Ray Jaramillo: On Bongos and Books

Books can play different roles, as Ray knows from his experience as an educator, owner of the Alpha School in Las Cruces, NM, and children’s author. “When I do readings and talks,” he says, “I like to quote these thoughts from researcher Rudine Sims Bishop: “Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created or recreated by the author.” And a window can also be “a mirror where we see our own lives and experiences as part of a larger human experience”—words that describe Ray’s book Gust, Gust, Gust!

It’s the story of Gustavo, a young boy who’s afraid of the wind. He lives with his tata, or grandfather, in a small New Mexico village that depends on windmills for its supply of electricity and water. Everyone in the village knew that Gustavo was afraid of the wind because he and his tata would play the bongos every time the wind blew. They were playing the bongos when a fierce storm wreaked havoc on the village, leading the village elders to forbid Gustavo and his tata from playing the bongos again. After that, the wind disappeared until the village elders called on Gustavo and his tata to save the day by playing the bongos in the town square. Gustavo and his tata went from being villains to heroes, and Ray, too, was a hero for a young boy who inspired him to write the book.

“Back when I was new to the early learning field,” Ray recalls, “I taught a child named Joshua who was afraid of the wind. So, on windy days, I would play music outside on the playground, and that would take his mind off the wind. Joshua is now in his late twenties, and I’m still in touch with him,” Ray says. And the boy is one of the many children who Ray has served since a chance encounter led to the start of his career in 1995.

“At the time,” he recalls, “I had dropped out of college and was working at a bowling alley, where I ran into Barbara Dedera, then the owner of the Alpha School. She asked me if I wanted to substitute teach, and that’s how I began. I was only supposed to work at the school for two days, but those two days turned into two weeks. And then the school offered me a job as an assistant teacher.”

At first, a group of parents objected to having a man teach their young children, as Ray recalls. “Some even threatened to take their children out of the school, but Barbara came to my defense and insisted I stay on the job. She saw something in me and encouraged me to grow in the early learning field by earning my CDA®. So, I went on to go through the CDA process, along with four other teachers at the school. When we earned our credentials, Barbara took us out for a celebration. And I remember being excited because having a CDA meant that I knew what I was doing with children.”

Ray especially enjoyed reading to children, and Barbara encouraged him by introducing him to the world of children’s books at an early learning conference they attended. “There was a book store at the conference,” Ray says, “and I wanted to buy all these books, but I didn’t have much money. When I asked Barbara if the school could buy me a few books, she gave me her credit card and I wound up buying about $500 worth of books with her blessing. I read them to the children when I got home, and some of those books are still my favorites,” Ray recalls.

He was also hitting the books as he went on to earn his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education. “I was taking a STEM class for my master’s,” Ray recalls, “and one of my assignments was to write a children’s book, so I drew on elements from my own life to do the assignment.” Besides the small boy who was afraid of the wind, everything in the book mirrors Ray’s childhood in a small New Mexico village. “My brother played the bongos,” he says, “my tata was a very important person in my life and my grandparents lived in a house with an old wooden windmill in the backyard.”

There are pictures of old windmills in the book, along with many illustrations that show where Ray grew up. “There’s a pink house like the one where my grandparents lived and cracks in the ground because it can be very dry in the Southwest,” Ray says. “There’s a clothesline like the one where my grandmother hung up her wash. All the people in the book have dark skin and brown eyes like my family. And there are also pictures of modern windmills to encourage classroom discussion.”

When Ray read the book to his class, the children loved it, he recalls. “One day I was watching my niece play soccer when a little kid came running up to me through the field with his mom in pursuit. Easton was one of my former students, and he had come to me with a request. He wanted me to read Gust in the middle of the soccer field.”

Since then, Ray has done book readings at several universities, and he’s also used his voice to serve the early childhood profession. He spent eight years on the Las Cruces Public Schools Board of Education, and he now serves on the New Mexico Child Care and Education Association. At the association, he works with other advocates and lawmakers to improve early learning policies in the state, “We’re now working on adjusting our child-to-teacher ratios,” he says, “and we’re trying to make the CDA part of the career pathway for New Mexico early childhood teachers.”

Ray also supports staff at the Alpha School in earning their CDA since buying the school two years ago. “By then, Barbara had retired and been replaced by Trisha, one of my mentors when I was a young teacher,” he says. “When Trisha was ready to pursue other paths in the early childhood field, she agreed to sell me the school. The only problem was I didn’t have enough money.”

When Ray asked the bank for a loan, they wanted a down payment, he recalls. “At the time, I was still working as the assistant director, so I wasn’t making much money. And my wife has a disability, so there was only one income. But there were hundreds of children’s books in my office and home. I offered the books as collateral, and the bank agreed to give me the loan. I think the books meant to them that I was invested in the school and in helping young children learn.”

One of his other goals as owner of the school is to smooth the way for men in the early childhood field. “Of course, the world has changed a bit since I entered the field,” he says, “and male educators are a bit more accepted. I now have three men working for me, and the parents aren’t questioning these men as much as they once did me. So, I think, I have paved the way at the Alpha School for male educators to succeed.”

Still, the low wages in the early learning field remain an issue for men, as they do for all early learning professionals, including Ray. “Besides running the school,” he says, “I have a couple of other jobs. I DJ at weddings and I work as an adjunct professor at Western New Mexico University. I can’t make the money an excuse for not working at what I love: inspiring educators to do what is developmentally right for young children.”

And one of the ways you can help children advance is by helping them cope with their fears, so Ray has just written a second book to help children deal with the illness or death of someone they love. In it, Gust comforts his tata in a hospital room by playing the bongos,” Ray explains. “Gust is now a dad with two children, Molli and Ray, which are names of my own children. And when Gust and his children play the bongos for Tata, he smiles as he remembers the sound of the wind.”

What a comforting picture. And it was especially timely during COVID, the crisis that inspired Ray to write this second book. “It’s called Gust, Gust, Gust: The Next Beat,” Ray says. And it should make an impact, based on the feedback he’s received on his first book.

“After reading my book over Zoom to a class, I received an email from a teacher who had a student with a crippling fear of the wind,” Ray recalls. “If it was windy, she told me, DJ would cling to a teacher’s leg or hide in the bathroom when it was time to go outside. He received therapy for this phobia for years, to no avail. But since your presentation, he has begun to see the wind as a positive thing and he’s finally going outside with no fear. Hearing about Gust, that teacher explained, had changed DJ’s life.”