Erin Bailey: Welcome to Reading Inspires by Reading is Fundamental.
I'm your host, Dr. Aaron Bailey.
This podcast celebrates the power of books and the joy of reading.
In each episode, we talk with educators, librarians, families, authors, and literacy champions to explore one big question.
What does Reading inspire for you?
Through stories, research, and real world experiences from classrooms, libraries, and homes, we explore what literacy looks like and why it matters.
Whether you're nurturing young readers, shaping learning spaces, or simply love a good book, we're glad you're here.
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Let's get inspired.
Today I am chatting with Dr. Elena Forni.
And fun story about how we met when I was teaching graduate students in the literacy program at George Washington.
I used one of Dr. Forani's articles to talk about digital literacies and one of my former graduat.
Students actually reached out to Elena because she enjoyed your article.
And then connected the two of us and we've had the opportunity to meet up at conferences and work together in other spaces.
So I'm sharing that so that those of you who are listening, if you ever read an article or something that you're interested in and you wanna engage in a conversation with the person who wrote it, you should reach out to them.
That's why their email's there.
I'm sure they'd be happy to hear from you.
So all that to say, welcome Dr. Ani.
Dr. Elena Forzani: Yeah.
Thank you so much, Erin.
Appreciate it.
And I had actually forgotten about how we originally.
Connected.
I don't, yeah, it's been so long.
So I appreciate that story.
And it's great to be here, so thank you.
Erin Bailey: Thank you.
So you're currently a faculty member at Boston University's Wheelock College of Education and Human Development.
And your focus for research is on literacy assessment and equity.
Can you share a little bit about your professional journey?
What drew you to literacy research and assessment, and how have your experiences shaped your current work?
Dr. Elena Forzani: Yeah, sure.
So actually I started out interested in child psychology and thought I would go into psychology.
And then I did in college, did an internship in.
In fifth grade actually teaching cognitive behavioral psychology to fifth graders.
And I just loved being in the classroom and having an opportunity to work with young children and then actually to really feel how it clicked with them when they got something.
And so that kind of inspired me to go into education.
I taught first grade and just found that I loved teaching reading.
I remember my literacy specialist said, you know, she's like, Wayne, you can't just teach reading all day.
And you know, I did obviously teach all the other things as well, but really loved teaching, reading, both like the phonics.
I felt like it was so magic that kids could learn this code and then they could actually be able to read words, which.
When they first came into my classroom at the beginning of first grade, they couldn't do, and of course, not only do they read words, but it just opens the door for them to read all kinds of wonderful texts and have these wonderful experiences and experience different people and different worlds.
And I that, you know, that's reading has always been a huge part of my life.
So that was really exciting to me.
I got into assessment specifically because I, later, after I taught first grade, I taught high school English and was a high school reading specialist, and we, I worked at a charter school.
Where we assessed kids every six weeks, and we also definitely taught to the test for the what?
What at the time was the Connecticut Achievement Test.
You know, I got really good at figuring out what the formula was for scoring each of the, there were sort of like these four questions on the ELA test or the reading part of the test.
And I spent a lot of time figuring out, well, what's the formula for a good score?
And teaching kids that formula.
And I remember we got our scores back in the summer and my principal brought me into his office and he said look at these great scores.
Isn't this so wonderful?
And I truly felt like terrible about it.
It was a moment that it just made me realize I had spent all this time preparing students for this one test where there wasn't necessarily a whole lot of transfer for them.
And, you know, in addition to the state test, the charter network had its own.
Assessments that we did every six weeks that were not really tied to instruction.
So that got me really interested in assessment.
And kind of also like the structures of control that schools implement on students that don't feel so great and that, you know, aren't great for student agency and autonomy.
So it's, I guess a long way to say like how I got interested in sort of reading and assessment and then more broadly, like students' wellbeing and psychological wellness, which is sort of like where I started in a way.
Erin Bailey: It's so interesting and thank you for being so authentic there about your experience with assessments, because I'm sure there's a lot of educators listening right now that can.
Relate to that a lot.
I mean, when I was a reading specialist, I loved giving assessments and I probably gave them every six weeks.
