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Reading Inspires is Reading Is Fundamental’s new podcast celebrating the power of books and the joy of reading. Each episode invites educators, librarians, families, authors, illustrators, and all who champion children’s literacy to explore one big question: What does reading inspire for you? Through engaging conversations and storytelling, Reading Inspires bridges the gap between research and real-world practice—showing what literacy looks and feels like in classrooms, libraries, and homes. Grounded in evidence yet open-ended in approach, this is a space for curiosity and connection. Whether you’re an educator seeking fresh ideas, a parent hoping to spark a love of reading, or simply a lifelong bookworm, you’ll find inspiration, practical insights, and stories that remind us all why reading matters—and how it changes lives.
Erin Bailey: Welcome.
This morning I'm talking to Dr. Dewan McNair Lee, who is a dear friend of mine.
We go back to our doctoral studies at the George Washington University, where we found out that we had a shared passion of literacy and we actually were neighbors.
We taught across the street from each other, and since then, we've become great friends.
Dewan has.
Been a great support to rif.
She's on our early childhood Education advisory Board and she's done many webinars for us, so I'm excited to sit down with her today to have this chat.
I'll pass it over to you, Dewan.
Welcome.
Please share your story, in your background and teaching, and specifically middle schoolers.
Dowan: Sure thing.
Hey Erin, it is so good to be with you.
specifically, like you said, we've gone, we go back a long, long way.
we're hitting on our 10 year anniversary next year.
Can you believe it?
Oh my god.
and the work with riff.
thank you for inviting me to riff into this space that censors reading and literacy, is just always such an exciting time and an invigorating time for me to be in this space.
So.
My story.
I started off as a, elementary education major who taught third grade at first, my first two years with third grade.
And my principal at the time taught, was the principal of both our elementary campus and our middle school campus.
And somewhere mid my second year teaching third grade, she was like, you need to move.
And I was like, move where she was like, I wanna move you to middle school.
I wanna move you to our middle school campus.
So the next year she moved me to our sixth grade campus.
and I taught sixth grade ELA and I immediately fell in love.
I just knew that it was the place for me.
Middle schoolers had just the right amount of.
Sweet yet sarcasm that I could match and I could feel comfortable in conversation with them.
the text that we read, we could read rich texts.
We have great conversations and I just adored my time with sixth graders throughout the years.
I taught sixth grade.
I taught seventh grade, but then the, my last middle school placement in Prince George's County was with eighth grade.
And eighth graders have my heart.
teaching eighth grade reading English Language Arts, was revelatory for me.
It was an opportunity for me to engage with rich young adult literature while also teaching students the skills to access text, both fiction, nonfiction.
One of my favorite units to teach was always the, nonfiction argument unit where they had to argue about paper straws and plastic in the ocean, and
teaching them how to write about their opinions and their arguments and write counter arguments just was the highlight really of my, my teaching experience.
The other thing that was fun and helpful was that when I was teaching eighth grade.
I wrote, my dissertation is handled with my students.
So when they were writing, I would write and they would hold me accountable for my writing.
So if I said I was gonna finish a page or do this or work out some theoretical question I had, my students would ask me at the end of class, after they finish writing, they'd say, Ms.
McNair Lee, we wanna hear what you wrote.
So having eighth graders who helped me accountable to my work, helped me accountable to my studies, outside of folks like Aaron and our cohort and my family and my other friends.
They were the impetus to keep me going and keep me moving through that process.
That was difficult and challenging, but teaching eighth grade, and middle school as a whole really was my sweet spot of teaching.
eighth graders are curious.
They're funny, they're brilliant, and being able to engage with them intellectually sharpened me in ways that I would've never imagined.
Erin Bailey: Thanks.
On.
I think I, I can relate to that so much because fifth and sixth grade for me is a sweet spot.
I started out as a classroom teacher for fifth grade, and then I mostly spent a lot of my career in early childhood.
