in schools, literacy should also extend into our homes after school hours.
Once upon a time, families used to spend a lot more time together reading, talking, laughing and learning. They didn’t sit at computers almost 76% of their day; they didn’t have conversations through msn messaging, text messaging, or emails. Once upon a time, our world was not such a place driven by the need to keep up technologically, the need to succeed more so than our neighbours, the need to be the best at work, or, driven by the need to survive… Times have indeed changed, and although these changes are foremost in our society, literacy has remained unvarying. Educators continue to strive to ensure that literacy has come to take on a broader meaning, standing for a range of knowledge, skills and abilities relating to all topics building our child’s education. A perfect example would be with the rise of technology in our society, the ability to use and apply key mathematics and science concepts is now necessary across a wide range of occupations. This forces our educators to change their approach to education to accommodate the need to succeed with these advancements.
Literacy in our schools provides the foundation upon which such skills needed in the labour market are based, literacy supported in our homes, further develops a child’s growth in a positive way. At one time the ability to read, understand and use information was what comprised literacy in our schools. The focus was to understand the written word, be able to construct properly the written sentence, and to be able to read and digest the meaning behind the written word. I’m a product of that era. And although that era worked equally as hard to succeed, the approach to success was most certainly different than it is today.
Today, we face a world focused on obtaining a stronger future, with more than a good job, decent earnings and access to promotions through training. We seem to see our kids thinking about this at younger ages, being taught this principle as early as eight years of age. Yes, it is highly important to closely link successes to obtaining and maintaining strong literacy skills. And yes, it is most important to start teaching about the connection of success to literacy early on in a child’s intellectual development through schools, but there is also another aspect that is sadly lacking, the family connection involving literacy.
We must realize as parents, that literacy should be promoted in our homes too. Taking the time in our hectic lives to sit and read a book with our child, discuss a story that you’ve read together and listen to your child’s take on what you just finished reading, is also crucial to our children’s learning process. We must re-connect that link involving family time and literacy. In doing so, the rewards are guaranteed to be endless. When I attended school, literacy was more about reading, writing, grammar… as a child going through the educational system, I especially enjoyed these lessons and looked forward to attending classes that allowed me to feed my creative side.
I was fortunate enough to grow up in a home of readers. Reading was very important to my parents, both were avid readers and clearly had a strong understanding of the importance of a good education. They encouraged reading after school, on weekends and during free time. I remember as a child, spending hours reading a novel, unable to put it down until I had finished reading it cover to cover. I even had very special novels that I kept and read again and again. Nancy Drew was my hero and I wanted to be just like her. The Archie comic books… I think I have them all still, I collected them with my father and read them over and over again, even secretly when they were deemed childish for a thirteen year old.
As a teen, I never went anywhere without a book I was reading constantly and used any moment of free time in between dancing and school, to read. I remember my father would often take me to a local bookstore that had used books and a book exchange program that I participated in quite frequently in order to get a new book to read. I learned to love the written word because once I opened the cover of a book I was taken on an incredible journey into far away places imagined by great writers. Reading was my escape and still is as I often disappear inside a good novel to forget daily stresses or concerns.
My creative side couldn’t get enough of the written word, I wanted and craved more; it fuelled the side of me that I now rely on as a published author. As a published author, I truly appreciate the hard work of my teachers, and my parents’ ability to promote a love for reading, writing and understanding of the written word. Their encouragement is responsible in part for who I am today. I believe that I am a published author because of my great understanding for the need of having a strong foundation in literacy.
I believe education is the route to take, I believe that you must never think yourself “done” with learning once you’ve graduated from a post-secondary education. I strongly encourage all to continue with building their education throughout their lives in order to keep up with all the changes our world is going through. You are never too old to learn. On speaking about the topic of writing for a career, and when asked what advice I could give to those parents who have young children that love to read, or write stories, I encourage them to try and understand and maintain this vital concept while building their child’s foundation in literacy. This same concept can be applied to building our future doctors, or future astronauts, or perhaps, our future leaders of our country.