And if you know me or if you've listened to this podcast a while, that probably sounds strange to you because I'm all about the joy of reading.
So assessment and joy don't go hand in hand.
They actually do when you use them appropriately.
Because when I was a reading specialist, I would use these assessments, some of which I designed myself, and some of which, you know, were provided for me to like, it was like playing detective so I could figure out what skills a, what specific reading skills a student was struggling with.
So maybe it was a particular phonics pattern or maybe it was a. Component of phonological awareness, or maybe they were having a fluency issue.
And then once I had those clues, I could put together a personalized program for them and really tailor my lessons to meet their needs.
And I found joy in that because it felt successful for me and it also felt successful for the students.
Dr. Elena Forzani: Yeah.
It's interesting you say that because I had a very similar experience when I taught first grade.
I also loved doing assessments, and I think it was for the same reason you just said, right.
You get to actually learn.
What's going on with a student, and it's very specific.
You know, depending on the assessment, it's specific information that you can actually then use in instruction to help them grow.
And that was really cool and exciting to me to understand.
You know why the sort of the why behind their performance if they were struggling or if they were doing really well.
You know, a kid reads a paragraph out loud or silently and you have no idea what's happening, right?
Unless you dig a little deeper.
And I think that's something kind of, as you just said, an assessment tool allows us to do is to dig a leader.
Little deeper into that, why.
Erin Bailey: Absolutely.
And I can see how your path has led you to where you are today.
So now you are deeply involved in the development of the 2026 NAP reading framework, and you serve on the na.
Standing reading committee.
So can you tell us a little bit about what that role entails and what are some of the priorities?
Guiding NAPS reading assessment right now.
Dr. Elena Forzani: Yeah, sure.
So we developed the framework a few years ago now.
I can't remember when it was actually published, maybe during, maybe in 23.
So it's been a few years, but I do know it's now 2026, so it's gonna start to be implemented and it'll be really exciting to see that data and to see how you know, I'm sure there'll be all kinds of conversations and complaints about the way the data is structured and the changes.
But the actual process of developing the new framework, I think was really exciting because it hadn't been developed since 2002.
And if you think about the time period between 2002 and like 2020 when we started developing it.
It's a big time period and certainly just thinking about the role of the internet, which is something else that I study, there's a huge change right in, in terms of digital reading and the, what the internet has done to.
Kids reading.
So I think that's something that we wanted to better account for sure.
And the reading experiences or activities, the tasks are situated within particular disciplinary areas or context, disciplinary context or, and they'll be reported that way, which will be a new change.
And that was really guided too by some of the practitioners in the room feeling like that would be valuable because teachers would be able to understand how students read in these particular contexts.
I think it also does a nice thing, which is helping us all remember that reading is not a fixed thing in, you know.
Across all contexts, right?
The way we read in a particular context may be really different than the way we read.
You know, in another context, whether it's a different topic or a different type of text.
Readers read differently across different contexts and disciplinary contexts are one context that I think are really relevant for school.
So I hope that those data will be valuable for teachers.
And I forget your second question.
Was it around what's important?
Erin Bailey: Yeah, I mean, what was, what were the priorities of the reading assessment right now?
Which I think you kind of highlighted, I mean, a big priority of course, being, it's been almost 20 years since the update, so.
Oh, that's seems like a lot has happened in the last 20 years.
Dr. Elena Forzani: Yeah.
And you know, they're always concerned with trend and making sure we can maintain trend.
So I think they're doing.
Evaluations to make sure that the assessments will be comparable.
They always keep some of the prior tasks so that they can do that comparison.
But yeah, it'll be interesting to see how the data looks.
Although I don't really know what's going on with a right now, with, you know, everything happening federally.
I'm not sure what's, I know they're administering the assessment.
I don't know much.
I haven't heard much else about it.
Erin Bailey: And I think the other thing is comparing nap.
To the Connecticut assessment that you described earlier.
I know our listeners will be interested as I am in like what makes NAP considered a low stake assessment.
You know, we always hear about high stakes testing, so what makes NAP low stakes and authentic in comparison to some of the other assessments that you've seen?