But when I became a reading specialist, then I had the whole span, right?
pre-K all the way up through eighth grade and.
Fifth and sixth grade.
Reluctant readers are my favorite kind of readers.
Give me, give me a challenge.
give me a student who says they're not interested in reading, and I will turn that around for them.
You know, it, that was what was fun because a lot of times it is about finding the right text for middle school students to engage with and that's, you know, part of what we're gonna talk about, today.
So.
From your experiences, what are the most popular texts that middle schoolers are drawn to, and why do you think they're drawn to those texts?
Dowan: So now, middle schoolers seem to be really drawn to graphic novels, anime and manga texts.
Those are the ones that they're like in my veins.
They want those texts.
research shows that.
One of the reasons why they're drawn to the graphic novel, the anime and the manga, is because of the non-linear storytelling.
It matches the way that they take in information.
middle school aged students are taking in information in various ways.
They take it from their phones, they're texting, they're receiving information.
From, media in all different ways.
So when they read an anime, book, or a manga book or a graphic novel, it mirrors how they're taking in information in their real lives.
also I do think it's a form of escapism in some ways.
they're able to move beyond their current circumstances, current positions, and go to other worlds.
I often cite, Rudin sims, bishops mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors.
I think especially for manga and anime, that's a sliding glass door experience for students.
It's where they get to experience other worlds, other cultures, other spaces that may not be part of their lived reality, but they get to experience these.
Spaces and become enveloped in them in ways that they may not, if they were just having to rely on their own pictures in their minds to do so.
So I think that's why they're drawn to these texts.
Then you have the students who are drawn to the traditional story, the traditional, Romance, but with a twist.
I'm finding that a lot of middle school age students, like, horror, they like, they like books that have suspense and that keep them on their toes.
Part of it is that I think that the world that they live in is quite frankly, one that is building them up with this kind of resilience and, anticipation of.
The not great.
these are kids who lived through COVID, so you have children who've lived through some circumstances that have not been great, so they can handle Tex in some ways that I.
Scare them a little bit, if I can be quite frank.
They can handle that.
They can handle that level of suspense.
and also I think it is another sliding glass door experience where they can see something else, where they can picture something else.
so I'm always kind of interested when I see kids walking down the hall or whatever near reading, and you're like, what are you reading?
And they're like, yes, this is about this, but it's werewolves and it's this.
And then the main character, you're like, oh.
and it's always really funny and cute and they're so sincere about it.
They're really into it.
They're engaged in the text.
But I do find that the text students are reading seems to be forms of escapism.
They want to be able to get away.
They want to be able to go to another space, another world, another realm, and experience something else.
Erin Bailey: That makes a lot of sense and it mirrors what we've seen at reading is fundamental.
We have middle.
School programs we're in 77, intensive programs in middle schools right now.
And the exactly what you described are the books that we see them drawn to.
one thing that you said that resonated with me was this idea of.
mirrors windows and sliding glass doors.
I think there has been a movement towards more books being mirrors, reflecting students' lived experiences, as well as their identities and affinities, and I think that's wonderful.
We need more books like that.
But text relevance itself doesn't always mean seeing yourself reflected in a book.
And I think a great example of that is how popular Harry Potter became in the us.
I mean, children of all different backgrounds in the US loved Harry Potter, yet not a single one of them.
Were a British schoolboy, with magical powers, you know,
going on these adventures.
Dowan: it wasn't the exteriority that kids were attracted to.
It was the interiority, right?
Like I'm not seeing the relevance or the sameness of their outward experiences.
I'm seeing the sameness in who they are, and I think that's what kids see when they reanimate.
It's not that they are Samurai warriors in Japan or whatever.
They're seeing bravery, they're seeing fear.
They're seeing.
bonds being shared or broken, and that's what they can relate to.
It's not the exteriority of it, it's the inferiority of it that I think matters to kids more now, and I can appreciate that.
Erin Bailey: Absolutely like the characteristics of the character, some of the issue.
That they're going through.
