Back to Marks and Mind Book Series
 Dr. Susan Rich Sheridan is a scholar/teacher with degrees in English, Art and Education. Her Neuroconstructive, brain-based theory and marks-based practice of literacy have a twenty-year history, including teaching first grade through college. Saving Literacy introduces the Scribbling/Drawing/Writing program for children 10 months to 6 years, including developmental benchmarks, lesson plans, evaluation tools, and research questions designed for professional caregivers: preschool and daycare providers, elementary school teachers, child psychologists, art teachers and art therapists, speech pathologists and researchers in child development and education. The goals of the program are sustained attention, emotional control and connection, expanded speech and literacy. Autism and the effects of technology are discussed. Dr. Sheridan has published a companion book for parents, Handmade Marks.
 "What we most need now... is a fresh perspective on the masses of data that neurobiologists have gathered, and on the puzzles those data pose... How do brains make sense of the world (?)... (A) new general theory... requires new assumptions and new definitions. I believe that the idea of meaning, a critical concept that defines the relations of each brain to the world, is central to current debates in philosophy and cognitive science, and will become so in neurobiology... Doodling can and should accompany if not even precede speaking. Language derives from the dynamics and structure of intentional behavior, as I describe in my book How Brains Make Up Their Mind, and the face and hand areas of the cortex lie side by side, undergoing the same patterns of neural development. They are inextricably linked, as we know from the necessity of moving our hands and fingers as we speak to communicate meaning most effectively." Correspondence between Dr. Freeman and the author, March 17, 2001.
"Your hypothesis of guidance of (brain) activity into doodling (scribbling, drawing) as a means to approach constructive and intentional control of central (brain) activity is pregnant with all kinds of meaning." Correspondence between Dr. Freeman and the author, August 5, 2009
"You certainly raise a fascinating and important question when you ask how and at what point scibbles become symbols. Both are expressions of intention, but at very different levels, one being an expression of the developing mind of the individual, the other being an expression of the desire to share insights with other minds. You provide the tools and the raw materials for forging answers... prime research topics for multiple Ph.D theses." Correspondence between Dr. Freeman and the author, January 8, 2010
Walter J. Freeman, M.D., Ph.D., biologist, theoretical neurologist, philosopher, Professor of Neurobiology
Walter J. Freeman Neurophysiology Lab for Nonlinear Neurodynamics, University of California, Berkeley, CA
"The often devastating impact of learning disabilities can be avoided with the right kind of early intervention… This is where your insights and systematic program can be so valuable. You recognize that children can be encouraged to develop the ability to use scribbles and markings as the initial step toward capturing meaning on paper, and perhaps in so doing providing the crucial early experience that will prevent some children from developing learning problems in later years. I think you book and your larger body of work are firmly grounded in science, wisdom and vast experience." Correspondence between Dr. Royer and the author, 2003.
James. M. Royer, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
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