"Tell Me a Cuento" Workshop for Teachers

I had the best afternoon with adult education teachers in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Sandra Chupkai and I presented a workshop on Tell Me a Cuento, a book club for ESOL students reading illustrated children's books.

Northeast SABES, System for Adult Education Support, hosted the workshop. The Lawrence (MA) Public Library and Mass Humanities made it possible for me to present and for each teacher to recieve a copy of Celia Cruz, Queen of Salsa by Veronica Chambers. We did a model discussion. Many teachers had actually met Celia in NYC or she sang at their graduations. The discussion was an amazing testimonial to the power of Celia's music to translate a culture and the pride in salsa music as a symbol of Latino cultures in counties around the world. Thank you to all the teachers who shared your stories. Sandra and I presented the workshop to give teachers ideas for running their own Book Clubs for adult ESOL students or for parent groups. I hope the handouts on Tips for Teacher-Led Discussions will inspire teachers to offer their own programs. If teachers would like support in presenting a Tell Me a Cuento program or variation on it, please e-mail me. We also spent some time talking about selecting multicultural books with cultural authenticity. I showed some slides of my powerpoint on multicultual books.

Mleta Hadithi

A group of twelve people from Amesbury are in Amesbury's sister city, Esabalu in western Kenya this week. Some of the visitors will work on the literacy project that several of us began the last time we were in Esabalu. The project is called Mleta Hadithi, Stories are Coming.
Wilson Reading funded the design and printing of this poster. Aron Fine, a new designer with Wilson, created the poster as his first project. The words in Swahili say, Reading Begins at Home. The book pictured is For You Are a Kenyan Child by Kelly Cunnane, illustrated by Ana Juan.
In Esabalu young women who have graduated from college but don't yet have jobs take books in Swahili, Luhya, the mother tongue, and English into village homes and read to children.
I will write updates here about how the Mleta Hadithi girls are doing in the village.