I, the other big requests that we get from our middle schoolers are they want books about friendship, drama.
That makes a lot of sense.
It's something that they're experiencing in middle school and they wanna see how characters experience it and how characters navigate it.
It can give them some ideas of how they might navigate similar conflicts in, in their own lives.
Okay.
Dowan: Absolutely.
and they, you know, and we know that when kids read fiction, it heightens their sensitivity.
it changes their outlook on the world.
It changes the way that they see people.
They see exchanges, they see situations.
So one of the best ways to teach kids, skills, like when we talk about social emotional learning, is exposing them to quality fiction That tells you stories about friendship and relationships and how we deal with coexist with people.
I.
Erin Bailey: And you mentioned something else that I wanted to return to about comics and graphic novels.
I was actually in a webinar recently attending a webinar recently, and someone put in the chat that graphic novels.
We're not real reading, and I certainly have a stance on this, but I'd love to hear you share about why this might be a misconception and what are some of the advantages of reading graphic novels.
Dowan: So, I've heard this since I started teaching and I started teaching 20,
gosh, 24 years ago I started teaching and graphic novels were just becoming a thing.
Way back then.
And, I heard so many, but they can't read that.
They can't read that.
No.
You got, they have to read real books.
part of it is just people's allegiance to what's already been done.
It.
There's no rhyme or reason.
It's just allegiance to what's already been done.
Also, some people have an affinity for a paragraph.
They want to see blocks of text without pictures and pictures For some people.
the fact that a text would have pictures for some denotes that it is not, that the pictures are cheating, that a picture in a text is cheating kids out of a comprehension experience.
And
I actually take serious issue with that.
As someone who admires and loves art, we go to museums to look at pictures.
All the time.
And we ask the picture theoretically to tell us what the, what its story is.
So we stand in front of this picture and we ask this picture, what is your story?
So if a picture then is in a book.
It is accompanied by words.
Why can't we then teach kids to ask the picture what its story is the same way we do when we go to a museum.
Secondly, I think because in graphic novels we have texts and pictures.
The texts are not the dominant feature.
It's like code stars, right?
But then that means that the text has to be rich and it has to do its job efficiently.
So you have figurative language, you have phrases that students have to decipher and know because there's not gonna be a whole lot of description given because the description is gonna be in the picture, but the text is going to be tight and rich.
And I think when we say that graphic novels aren't.
Books or they aren't relevant, we're cheating students out of the opportunity to really engage with this kind of tight and rich text that is figurative language heavy.
That is definitely kind of giving you what it wants to give you in ways that.
You're not going to get in a traditional text.
and I think that like, as I was thinking about our conversation yesterday and how I might approach this, how dare I go up to someone like Jerry Craft and tell him that a book like New Kid Isn't Relevant isn't a great text?
Like that's so presumptuous and quite frankly is disrespectful that we would approach.
Text that does it differently as not being valid.
I also think that we privilege difficult, we privilege difficult in ways that are unnecessary.
Is it necessary for us to read, um, 50 pages of dense texts when this story can be told in 10 in a different way by marrying text and pictures?
And because I've gone through certain processes in my life where you have to go through a process to get something.
I also think that some teachers and, and educators, I'll say it like that, believe that if this is the way that I learned, then this is the way my students must learn.
And I don't think that's valid.
I think that we have to look at the students we have in our rooms and we have to look to see what the kids want and what they're drawn to.
And if it's a graphic novel to let 'em read, let them read.
Erin Bailey: How about, so I'll give a specific example, about letting students choose the mode that they can access the text.
So, for example, I, this happened recently, I ordered some books for a school, one crazy summer.
it's a very popular text used in a lot of schools.
They now have a Spanish version of it.
They also have a graphic novel version of it, and of course you can get the audio book.
So.
Are there benefits to having a, the same story in multiple formats?
Dowan: Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Because I think that you get different experiences from each format.