My concept is this… I cannot stress how important it is to feed the creative part of our children’s lives. We tend to think only of the academics that apply to math and sciences that lead toward fitting into this technological society that is quickly growing around us. But having a child, who wants to write stories and read books, is equally as important, since both nurture the creative side to their personal growth, and in turn teach them to see past the guidelines or boundaries/beliefs possibilities most people set for themselves as prerequisites to enter the work force or rule their daily lives.
We as parents, tend push our children to excel with the essentials they need for high school, university and then careers. Those essentials of course, are very important but what about the substance of character that is derived from creativity? What we are forgetting is that some of the greatest inventions of our time were born through the creative imaginations of inventors, researchers and dreamers. They believed or dared enough to imagine amazing possibilities that sometimes fell outside the realm of norm, where success was but a venture past the lines and boundaries set by academics and social expectations.
One cannot believe in miracles, if one doesn’t dare to imagine or dream the possibility that one could exist. One cannot dream of possibilities, if we do not nurture the imagination and creativity born from reading books. If that side of us isn’t cultivated too, then we will simply succeed with existing in life, instead of enjoying it and visualizing greater possibilities for it. Some of our greatest medical cures have come from a nurtured and imaginative mind. As an author, I don’t think it’s so terrible to dream… some of my best stories were created from dreams… So your thought for the night: When was the last time you sat down and read to your child, gave a book to your child to read, or read a story your child worked hard in creating?
Thank you and enjoy your evening.
J.L. Slipak
Copyright 2009
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My World Of Education
PUBLIC SPEAKING:
SPEECH GIVEN AT OAKWOOD PUBLIC SCHOOL
Port Colborne - February 24, 2009
"Literacy In Our Schools and Homes And My Life"
First, I’d like to thank Oakwood School and its staff for having me here tonight to speak to you all about literacy in our schools and homes and how literacy played an important part in my life and in my careers, one being a published author. I believe literacy is crucial to the success of students in both their career aspirations and their quality of life. A strong understanding that literacy is more than a basic reading ability can only serve to help our children and then our future adults, function better in society and succeed in life.
The world we live in today is vastly different from that of a generation ago. Technological change has transformed the way in which we achieve our goals, either on a personal level or a career level. Having a population that has strong literacy skills also places a country in a better position to meet the complex social challenges that it faces. This is why literacy should be a fundamental learning process in schools. But not only in schools, literacy should also extend into our homes after school hours.
Once upon a time, families used to spend a lot more time together reading, talking, laughing and learning. They didn’t sit at computers almost 76% of their day; they didn’t have conversations through msn messaging, text messaging, or emails. Once upon a time, our world was not such a place driven by the need to keep up technologically, the need to succeed more so than our neighbours, the need to be the best at work, or, driven by the need to survive… Times have indeed changed, and although these changes are foremost in our society, literacy has remained unvarying. Educators continue to strive to ensure that literacy has come to take on a broader meaning, standing for a range of knowledge, skills and abilities relating to all topics building our child’s education. A perfect example would be with the rise of technology in our society, the ability to use and apply key mathematics and science concepts is now necessary across a wide range of occupations. This forces our educators to change their approach to education to accommodate the need to succeed with these advancements.
Literacy in our schools provides the foundation upon which such skills needed in the labour market are based, literacy supported in our homes, further develops a child’s growth in a positive way. At one time the ability to read, understand and use information was what comprised literacy in our schools. The focus was to understand the written word, be able to construct properly the written sentence, and to be able to read and digest the meaning behind the written word. I’m a product of that era. And although that era worked equally as hard to succeed, the approach to success was most certainly different than it is today.
Today, we face a world focused on obtaining a stronger future, with more than a good job, decent earnings and access to promotions through training. We seem to see our kids thinking about this at younger ages, being taught this principle as early as eight years of age. Yes, it is highly important to closely link successes to obtaining and maintaining strong literacy skills. And yes, it is most important to start teaching about the connection of success to literacy early on in a child’s intellectual development through schools, but there is also another aspect that is sadly lacking, the family connection involving literacy.