Dr. Elena Forzani: Yeah, that's a great question.
So it's low stakes in the sense that it doesn't have consequences for particular students.
And you know, it state standardized tests.
I think sometimes they can have consequences.
It depends on the state.
But NAP certainly, you know, it's not an individualized, like there are no, it doesn't report individual scores.
So it reports scores for the nation and for specific entities or groups that use it to understand how their group of readers are performing.
So that's the way in which it's low stakes.
Erin Bailey: That's great.
And the way I've heard it described is maybe like no one student takes the full nap assessment.
It's basically what, maybe like eight students that create like a composite student.
Okay.
Dr. Elena Forzani: Yeah, that's right.
So they sample different pieces and I don't know the full sampling plan off the top of my head.
But the idea is that it lessens the burden of time on each individual student and sort of spreads that across the population because they're trying to understand.
Reading assessment on a national scale.
And so it's, you know, it's like a temperature check or a thermometer is one way it gets described that isn't this individual piece, but really helping us sort of understand in, with broad strokes how students are performing.
It does not really help us understand why students are performing the way that they are.
And you know, that was something that we advocated for, was sort of additional studies and variables that would help understand why and connect the performance data to other variables.
But those did not get funded.
They were not seen, I guess, as important.
And so I think there are limited.
There's certainly like really important things we can do with the data, but limited in the sense of not necessarily helping us understand the why behind the performance scores.
Erin Bailey: Yes, and certainly people will draw some causal conclusions through the data.
One that comes to mind is a lot of states are passing science of reading policies, so certainly you can try to match up how different states maybe improved compared to what policies they had in place.
Dr. Elena Forzani: Yeah.
Sure.
So that, right, like nap data gets used for things like that all the time, I think.
And, you know, mostly it's correlational.
I think sometimes people are looking at the time at which a particular policy was implemented, but you don't really know.
There, there are questionnaires that go with APE and so you can correlate questionnaire data with performance data, which I think can tell us some things.
Erin Bailey: That's great.
So I also wanna think about equity in your work.
It's part, a big part of your scholarship.
How do you define equity in assessment and.
What does that look like in practice?
Dr. Elena Forzani: Yeah, that's a big question.
And and there are so many ways I think to think about equity.
You know, I think one way we defined it recently in our justice based reading assessment framework was to think about it as students getting what they need within a system.
And that could mean that if you and I are students and we take an assessment.
The assessment shows we need different amounts of instruction or different types of instruction that we both get that different instruction or that differentiation, but I think that assumes that the system itself is what we're going for, right?
That assumes that it's equity within a given system.
And we also in that framework talk about justice, which is about more about like changing the system or questioning is that system equitable itself?
I think another way to think about equity and assessment is consequences.
So what are the ultimate consequences for students based on that assessment and are they good consequences that are actually gonna help students and that are gonna be fair across students?
I think historically, certainly the stories that have been told about certain populations of students with assessment have been quite negative, like persistently negative, and sometimes the story ends up getting told in a way that, you know, it blames particular populations of learners or even students themselves, rather than helping us think about.
The contexts and how we can change and design learning contexts that will better support groups of students or how we might think about you know, societal structures that you know, constrained learners in certain ways and that historically have constrained learners in certain ways.
And the ways in which, you know, assessments really are often developed by the same.
Kinds of people.
I think this is certainly getting better, but historically assessments have been developed and designed and implemented by dominant populations.
And so you know that popul a dominant population isn't really gonna be able to understand the needs of all other populations and implement assessment.
Design and develop and implement assessment in ways that are going to align with the needs or even the values of assessment.
You know, assessments are really like instantiations of our social values, right?
Somebody is deciding what we're gonna assess and what matters enough to assess it, and how we're gonna actually operationalize that in the assessment.
What's, how we're gonna actually measure it.
So, you know, different groups of people or different people might decide that they value different things.
So I think equity and assessment also means understanding what is it that different populations of people value in literacy assessment and in literacy practices, and how should we go about.
