Stay tuned, this amazing insight into this film – coming! It was AWESOME seeing Senator Buckson, Peggy Geisler, Lisette Cabrera Gallozo, Margie Cyr, Zjhodell Hudson, as well as Maureen Whalen as panel members for this INITIAL, FIRST SHOWING of this insightful film. How can I tell you the amazing depth of this film without giving it away before the showing days you see below are done?

Let me show you a few amazing facts from this film:

The fact that many low literacy to no literary individuals are considered poets and the fact is, many individuals that are poets never knew how to write complete sentence and this showed how they learned how to navigate without that knowledge.

How do we acknowledge as a country that a million and a half individuals are illiterate in our country?

How in Delaware 120 million is spent on low income subsidies and yet we are still graduating so many individuals that cannot read or write?

Realizing the example given, that as a chair relies on the four leg as a foundation, we too are seeing a diminishing foundation of losing literate individuals, as we lose certified librarians, researched methods to address literacy and finding paths to address this issue head on instead of with program ideas.

Shocking/Revolutionary/speechless to meet a millionaire, a teacher, a doctor in their professions while they DID NOT KNOW HOW TO READ ANYTHING. Read that again, and yes, avoiding emails, letters, contracts AND teaching OTHERS the very substance of what they were missing – this was – there are no words to detail this until you see this film – and even after, you are just stunned.

It is scary that the most impoverished group we have are children. It is even more shocking to see that students that never learned to read were 100% on being able to mimic teachers to get to the point of being able to graduate with that method.

The acknowledgement of so many individuals and cross sections of educational employees working in silos apart from each other says much about what could have been achieved had this not been the cae through the years.

The fact I will come back to again is meeting a teacher that taught for 17, SEVENTEEN years and that could not read at all – you have to let that sink it to be able to redefine who you are thinking of when we say the word illiterate, and how this effects EVERY SINGLE MEMBER OF Society as a result in someway. But to realize this, you need to see the desperation of survival that students, not turned adults, utilize to survive without the skills of reading and comprehension that never were properly taught to be able to learn.

What kept coming back to me during this film was the fact that Delaware ranks 42 out of 51 states (counting D.C.) in librarianship and the lack of knowledge of how many certified librarians and we have lost. AND the further thought that certified librarians is only one large cog in a whole series of critical areas not being the right tools students are receiving.

It was so ironic to see footage of Barbara Bush’s initial adult literacy movements. I was a product of the Barbara Bush initiative to encourage librarians in the school to be able to take- for 7 years, as many credits for $1000.00 per semester towards the degree of being a certified librarian. I took advantage of this and that is where my eyes became opened to the lack of support for school librarians in schools. When I saw Barbara Bush on this video advocated for the DOZEN of literacy programs, now still in place thanks to Laura Bush, I remembered how lucky I was to have someone encourage me to delve into literacy more.

Now we have a chance to help others in many other ways by bringing the realities of lack, is so many areas, to the surface.

From examining balanced literacy, to phonics as what was thought as the saving technique, to the reading wars, to Whole language, it was difficult to indeed say we are the “Land of the Free” when there is no support for individuals that can work their way through school and through graduation, being passed from grade to grade, without having a clue how to read one sentence at all. We are not truly free if so many individuals are not afforded the care, services, skills from professionals that allow themselves to be free.

If you are stagnant, you are not doing anything- was such a simply but powerful quote stated by an inmate, who saw how reading and understand reading pulled him out of quicksand.

Seeing the laborious ways individuals took to be able to get the proper words used in a sentence and mean what they intended, by guessing on typing words to see what the meaning in context is when they do this in Google. In Google. This method takes the person did not acquire literacy skills almost an hour longer to produce a sentence, that makes sense, and meets the need of the individual themself.

The lengths individuals share with you to not be detected by others, that they cannot read- is exhausting day after day even to is as the viewer.

The sentiment that no one is going to save us so we have to be the ones that save ourselves has never been more true as you encounter so many prominent people that never truly learned to read and write in the first 40 years of their lives. FORTY YEARS!

Seeing how a lack of literacy, a lack of trained librarians, a lack of awareness of all the moving parts needed to support all students in school, the fact that much illiteracy is evaded even all through college, and still so many graduate – passed through grade after grade, and all the while the lack of reading and literacy is present.

This film is so personal and so direct, you will NOT even slightly want to consider missing on the screenings you see above. Once May 15th hits and all have had a chance to see this film, I will deep dive into some of the most amazing take-away from this film is too vast to try and cover in one blog post. So, let’s give you a chance to see this in the next few weeks and then we will return to return to this topic.