The Early Childhood Literacy Expertease

Clare Sera, our audience tonight is composed mostly of preschoolers who can't read. And that's your... Expertise! Spelled wrong. I thought we could probe your area... Hmm? ...of expertise. You're listening to Expertise, spelled wrong. The podcast where the world's most expert experts discuss their areas of expertise expertly. Expert comedy writer Clare Sera and expert comedy writer Danno Sullivan bring their expertise to other unrelated expertises. Good afternoon, good morning, and good evening people around the world in various time zones. Welcome to Expertise, the informational podcast.

I'm your host, Danno Sullivan, and I'm delighted to welcome to the program early childhood literacy expert, Clare Sera. Welcome to the program. I am just absolutely T-H-R-I-L-L-E-D to be here at this P-O-D-C-A-S-T today. Hang on, hang on, hang on. You're leaving me way behind in the dust of your education. What does all that mean, all those letters? Those are what we call letters in a row, and letters in a row make words. Words, all right. So words like we're using now when we speak. That's exactly correct. All right. And those words on a page make writing.

That's what writing is. Why do you say it like that with a writing, with a ting at the end, a ting? Well, Danno, look at you. You've picked up on this immediately. I can tell that from a young age, you were illiterate. I was illiterate from a young age, and still to this day. You are illiterate. So what does that even mean? So Danno, to say you are illiterate means that you don't know who your father is. I didn't know we were going to be going into that sort of thing. Why do you want to bring that up? I know who your mama is. Let me just put this topic to rest for a moment.

What did your father look like? Well, he looked a lot like me, but with a beard. Do you have a beard? I do, yes. Oh, that man was not your father. It was me all along. A lot of mothers, in order to get out of the stigma of having a child out of wedlock, employ the use of mirrors and false hair pieces. Are you telling me I had no father? And that the man of the house was just a reflected version of me in a hairpiece? Yeah, or some women got very creative and they would, you know, etch a beard onto the mirror. Every single time I looked in that mirror, I thought I was seeing my father, and I was seeing myself.

Don't blame your mother. She was just doing her best, trying to make you have a sense of comfort that you had a daddy. I don't ever want to be illiterate no more. Well, I am so glad to hear that, and I have the tools to help you learn how to read and write. R-E-A-D and R-I-T-E. Stop doing that. It makes my brain hurt. Oh, you know, there are other ways that we employ for child literacy. I am an advocate for fun time, reading time. What makes reading time fun time? Bouncing, bright colors, popsicles, rolling. A sweep organism style of reading. I know I don't know who my father is, but I don't know what that word means.

Oh, a sweep organism is a small, little-known cult that was started by a Swedish man, whose name was Sweet Swedensen, and he started the organism style for teaching childhood literacy. Is this something worth exploring? No, it's absolutely not. Let's move on. Claire, I have to say, the reason I was really excited about having you come on the podcast, I really like the ideas that you present of the children having fun while learning to read. In particular, your candy-based reading systems really seem to have swept much of the educational world by storm.

Well, that is the whole philosophy behind our Childhood Literacy Center, which is eat your words. Oh, so that can be taken literally or figuratively, no doubt. And it teaches children the importance of words, you know, and I'm going to say in our day and age, I think we could spend a little more time thinking about what we're saying, how we're saying. How does it taste in your mouth as you're saying these words? That's what I want the children to think about. Is there a bitter aftertaste to what you have just said? Maybe don't say it. Say those sweet words.

Are you worried at all about the explosion of childhood obesity somehow being linked to teaching children to read with candy sweets? Well, there is a saying that we have at our childhood literacy, sweetborganism.com, and that is... Isn't there something about a honeyed tongue? We did try that approach, but apparently there is a botulism toxin in honey that does not react well with children. Speaking of things that don't react well with children, you've received a little bit of criticism, I suppose, for teaching some of the early classics of literature to children using your candy-based method.

For example, the famous novel of the French court, The Three Musketeers. You've taught entirely without providing the book, but only the candy bar itself. Yes. In our story, there are three musketeer bars. Right, right. Which just sounds delicious and makes me want to read. Although I have tried to read the label of a Three Musketeers bar and found it very uninteresting, hard-going. Yes. And even the word three is a digit. I'm more words-focused than math. And musketeers is a long word. It's a big word. Wow. It took me half a candy bar just to get through that word.

Well, and that's what we're trying to help the children. They're going to taste those musketeers. So, and they're going to ingest the values and the morals that Thomas Dumas wrote with such clarity and passion. Wait, excuse me? Yes. You said Dumas wrote that book? No, that's the name of the author. It's sweet. It's a sweet name. He's a sweet Dumas that wrote a beautiful book that is above children's heads in the way the words are presented today. But don't you want, wouldn't you want your, how many illegitimate children do you have? That I know of? Only three.