Designing and developing assessment that will align with that, and I think that really necessarily then means making sure all those different groups are at the table define, you know, deciding what's measured and how it's gonna be measured, how it's gonna be implemented, and how we're gonna think about reporting results and ultimate consequences of that assessment.
So I think there are lots of ways to think about it.
One other thing I'll say is differentiation.
So especially now with a focus on the science of reading, I think we're seeing a lot of rhetoric around we're gonna implement the same instruction or the same assessment for all learners, because that's gonna be equitable, to make sure that every single learner gets the same thing and.
It's sort of this move away from differentiation, which to me, you know, I just really don't understand this and I think it's really problematic.
I get the idea of wanting to make sure that students, that no student misses out on instruction.
And historically for assessment, right, we're assessment is like giving the same assessment to the same way to all learners and not differentiating or not adapting, but that can turn into a validity issue where it's actually less valid for some learners and so it's less equitable and less valid and it's actually ends up going against good assessment principles.
So I think we do need to differentiate assessment to make it more equitable for different learners.
Erin Bailey: Yeah, that's, I mean, what you're describing, I think all educators are grappling with right now because it seems like there's been a movement towards whole class, a lot of things.
So whole class instruction, whole class assessment, this kind of.
Equity means everyone gets the same thing, one size fits all kind of thing.
And that's different than equity, right?
That's like equal.
And those two don't always go to, those don't always go hand in hand.
But one thing we talk about a lot, and I know you've.
Written about is culturally responsive or culturally relevant teaching, but you have this idea of culturally responsive assessment.
Can you describe that a little bit?
What are the core principles and what challenges might arise if people try to implement this at scale?
Dr. Elena Forzani: Yeah, and I'll just say culturally responsive assessment is not our concept.
You know, folks like Montenegro and Carol Lee took up culturally responsive assessment years ago.
I think most recently, Bennett has a really nice paper on culturally responsive assessment.
But I think, you know, there are different, there are a few ideas there.
One is, I mean, for me it means one thing I just mentioned, which is partnering with the populations of people that an assessment is trying to serve.
Right?
If you're creating an assessment or implementing it.
And the people that it's supposed to help or serve isn't, aren't at the table.
I think you really can't do a good job of that.
You have no idea what their goals are, what they want, what kinds of literacy practices are meaningful to them, or how they make meaning in different ways.
And so I think having those rights holders at the table is absolutely essential and a first step before you're doing anything else.
And I think it needs to be more than just.
You know, having focus groups or asking a couple of people to look at the assessment after the fact, right?
So sometimes we have these bias panels or fairness panels that happen after an assessment gets developed and they're supposed to sort of, just make small tweaks.
I think we really need to think about being culturally responsive and equitable from the very outset of the assessment, which.
Means sitting with people that the assessment is gonna serve.
I also think it means really valuing different identities, knowledges, cultures, experiences, forms of expression that.
At least that are going to represent the people being served by the assessment.
And if that's, if you're developing an assessment for the national population, that means finding ways, you know, to reflect the identities and knowledges and experiences and languages of people in the national population, depending on, you know, what you're trying to assess as well.
There's been a lot of good work in trying to adapt assessments to try to account for some of those influences.
And you know, we've long known, of course that background knowledge plays a huge role in reading comprehension.
And so if you and I have different knowledge and we read the same passage, on baseball, let's say.
And you know a
ton about baseball.
I know nothing.
I know nothing about baseball.
So I use this example a lot.
You know, then it's gonna be a really hard passage for me to read.
I'll probably perform poorly on it.
If you know a lot, you'll perform better.
It's a very simplistic example, but we want to sort of.
Vary the kinds of knowledges and even better understand the reader's knowledge who are taking an assessment so we can understand the relationship in any given assessment between knowledges, motivations, identities, language, and their performance on the assessment.
I think too, like I mentioned, adapting assessments, I think that's a huge thing that.
We do need to differentiate and adapt assessments to account for the needs of different kinds of learners.
You know, just in, I just mentioned this survey we're giving and one of the things that's looking at teachers' practices and perspectives for reading assessment, and one of the themes that's come up over and over is that.
Basically that we need to differentiate assessment, both in terms of populations of learners, like assessments not being appropriate for English learners or for students behind grade level.
