Memories of Marie

"From the age of 25, when she first travelled beyond New Zealand on a Fulbright Scholarship to the United States, Marie Clay worked to establish international connections, while keeping her base in her homeland. Marie Clay joined the Education Department of the University of Auckland, New Zealand, in 1960, and there helped to create the new Diploma of Educational Psychology. In 1968, the year after she was awarded a doctorate for her thesis Emergent Reading Behaviour, she was an invited speaker in Copenhagen at the 2nd World Congress in Reading. Seven years later she became the first woman professor at the University of Auckland, and was appointed Head of the Education Department. Marie Clay developed a system of early intervention, called Reading Recovery, to help children who were having the most difficulty reading. During the 1980s Reading Recovery was established nationwide in New Zealand, and rapidly expanded into Australia, and the United States, and later into Canada.^ In 1987 she was listed in the Queen's Honours and became Dame Marie Clay. After her retirement from the University of Auckland in 1991, she helped to establish a Reading Recovery course for Tutors and teachers