What does it take to turn on a nerdy neo-schoolmarm?

Well, read this and find out:

Pediatric resident Dipesh Navsaria has a novel way of measuring his young patients' development during checkups: He puts a book in their hands and watches their reaction.

Navsaria, a resident at American Family Children's Hospital, says the child's response speaks volumes. If the patient shows interest and curiosity, he can tell if books are a natural part of their life. At a certain age, if the child holds the book right-side up, opens it and turns the pages, the doctor gets a quick read on motor skills.

And if children begin talking about what they see in the book, Navsaria can see if they are building social skills.

"This is part of the tools we use to assess children's health," he said. "We want children to grow up and set habits and methods of learning that will carry them forward their entire lives. Read more ...

Early language and literacy is one of my [many] soapboxes. It's been pretty widely talked about how reading to a child for 20 minutes a day makes a world of difference in their literacy learning, but another huge disparity that I've come across is between kids who are talked to and those who aren't. It shouldn't be any surprise that the kids who are talked to/with have a larger vocabulary, a larger bank of conceptual knowledge, better social skills, etc. etc. By the time I get my students, they are already 5 years old and some of them have a lot of language catch-up to do.

Who sees kids -- and more importantly, their parents -- from very early on? Pediatricians and family practice doctors. So it only makes sense that they actively promote reading and language development.

This is soooooo exciting!

(One aside: If you read the entire article, you will see that this guy not only is not only a doctor, but he took a break from med school to get a masters in library science, plus he holds a master's degree in public health. Oh yeah, and he's married with a couple of kids. Can you say overachiever? It exhausts me, just thinking about it. But I love him anyway.)