And then also this idea that some students.
That may be behind grade level, that are struggling with reading, might need more frequent and or different kinds of assessments compared to students who are on grade level.
Right.
And it's such a, it's almost like a back to basics concept that we used to do when we differentiated.
And now, like you said, it's become a one size fits all.
Issue where we're just giving the same assessments to all learners and saying, that's good.
And I think what we're finding in this survey is teachers are saying like, no that's actually not working.
It's not serving students.
It's not helping me inform my instruction.
Instruction.
And it's a waste of time.
So hopefully we will eventually see more of that instructional or that assessment adaptation.
Erin Bailey: It's, it seems like such a big task though, because like your baseball example is perfect and I think there was even a study sometime around the eighties that did such a test where.
Readers were given a BA passage about baseball, and depending on their background knowledge of baseball, they were able to do the learning task you know, to a certain degree, better or worse.
But it really had to do more with their background knowledge of baseball than the reading passage that they were given.
So, I mean, to think about this at a national.
Scale seems like such a daunting task because is there anything that we truly all share of background knowledge in or how, I mean, what can we do?
Dr. Elena Forzani: Yeah, and I think, you know, that's a common issue that comes up I think for good reason and.
I mean, I think one thing we can do that folks are doing is like sampling different kinds of knowledge or at least understanding, you know, including short questionnaires that assess knowledge so that you can then at least understand a student's, the relationship between a student's background content knowledge, and their performance on the passage, so that you sort of know that why piece, if they didn't perform well.
You know, you can say, oh, that's because one possible reason is that they had this low knowledge.
So that we can kind of understand that.
But yeah, it's a huge issue, especially when we're thinking about assessing on a national scale.
But I think it's something we have to do, right?
Because for so many years, assessment was just developed with the assumption that every learner was exactly the same.
And you know, that's just really not the case across the, you know, diverse human population, particularly the population that we have in the United States.
You know, scoring systems are, another way I think to address variation in learners is scoring systems that account for different differences, for example, that sort of allow teachers to.
What are the resources learners bring to instruction or to assessment, and why might they have performed a particular way rather than just, you know, if you have a one size fits all assessment, you're looking at assessment results and you're just assuming that.
For example, you might just assume that the student didn't, you know, doesn't it you might assume that the student has an issue with sounds and with understanding their sounds or with phonological awareness, and maybe in fact they're really good with their sounds in their home language, but.
Haven't yet learned sounds in English, and that's really important information for a teacher to know and has, you know, potentially different avenues for instruction.
So I think people are working on different ways to address the fact that we do have this diverse population.
But yeah, it is certainly such a huge issue and I think we're just beginning to think about it.
Erin Bailey: But thinking about it is a start.
And I like your idea too, of bringing everyone, bringing a diverse representation of people to the table at the onset, designing the assessment versus, just having, you know, a panel at the end that might react to an assessment.
I think, you know, those kind of like small steps can get us there over time.
I.
Dr. Elena Forzani: Yeah, I think that's again, an essential first piece that at least can guide the assessment.
And then I think.
It depends on the specific assessment, right?
And what you're trying to accomplish and what you're trying to measure in that assessment and who are the populations like for an assessment.
Maybe it is a homogenous population for a particular assessment, and then you can build that assessment for that population.
But I think on a national level, we do have really diverse populations that we need to think about.
Erin Bailey: Yeah.
And thinking back to the beginning when I introduced your research on digital literacies and online.
Reading.
A lot of your research explores how students read and how they evaluate information in digital spaces.
How should assessments evolve to be able to capture students' abilities to n navigate, evaluate, and synthesize information online?
Dr. Elena Forzani: Yeah, I mean, they should evolve to capture these things, right?
It's such an important skill and I think has only become more and more important with ai, with algorithms, with platform driven social media platforms.
These things really affect, actually, we were just talking about this in class last night.
They affect the information that we see, right?
Even like algorithms affect the information that we have access to, unless we're savvy enough to real, to like remember, oh yeah, there's an algorithm driving this information funnel.
And in order to see additional perspectives, I have to somehow get outside of that.
