David has been a teacher, principal, university lecturer, author and literacy consultant for 53 years and still loves working in classrooms with teachers and students.

He was with the Victorian Ministry of Education for 28 years and taught at every year level. During that time, he also lectured at Melbourne University, La Trobe University and RMIT University. For 4 years he was a curriculum consultant in primary and secondary schools and then returned to the primary classroom. He was the principal of Ringwood Heights Primary School, a school he loved, for 5 years.

David is now working as a literacy consultant in schools. He is passionate about early childhood education and ensuring that young students experience success, as well as the joy of learning. He is disturbed by the current push, mostly by non-educators who have never taught a class of children to read and write, towards robotic, mechanical, joyless methodologies which are one-size-fits-all recipes for turning kids off learning.

David is a highly sought after speaker at national and international conferences. He has completed many lecture tours of the United States and the United Kingdom. He has also worked with teachers in China, Costa Rica, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malta, New Zealand and Singapore. More recently, he worked with two international bilingual schools in Beijing.

David has written or co-authored many popular teacher reference books and three CD-ROM programs