My Body! What I Say Goes! 2nd Edition

Jayneen Sanders (aka Jay Dale) is an experienced Australian early years educator, children’s book author, and publisher.

She began her teaching career in the 1980s as a primary school teacher in rural Queensland, Australia. She then moved to Melbourne, Victoria, and taught at several inner-city schools. In 1985, Jayneen changed careers and became an educational editor and publisher.

In the early 1990s, Jayneen and her partner moved to Japan to work as English teachers. They lived and worked in Japan for over three and a half years, and Jayneen’s first daughter was born there.

Upon returning to Australia, Jayneen began working as an educational author/packager. She has since authored and produced numerous award-winning titles for the educational publishing industry. Jayneen is also an accomplished children’s book author, writing titles for literacy series such as ZigZags, Totally Kidz, Deadly and Incredible, and a children’s picture book series for Penguin.

Jayneen is currently the lead author of the literacy series ‘Engage Literacy’ published by Capstone, for which she has written over 150 titles.

Jayneen is a mother of three daughters and served as a school councillor at her local school for over seven years. This experience, both as a teacher and a parent, inspired her to ask her community, “What are we doing in schools to protect our children from inappropriate touch?” Realizing that very little was being done, she decided to use her authoring and publishing skills to write ‘Some Secrets Should Never Be Kept’ to help parents, carers, and teachers broach this subject and encourage children to speak up.

Following the encouraging response to ‘Some Secrets Should Never Be Kept’, Jayneen recognized a need to further build upon the idea of prevention education. She participated in Protective Behaviours professional development and attended numerous conferences on the topic to educate herself on keeping children safe and providing them with age-appropriate and empowering body safety and consent education.

Jayneen then developed and published a comprehensive Body Safety and Respectful Relationship Teacher’s Resource Kit, as well as writing many more children’s books on body safety, consent, respect, gender equality, social and emotional intelligence, and diversity and inclusion.

Jayneen currently works with her partner, Mark Sanders, to run Educate2Empower Publishing. Her ongoing passion for the safety and empowerment of children continues today, with new manuscripts and free-to-download resources always in development.