I mean, that's a really.
Tricky thing I think for students to learn about and for any of us to remember when we're reading online to remember how information is really controlled and funneled to us.
And it's not just algorithms, right?
It's also companies and organizations that have a lot of power and a lot of resources that have significant interests in.
Funneling particular information in particular ways to us.
So it's sort of like information is never neutral.
And we do have some good assessments of reading online.
So like PISA has an online reading assessment, pearls, which is a fourth grade reading assessment.
They also have an on an assessment of students' online reading.
I don't think really either of those.
Are thinking about sort of this contextual piece of how information gets controlled and funneled, which is more like moving towards a media literacy perspective.
And there are assessments on media literacy out there.
And I think too, like it's not just about assessing students' strategies.
But about assessing mindsets and how students approach information.
Again, that piece I just mentioned that my students were talking about in class last night of.
Realizing, oh yeah, there's an algorithm driving this, and how do I evaluate information within the context of that algorithm or of that funnel.
So I think some of those pieces we're really not assessing yet on a national level.
And yeah, I mean, I think that can have really big consequences for what we understand at a national level about what students.
Know and how they're operating when they're reading multiple different texts online.
Going back to nap, though I will say they're, some of their tasks do involve reading multiple digital texts online as well.
And they've got some really cool tasks that are really engaging and they've got avatars and that really sort of.
I think do a nice job of authentically representing what reading looks like online sometimes where students are reading multiple texts and thinking about multiple perspectives and synthesizing information across multiple texts.
But I think that evaluation piece is really key and that's something we need to think about measuring so that we focus on it more.
And the thing I'll say about that is I think there's a lot of.
Fear and reluctance to, to focus on that or to measure be particularly in our current.
Political context because it really does get into issues of who has control and who has power and what groups are being marginalized by information.
And you know, that's been, in some states you can't really talk about that anymore.
So I think that you know, are we gonna assess that?
There's a lot of fear around that and there's a lot of sort of pulling back.
But I do think that's something that.
We need to assess and even more so as kids are using ai, needing to understand how students are thinking about information and how they're really evaluating the credibility of that information and the ways in which that information is politically and socially situated.
Erin Bailey: Yeah that's so interesting.
I mean, I had a coworker the other day who asked, you know, should a question be whether students can identify if something is AI or human generated?
And I don't even know if we're asking the right questions.
I mean, is that a question that we should even be asking?
Does it matter, I guess, whether a human wrote it or an AI wrote it?
Is it more about the factual information?
I.
Dr. Elena Forzani: Yeah, I think that's a great question about like what questions are we asking, right?
What's important?
And I think there is that temptation to just focus on, right?
Is it AI or is it not AI or is it credible or is it not credible?
And it's like, well, it's really not that simple.
Information is not that simple.
And.
I, and I think a lot of organizations are allowing AI writing right now, even if schools are not allowing it.
And maybe there is, you know, important work that needs to be done on school's part to really consider how do we deal with ai?
Because I think.
The majority of K 12 schools right now, especially at elementary, middle school level, are just telling students they can't use it.
But of course, students are going home and they are using it.
And so how are schools sort of addressing that?
And I think it's, yeah, it's a really complex issue.
Erin Bailey: It's such a good point because as you mentioned, a lot of organizations and workplaces are allowing AI in writing, but then as you mentioned, schools are more hesitant to adopt that.
So are we really preparing.
Our learners for their lives outside of school if we're not equipping them with the right tools and the right processes to, to learn how to navigate AI in school.
Dr. Elena Forzani: Yeah.
And I think it's tricky.
Like, we want students to learn how to do something right, and if they never write on their own, they'll never, they won't be able to learn how.
But then I guess, right on the other hand, maybe they won't need to know, you know, who knows what the next 20 year.
I hate to say that I, everybody should learn how to write because I think it's a tool for helping us think, but, you know, what is the next 20 years gonna look like with ai?
I don't know.
I think that's can be a scary question.
Erin Bailey: Yeah, certainly something worth exploring though.
And thinking about that looking ahead, what areas of literacy, research and assessment excite you?
