I am honored -- and a little overwhelmed -- to help open the convention that will nominate my husband for President of the United States. You know I am completely objective when I say ... you have made a GREAT choice.
George and I have been blessed throughout our 23 years of marriage with many interesting opportunities. Our lives have changed enormously in the last six years. He was elected Governor, we moved to Austin with our then 13-year-old twin teenagers, and since then, we've been through dating, drivers licenses, prom night and just a few weeks ago, high school graduation.
Now we're helping our daughters pack for college and we're preparing for our next life crisis ... empty nest syndrome. They say parents often have to get out of the house when their kids go off to college because it seems so lonely. Everyone deals with it in different ways. But I told George I thought running for President was a little extreme.
I'm grateful to my family for being here tonight. My mother, Jenna Welch, our daughters Barbara and Jenna, and a couple of people you may know ... my mother and father-in-law. I love them all dearly.
I thank Michael and all his students for helping introduce me. I have never had this many people watch me give a speech before, but I feel very at home here in this classroom setting. Education is the living room of my life.
George's opponent has been visiting schools lately and sometimes when he does, he spends the night before at the home of a teacher ... well, George spends EVERY night with a teacher.
I first decided to become a teacher when I was in the second grade. Neither of my parents graduated from college, but I knew at an early age they had that high hope and high expectation for me. My Dad bought an education policy, and I remember him telling me, "Don't worry, your college education will be taken care of."
Growing up I practiced teaching on my dolls. I would line them up in rows for the day's lessons. Years later our daughters did the same thing. We used to joke that the Bush family had the best-educated dolls in America.
George and I always read to our girls -- Dr. Seuss' "Hop on Pop" was one of his favorites. George would lie on the floor and the girls would literally hop on pop, turning story time into a contact sport.
We wanted to teach our children what our parents had taught us ... that reading is entertaining and interesting and important. And one of the major reasons George is running for President is to make sure every child in America has that same opportunity. That's why he's proposed a 5 billion dollar Reading First initiative with a great American purpose ... to make sure every child in every neighborhood learns to read at grade level by third grade.
George led a similar initiative as Governor with fabulous results. A highly respected, nonpartisan RAND study released just last week found our education reforms in Texas have resulted in some of the highest achievement gains in the country, among students from all racial, socioeconomic and family backgrounds.
It happened because George led the way, focusing state money and schools' attention on reading. We developed a rigorous research-based curriculum; we funded intensive in-school, after-school and summer school reading intervention programs -- we improved teacher training.
When I taught school in Houston and Austin, many of my second, third and fourth grade students couldn't read, and frankly I'm not sure I was very good at teaching them.
I tried to make it fun by making the characters in children's books members of our class. We saved a web in the corner for Charlotte. But I know many teachers will agree we need better training in what works to teach children to read -- and as president, George will fund improved teacher training.
Public school reforms are crucial but they aren't enough. Learning to read starts much earlier. Researchers have learned parents should read out loud to their babies ... toddler's vocabularies are closely related to how much time adults spend talking with them. And importantly, listening to television doesn't help a young child develop language skills -- it's just background noise.
As First Lady, I will make early childhood development one of my priorities, and George will strengthen Head Start to make sure it's an early reading and early learning program.
I watched my husband make a difference as Governor, not by giving one speech about reading, but by giving one hundred speeches about reading -- directing time, money and resources to our schools.
And that's the kind of discipline and commitment George will bring to the presidency. He'll set great goals, and he'll work tirelessly to achieve them.