We must realize as parents, that literacy should be promoted in our homes too. Taking the time in our hectic lives to sit and read a book with our child, discuss a story that you’ve read together and listen to your child’s take on what you just finished reading, is also crucial to our children’s learning process. We must re-connect that link involving family time and literacy. In doing so, the rewards are guaranteed to be endless. When I attended school, literacy was more about reading, writing, grammar… as a child going through the educational system, I especially enjoyed these lessons and looked forward to attending classes that allowed me to feed my creative side.
I was fortunate enough to grow up in a home of readers. Reading was very important to my parents, both were avid readers and clearly had a strong understanding of the importance of a good education. They encouraged reading after school, on weekends and during free time. I remember as a child, spending hours reading a novel, unable to put it down until I had finished reading it cover to cover. I even had very special novels that I kept and read again and again. Nancy Drew was my hero and I wanted to be just like her. The Archie comic books… I think I have them all still, I collected them with my father and read them over and over again, even secretly when they were deemed childish for a thirteen year old.
As a teen, I never went anywhere without a book I was reading constantly and used any moment of free time in between dancing and school, to read. I remember my father would often take me to a local bookstore that had used books and a book exchange program that I participated in quite frequently in order to get a new book to read. I learned to love the written word because once I opened the cover of a book I was taken on an incredible journey into far away places imagined by great writers. Reading was my escape and still is as I often disappear inside a good novel to forget daily stresses or concerns.
My creative side couldn’t get enough of the written word, I wanted and craved more; it fuelled the side of me that I now rely on as a published author. As a published author, I truly appreciate the hard work of my teachers, and my parents’ ability to promote a love for reading, writing and understanding of the written word. Their encouragement is responsible in part for who I am today. I believe that I am a published author because of my great understanding for the need of having a strong foundation in literacy.
I believe education is the route to take, I believe that you must never think yourself “done” with learning once you’ve graduated from a post-secondary education. I strongly encourage all to continue with building their education throughout their lives in order to keep up with all the changes our world is going through. You are never too old to learn. On speaking about the topic of writing for a career, and when asked what advice I could give to those parents who have young children that love to read, or write stories, I encourage them to try and understand and maintain this vital concept while building their child’s foundation in literacy. This same concept can be applied to building our future doctors, or future astronauts, or perhaps, our future leaders of our country.
My concept is this… I cannot stress how important it is to feed the creative part of our children’s lives. We tend to think only of the academics that apply to math and sciences that lead toward fitting into this technological society that is quickly growing around us. But having a child, who wants to write stories and read books, is equally as important, since both nurture the creative side to their personal growth, and in turn teach them to see past the guidelines or boundaries/beliefs possibilities most people set for themselves as prerequisites to enter the work force or rule their daily lives.
We as parents, tend push our children to excel with the essentials they need for high school, university and then careers. Those essentials of course, are very important but what about the substance of character that is derived from creativity? What we are forgetting is that some of the greatest inventions of our time were born through the creative imaginations of inventors, researchers and dreamers. They believed or dared enough to imagine amazing possibilities that sometimes fell outside the realm of norm, where success was but a venture past the lines and boundaries set by academics and social expectations.
One cannot believe in miracles, if one doesn’t dare to imagine or dream the possibility that one could exist. One cannot dream of possibilities, if we do not nurture the imagination and creativity born from reading books. If that side of us isn’t cultivated too, then we will simply succeed with existing in life, instead of enjoying it and visualizing greater possibilities for it. Some of our greatest medical cures have come from a nurtured and imaginative mind. As an author, I don’t think it’s so terrible to dream… some of my best stories were created from dreams… So your thought for the night: When was the last time you sat down and read to your child, gave a book to your child to read, or read a story your child worked hard in creating?
Thank you and enjoy your evening.
J.L. Slipak
Copyright 2009
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