What do you believe will be the most influential on the future of educational and measurement?
Dr. Elena Forzani: Definitely ai since we're talking about it in terms of just speeding up analysis of results for sure.
But probably in assessment development as well.
I mean, I think in everything, right, AI is being used to do lots of different tasks.
So I think certainly AI and measurement is something we're gonna see more and more of.
I do also think we are gonna see more of a turn towards.
Adaptation of assessment rather than one size fits all.
I think people are starting to realize that that's not necessarily useful to use a one size fits all approach with assessment, and that we can differentiate in structured ways that are principled and that actually increase validity rather than, you know, take validity away, which is the fear.
So I think I, I do think there will be a turn towards that and towards differentiating and sort of adapting assessment, both at the classroom level and actually already, I think we're seeing more of that at the large scale assessment level where there's a lot of adaptation work going on.
Whereas at the classroom level, I think people are still afraid to adapt.
Erin Bailey: Well, that's interesting.
That's interesting to hear.
Thank you for that.
And finally, I always end by asking guests, what does reading inspire for you?
Dr. Elena Forzani: Yeah.
Okay.
That's a broad question.
I like it.
I think I would say two things.
One is like the ability to, maybe I mentioned this at the beginning, but I love that books can take us to a different world that we can't, you know, necessarily I. See or feel or experience otherwise.
And I think like history, I ne I feel like I never really understand historical things until I read a novel about them and then I'm like, oh, okay, now I really get it.
But just that ability to take you to historical places.
Like I'm reading Wolf Hall right now by Hillary Mantle or Mantle which is about, you know, 15, 16 hundreds England.
And obviously we can never go back in time.
So that's an example.
And then I think just the ability to like connect and communicate with other people, right?
Authors write these texts and we get to experience them.
And there's just so much there can, there's so much excitement in that when we get lost in a book whether it's something that's taking us to a different world or something that we identify with and it's this social thing, right, where it's not just the communication between the author and the reader.
But like we, we read together sometimes, right?
We make book recommendations that sometimes take us out of our comfort zones.
So I have this book actually, that I started, I don't usually read graphic novels 'cause it's not my it's not what I love.
It's not what I grew up with.
But a student just recommended this and it's about a Canadian family and crossing borders and it's a graphic novel, so it's also.
Forcing me to come outta my comfort zone a little bit and read a graphic novel.
And then to be able to talk about that book too with other people.
So I think, that's, it's just really exciting.
And just I guess I said like the love of just getting lost in a book.
I think that's so powerful and those of us who love to read know that feeling of just not being able to put a book down.
I was recently on an airplane reading all the colors of the dark, which had actually been recommended to me by two different colleagues.
And I was supposed to be working on something, but I started reading it at takeoff when I couldn't have my laptop open and I just couldn't put it down.
So there's just that, like, that feeling of getting lost in a book in that way of like, I kept meaning to put it down, but my brain just kept ignoring that piece.
And I think that's a great experience for kids to get to experience and adults as well.
Erin Bailey: I love graphic novels, so I am definitely going to check that one out and then you and I can connect over it the next time we see each other in person.
I will also link the.
Hello.
For everyone who's interested, I feel like now we've started Elena's book Club.
Of the three the three books that you mentioned, I'll be sure to link below so everyone can check them out.
And thank you so much for being here, Elena.
Dr. Elena Forzani: Yeah.
Thank you so much Erin.
And I'll just share one more thing because you're reminding me too.
This book was a recommendation because I asked students to bring in a text on the first night of class that's been meaningful to them in some way.
And as a way of like introducing themselves.
And it's just a great way too to get, like, to learn about students as people and what matters to them and to get book recommendations across the class.
So it's just another way of thinking about that.
Books sort of inspire connection and community.
Erin Bailey: That's a great interactivity.
So for those of you who are teachers listening right now, you should use that.
Bring a book bring a book as a get to know you, a activity.
That's a great way to connect and get.
Great reading recommendations too.
Well, thank you so much and thank you all for listening to Reading Inspires by Reading is Fundamental.
I hope today's conversation sparked new ideas, meaningful connections, and a renewed love of reading.
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