I mean, obviously Spanish, there's students who they just can simply access the text because if it wasn't in Spanish, they wouldn't be able to access it.
I think the graphic novel provides just a different experience.
You can't actually see, if I'm comparing The standard book or the original text to the graphic novel.
I think it is, it's a good choice that students can see.
How do they take this paragraph and then reflect this in arts and words, or going the opposite way.
How do they take this art and words and reflect it in a paragraph?
So I think that there's value in doing both.
I also think it's value in what is it that you're actually teaching.
and this is where I get into it with people about audio books all the time.
Audio books aren't reading.
Oh my God, audio books aren't reading.
And I'm like, whatever.
Audio books are a form of reading.
It just depends on what it is you're trying to teach.
If you're trying to teach letter recognition, word recognition, all that, then the audio book obviously is not teaching that the audio book is doing that work for you in that capacity, but you're still having to comprehend.
You're still having to listen and comprehend, so you're getting that part.
But if you're trying to get kids to be able to do the word work, then yes, you're gonna lead them to the written text for the word level work.
so I think it's incumbent upon the education professionals in the space to determine what is it that I'm trying to teach.
And then based on what it is I'm trying to teach, these are the options that I will make available for my students and given professionals who know their students and who have the skill to teach the options to do so, I think is the best way to go with that.
So think having all of that is wonderful in the classroom space.
Erin Bailey: There's also kind of, you've, you've touched on this a little bit.
There's somewhat of a, a debate.
is probably too strong of a word about novels versus excerpts, and there's actually an EdWeek article I can link for everyone in the show notes.
novels versus excerpts, what, you know, what kind of debates are going on right now.
And I was wondering if you have.
An opinion on this.
I think the movement has kind of been towards shorter excerpts and anthologies, particularly because in the testing environment, that's what students experience, right?
You're never in a testing environment and asked to read a whole novel.
So how can teachers find balance there?
Dowan: So back to the story about me moving from elementary to middle school.
That first year I taught sixth grade, was a transition year in our testing schedule.
It was like in the middle of us transitioning to, I forget 'cause I've taught in like four different testing environments.
but we were transitioning from one test to another and sixth grade was not a.
Tested grade or was not a pilot grade.
So this was the only year in my teaching career that I was not responsible for any kind of standardized test.
None, absolutely none, no benchmarks, no year end, no nothing.
And I took that as the opportunity to teach all novels.
I taught four novels that year and we actually partnered with another school that has sixth grade and we will walk over, back and forth to the schools and have book talks or whatever with each other.
And I'm still in touch with a lot of those students to this day, and they still tell me.
I remember that you let us read all of, Maya and Angela.
I know why the Caged Bird sings.
I, I'm glad that you let us read To Kill a Mockingbird.
Like these were the texts that sixth graders.
I was crazy letting them read these books.
By the way.
I was young.
I didn't know.
but sixth graders were able to read these whole novels.
And not just to read them to know how to make an inference or how to understand figurative language, but to really understand the development of a story,
to really understand why an author not just situated in the classroom standards, but while author historically would write this book, why an author?
in this time period, why does this matter now?
Why does this matter then, et cetera.
So I think that the push away from novels into the excerpt robs kids of the opportunity to experience books in their fullest expression.
you're not really understanding the entire story, and when I say story, I'm not just.
Talking about the printed text, but the entire story of the text, like, where does this fit in, in the larger cultural milieu?
for example, right now my ninth grader is reading the Joy Luck Club, and she and her best friend are going back and forth like, yes.
At the end of chapter five, her response was T like, oh my God, like.
They're having these conversations, and I just don't know if in an excerpt you're getting those kind of authentic conversations about sex that come up naturally as people read a book together.
because a excerpt doesn't lend itself to that, you're, you're not getting that.
I understand why.
I understand why.
Again, my last year in the classroom was 2022.
So, yes, I've been, I, I know and I understand the challenges.
our school had time for us to read novels where we could do novel study or whatever outside of, just test prep.
But I understand the challenges.
