Sue - Thank you for your feedback. My thoughts are with you and your family. These types of life transitions are powerful indeed. - Paul

Carrie - Thanks for the fun thinking on our behalf. I fully agree that a reading/storytelling event, or series of events, could help to communicate/memorialize the cultural/older roots of the waterkeeper/water-bearer, as well as express the current reality of feminine leadership very potently. Time will tell as the OpenIDEO process moves along. We gotta make it through the first round of review in order to see which direction the winds are gonna blow us all. Enjoy your days. - PWE/RTMN

Good Day ingrid,

It is wonderful to learn of your work and your dreams.

So good as well to know you are working with your students with a focus on reading-aloud in order to encourage their love and enjoyment of reading.

The process of working with the parents and family members of your students who do not read well, or do not know how to read at all, is one that may take some time.

What I will say, that I know you understand, is that love is contagious.

So, the love of reading that you are awakening within your students will grow and spread out like the roots of a plant, then the branches, flowers and fruits will follow.

Your job as the gardener (teacher) is to make sure the plants (your students) are always fed (read-aloud to as often as can be done) and always nourished with good soil and sunshine (provided with books and reading materials of many different types).

Then you the gardener (teacher) must weed the garden (fight against lazyness and boredom) and when it is harvest time share the wealth (encourage the parents, or other family members to see how reading is doing their students so much good).

Beyond that, the garden you are growing (the ability of your students to read and to love to read) will each year spread and take over new lands - almost all by itself.

For those who do not read I think it is helpful to remember that they are like people who have never tasted a melon fresh from a garden.

If someone has never before tasted a melon they may not want to because it is new and different - and sometimes new and different things make us nervous or scared.

Or, maybe they are shy or embarrassed to admit that they have never tasted a melon.

So, your job (our jobs - you and I) are to grow the best, sweetest, most nourishing melons we can (teach as many kids to read and love to read as we can) and share them with others - especially those who have never tasted a melon before.

Sorry about all of the gardening analogies.

Can you tell I am actually planting melons in my gardens today here in California, USA?

Nonetheless, they are good analogies for us both to remember as we go about our work.

Also, with your parents or family members who do not read - start small and use printed materials that are simple in the beginning.

Perhaps there are food preparation recipes or shopping lists that they can relate to in ways that do not require them to 'read' just words/letters, but allow for them to see a picture, or be familiar with some 'thing', which they can then see or associate the word(s) with that describe it.

If there are pictures of things, or actual things - fruits, vegetables, tools, pots, pans, household objects, sports stuff - that they already 'know' what they are, then they will be more comfortable learning what and how those things have words attached to them and each of those words will contain letters that they can begin to know and decode and become familiar with.

Learning how to read is a process that takes time to accomplish and it is something that a person does have to want to do.

However you can discover what they can be motivated by in order to see the value that reading can bring into their lives - that will be one of the things that will make the process go more quickly and smoothly.

I am happy to know you, what you are doing in Guatemala and about your Mayan heritage.

If 'Read To Me Now' continues along in this OpenIDEO challenge process perhaps you and I can create a project between us that will help both your efforts and mine, as well.

Doing that kind of 'work' together, with you and others, is exactly why I've started this whole process within the OpenIDEO.

Time will tell...

Meantime, if what I've shared has been helpful let's keep chatting as we both have time to do so.

Enjoy your days...

- Paul