About the Author

• Philip Builder is married to Gloria. They have three children and four grandchildren.  Philip has now retired from full time work to concentrate on writing, gardening, golf, and fishing.
   

• Philip left school at 14 to work at various jobs including station overseer and manager, stock agent, and farmer.  Drought and poor prices forced him back to study at the age of 32.
   

• He graduated from Salisbury College of Advanced Education with a Diploma of Teaching, won an extra year of study and wrote a research thesis on the effect of the home environment on children's reading.  He was awarded an Advanced Diploma in Reading at Distinction level, which was later converted to a Batchelor of Education degree.
   

• Philip has now spent nearly 30 years in various roles as a classroom teacher, Special educator, teacher trainer, IT specialist, researcher, and author.  
   

• He has held many leadership positions supporting and training classroom teachers in Mathematics, Literacy, Special Education, Teaching and Learning, and Information Technology (Computing).
   

• He has a wide experience in helping children with learning difficulties, and working closely with their parents.
   

• Philip has created several significant programs for parents, teachers and children, including:

  • PACT (Parent and Child Tutoring) involved parents learning how to understand and tutor their own children with learning difficulties.  Classroom teachers were also involved in PACT, learning how to modify their teaching to enable children with difficulties to be successful in the classroom.

  • HELP (Help for Early Literacy Program) which helped beginning readers and writers (5 to 8 year olds) recover from early learning delays.  HELP trains and uses parents and school assistants to tutor up to 18 students every day, 5 days a week.  Reading Recovery techniques are used, as well as other modern teaching ideas.  
     

• Over the last 10 years of his career Philip also developed Information Technology skills: managing computer networks, coordinating learning programs and training teachers to use computers across the curriculum to improve children's learning.