I understand that it is a balancing act, especially when teachers are being pushed to raise scores.
Right, and the, the easiest way to do that is skill-based.
Focusing on skills.
Focusing on skills, not necessarily the story itself.
So finding those times.
and that's where I think when I talked about it The webinar a few weeks ago when I talked about the contest and all of that.
That's where I think you get other people outside of the English teacher involved because it can't just be on the ELA teacher in the building to do this work.
It can't.
It can't.
it's too large of a responsibility and I think this is when all of the grownups in the building need to ship in and make sure the kids are reading.
And there has to be building wide efforts around that.
And that just can't be the sole purpose of the sixth, seventh, and eighth grade ELA teachers.
It just can't be.
Erin Bailey: You reminded me, when I was the reading specialist, I. Saw that the sixth grade science teacher used to read aloud to her students every day.
it was an after lunch recess, kind of, you know, we're coming back to the classroom and I'm gonna read you a chapter from this book, but I went, A lot of
science teachers, I don't wanna generalize, but as you're saying, a lot of middle school teachers think that it's the ELA teacher's responsibility, right?
So I went up to this teacher to give her a compliment and say, that's such a great practice that you're reading aloud to your students.
She said.
Yeah, of course I would read aloud to my students.
why wouldn't I?
But I think she didn't realize how rare it is for a content area teacher, science, social studies, other kind of teacher to be reading a aloud.
And many people do feel it's because they don't have, time in the school day.
And something else you said about being able to access whole novels, whole texts.
I, when I mentioned earlier, I started teaching fifth grade.
And we had an anthology, which was e excerpts and picture books.
And I remember when I started, I asked the seventh grade teacher, do you read novels here?
Or do you just stick to the curriculum in the anthology?
And he said, oh yeah, you gotta mix a novel in, because for some students.
That's the only whole novel they will read the entire year, and I think that's important to remember too, is that not every child reads at home and so you reading a novel to them with them, that might be the only novel that they read the entire year.
Dowan: That's their only exposure to that kind of rich engagement with text.
And if you don't provide that in some way, if the school doesn't provide it, then they're not gonna get it.
And like I said, I think that when students come back to me and say, you had had us read, I remember I had an eighth grade class that read The Giver and it was so many arguments and oh my God, they argue and fought for a month.
Like I, every day I knew we were gonna argue and fight because the book just brought up so many themes and.
You have to give kids the opportunity to engage in the way that we read books.
When we read books, we talk about them.
We are mad about them, we're excited about them.
We are like, Ooh, did you read this part?
And do you get that out of a curated excerpt?
That's just meant to show, you know, how the theme is developed through a character specific action.
No.
No, you have to be able to see all of the moves of the text in order to have those rich conversations.
Erin Bailey: Yeah, absolutely.
And you've mentioned some.
Older text.
So this might be a controversial question, but I'll, you brought it up.
You've mentioned the giver, and to kill a mocking word, what I guess advice would you have for teachers who might be grappling with, do I teach the quote unquote classics, or do I try to incorporate newer novels?
Like what has been your experience with this?
Dowan: So my, my feelings about To Kill a Mockingbird have changed significantly since I started teaching.
That was 20 years ago.
So the way that I feel about that book now is very different than I felt about event, and I think this is how I will answer this question.
So, my daughter Read To Kill a Mockingbird last year, and, without my prompting at all, shared some very strong feelings about the text, with me, with her teacher, and I was like.
Okay.
and read the entire book.
What I explained to her was that because To Kill a Mockingbird is, canonical in the sense that there's so many allusions to that text and other texts and other real world environments, right?
So in order to understand other things.
It's, and to be a literate member of society, this society that we live in, that is what it is.
It's fairly important that, you know, that text if you want to access other texts.
so I think that there has to be exposure to the cannon in order for students to be able to access other texts that reference the cannon, right?
but.
My push is that we expand what the cannon is because as much as To Kill a Mockingbird is canonical.