Three. So wouldn't you want them to have a one for all and all for one and for all kind of togetherness attitude towards the world? When you say it like that, it does sound thrilling. It sounds exciting. Then there's just that kind of lingering aftertaste of d'Artagnan. That's right. Are you d'Artagnan or are you Montpellier or the other one? That's... So there were three musketeers. There was d'Artagnan, Montpellier. Yes. And Stella Artois. Stella Artois. Those were the last two. Yeah. I'm more words focused than math. Do you teach any other literature via candy? Or I guess really we should open it up and say, do you teach any other literature via vending machine products?

I absolutely do. And... Because I feel like if I could read a great work of literature, you know, for two quarters, that's a bargain. Well, and it's funny you should say that because we have this method, which was for children, has been really appealing to a lot of adults. Adults on the go probably would just want to... Adults on the go, addicted to sugar, adults who are in their cars for long periods of time. And they had been listening to Audible, but now they're listening to my podcast, edible.com. Clara, I have to say as a candy buff, I love the convenience and the novelty factor of the Pez dispenser. Is there a literature equivalent to the Pez?

Well, we have been using Pez with such books as The Old Man and the Sea, because you can dispense short sentences like Hemingway's rat-a-tat style. Just spit them out one after another. Just shoot those Pez in your mouth. I actually had an Ernest Hemingway dispenser for a little while, and I never thought to load it up with Old Man and the Sea. It was just cinnamon. I have a Charles Dickens Pez dispenser, which I've been told is valuable as a collector's item. I believe that would be so, but then it's sitting on a shelf unused. And if you want to experience, say, Oliver...

Twist. With a twist. Now we're moving into our libations. Oh. We have an adult... Drinking and reading. Drinking and reading. Now this is not for your edible subscribers, because clearly you wouldn't be drinking in the car. And it's not for our children. So we're moving right away from the topic of our podcast, but let's explore it nevertheless. We all do need to branch out. Sure, and children grow up, don't they? They do. And if they're like my father, there's a lot of drinking going on. How do you think he became illiterate? Isn't that interesting? He became illiterate, so he was at one point a reading man.

Yes, he was from Pennsylvania. Oh, the city of brotherly reading. Reading, Pennsylvania. I believe it's pronounced dreading. Oh. Claire, you mentioned the service that you provide, and honestly, I'm simply not clear what service you do provide at this point. So you've got readingwithatwist.com. Yes. You've got Edible. Yes. Is that how you make your living? Is this how you go through life? Those are absolutely, those are sidebar gigs, as the kids today would call them. Claire, I was poking through what the kids call the internet, and I've come across... Would you please, for the record, state your full name?

Well, I'm not ashamed of my name. My name is Claire Focacia Sierra Duvall. Claire Focacia Sierra Duvall. When I look that name up on the internet, using voice dictation, naturally. Of course. As someone who's unable to type. Yes. I come across the Claire Sierra Candy Company. Sweets and confectioners based in readingpennsylvania.com. And you feel that this is a conflict of... I don't see anything about a college degree. I don't see anything about literacy education capabilities. I don't feel that it's a conflict of interest. I feel like it's an outright scam to bilk the youngest, most vulnerable people in our society of their hard-earned money.

Let me just employ an old literature technique in this very moment of this podcast and twist this plot line back around to the antagonist. If we could just rewind this podcast simply 15 seconds ago, did you or did you not employ the use of the correct word bilk? And are you going to tell me that that's from an illiterate person? Are you going to claim that you truly are not a use of words man? I am. I admit it. You've tricked me with your loquaciousness. I am a use of words man. The whole thing was but a clever ruse intending to rope you in. But you've roped me in and now we're both roped in. And where does that leave us?

The Expertise Spelled Wrong podcast is free and like the Amish, all are welcome. Be sure to sign up for our email announcements at funnypodcast.com. And follow us in your favorite podcast app like the expert podcast listener we know you are. Dana, reading and writing, candy and deliciousness are one of the simple pleasures that are also... Two of the simple pleasures I would say. I'm not a math expert. No, no, but I am an expert of words and also a semi expert of counting. So that was two, definitely two. Okay, so anyway, so my point is that candy, reading and writing are two of the great...

No, no, three. You're up to three. Look, I think we've established that I'm more words focused than math. So let me to sum up, say that children, writing, reading and sugary treats are two of the great delights of our planet and our short time on it. On behalf of myself, that's one. My listeners, that's two. And you and your listeners, that's a total of four now. Thank you. On behalf of everyone, I'd like to thank you for coming on today to teach us a little something about early childhood litigency. Litigency? No, I just couldn't read the word very well, sorry.

Right, okay, yeah. I'm more of a numbers man, as you know.