I believe that Beloved is canonical.
Now, am I gonna see Beloved to sixth graders?
Absolutely not.
Probably shouldn't have taught it to sixth.
Probably shouldn't have taught to kill a Mockingbird to sixth graders, but that was then.
but we have to expand what we believe is canonical.
So Tony Morrison is canonical.
Walter Sadine Myers to me is canonical in the world of young adult literature, right?
Like if kids have not read Monster, I'm like, why haven't you like, there has to be an exposure to that.
So I think expanding our idea of what the canon is and then being honest about why we're teaching.
Not because it's so important, not because it is the best, not because it is this, but because so much of what we will learn is based in these things.
That's why I taught Shakespeare.
It wasn't because, oh my God, Shakespeare is this and it's the, it's because so much of what you will read and understand later is based in what you know from this.
And not understanding this will kind of leave you lost and other stuff later.
So
Erin Bailey: a great point.
Dowan: is the, yeah, it's like that's the balancing act for me.
It's always like, this is the reference material.
I just want you to know the reference material.
Am I rising it above anything else know?
But because this is the society that we live in that chooses to use these text reference, this is the reference material.
I want you to know this so you can access all this other stuff.
Erin Bailey: So it's a both, it's a both and it's finding the balance and recognizing that time isn't always on our side.
You, you know,
this leads to teachers making difficult choices sometimes and, and, you know, maybe you mix it up.
Every school year, you don't, there's no rule that says you have to teach the same texts every school.
I mean, well, I shouldn't say there is no rule.
In some places there are rules.
but if you do, if you are a teacher who has autonomy over your curriculum, then you should feel empowered to, mix it up and, and use it both and approach.
Dowan: Spot things in and out, and again, utilize the resources that it's not just you, but rally the rally, the resources in your school community outside to help students be exposed to other texts as well.
Erin Bailey: And I think the other thing that you mentioned, particularly because we're talking about adolescent readers here, is that adolescents, middle schoolers love a good challenge and they love to critique things.
So just like you were describing of your daughter.
Reading a text that they disagree with sometimes is even better.
It will get them talking more.
It will get them thinking deeper.
It will get them excited.
Dowan: Absolutely.
If you had read her angry essays, I mean, just getting as outta spite, like, I hate this book, and these are reasons why, right?
this book is blank, blank, blank, blank, blank.
And this is why I believe that.
And just the passion to be able to make that point.
and I was like, I don't care that you don't like it.
I, I want you to read things that you don't love.
Not because you can't read it, but because you have an issue with it theoretically or whatever.
And I want you to be able to expand onto why, why you don't, and that I think is important for young people like.
And it helps frame their way of being engaged with the world, right?
Because every idea that they hear, they're not going to, agree with, that's not gonna be part of their personal stance.
So they have to be able to explain why, why?
I don't agree with this idea, why.
So this prepares them for those, interactions later or currently.
Erin Bailey: Yeah.
you mentioned 2022 earlier, so I wanna take us back.
We're gonna time travel for a minute here, and for our listeners, Dewan and I were invited.
To the National Assessment of Education Progress or the reading report card, release, back in 2022.
So we were sitting in the room with their panel of experts, when they did their, press release and released the scores and walked us all through the scores and when they brought up the literacy scores.
I mean, it was dead silent in the room.
It was chilling to say the least, and di and disheartening.
And the headline here is that in 2022, the NA scores had reached the lowest.
In 30 years.
and there's been a another round in APE since then, but it hasn't shown that much improvement.
So I wanted to ask you, Dewan, what is most concerning for you about this decline in APE scores for eighth graders?
Dowan: So particularly with eighth graders.
So with the 2022 scores, and now that I think about it, my last year in the classroom was 2021.
so.
couple things concern me.
So when we think about eighth graders, with the 2022 scores, that was kind of immediately post pandemic.
And for us in the room, I think it was just a stark, not even wanna say reminder, but stark example of.
The sheer trauma, educational trauma of the pandemic, and many states had different ways of addressing pandemic learning.
I am in a state or city where students were home for a year and a half.
other places were out for a couple months and they went back to school.
And quite honestly, there was not a lot of variance between kids who had been home for a year and a half versus kids who were home from March to.
June and went back to school in person in August.
There wasn't a lot of variance in those scores and I think what we saw is that the psychic, impact of the pandemic, affected children in ways that we probably are still working through and don't even know probably until those folks are adults.
And as I said, when, my principal.
When I was still in the classroom during the pandemic, we had some business folks visit our building and my principal asked me to be a part
of their conver that conversation, and she was like, one of the questions they asked was, what is something we're doing wrong right now?
I said, this rush back to normal.
The rush back to normal, doing things normal, let's get back to normal.
I think it devastated children because nothing was normal.
And then we rushed back to the sense of normalcy.
That really wasn't normal.
Instead of taking a beat and saying, what do kids need and how can we reconfigure what we're doing to really meet the needs of children that wasn't done.
and I think the 22 scores reflected that in ways that.
We're still seeing reverberate even as those students.
Now, if that's 22, those students will be college freshmen next year.
and they'll be on my doorstep soon.
and we are seeing some of these things in our college classrooms now, with the scores a couple years later, and there was no change.
I think for me, the conversation that has to happen is there were a lot of funding that was dropped on schools and school districts.
To catch kids up, like millions and millions and millions of dollars were given to schools and school districts to, you know.
Reverse pandemic loss and catch kids up.
And we saw that the scores did not really budge in those subsequent years.
So my question is that are we really understanding what it means to catch kids up?
Are we really doing evidence-based practices when we talk about moving kids to where they need to be in literacy?
And is the measuring stick that we're using even still applicable right now?
Like.
Is it fair to even still measure kids based on pre pandemic standards anymore?
Or should we really be rethinking this thing?
and quite honestly, one of the things that bothers me still is the lack of imagination.
And daring that I think children needed and still need in order to reach their full potential.
And my fear is that this continued lack of imagination, this continued lack of daring, and reliance on AI and things like that are going to cause we're not gonna see anything get better
Erin Bailey: And I think your point too.
About going back to normal.
The reading scores were not great before the pandemic, to be clear.
So the idea
Dowan: It wasn't like we were beaten down anything before, so it's like why even make that our goal?
Why can't we imagine something different and better?
Like, you know, the work that I do, my work is all about dreaming and thinking about a better world, a better future, a better idea.
So this idea of like going backwards, going backwards for something that wasn't even great to begin with is kind of silly.
Erin Bailey: Yeah, definitely.
Um, so we'll end on a positive here.
As you know, the podcast is called Reading Inspires, and you just mentioned dreaming.
So what does reading inspire for you?
Dowan: Oh gosh.
You know, I thought about this one.
I tell my reading story to my students all the I'm a little girl from northeast dc You know, I grew up in an apartment on Fort Soton Drive, in northeast DC My parents were working class, and I didn't see a whole lot of the world.
I mean, I lived in DC so I went to museums.
I had experiences, but I didn't see a lot of the world as a child.
We didn't travel extensively.
We can do this.
But books took me everywhere I wanted to go.
books showed me that there was a world outside of the apartment that I lived in, outside of my grandma's house, outside of my church.
books showed me that there were people who didn't look like me, but who had, there were girls who were having similar experiences to me.
one of my favorite books as a little girl was Little Women.
Those girls couldn't have been more different from me in circumstances than anybody in the world.
But knowing that there were four little girls.
Somewhere in time.
That were sharing some of the same fears, anxieties, loves that I had made me feel like I was connected in a world that sometimes I felt disconnected from.
so reading inspires for me, it inspires this idea that, um.
You know, to be kind of corny, but take a look.
It's in a book like it.
I can go anywhere.
I can do anything, I can be anything.
And the idea that I would be anything, was inspired by books.
It was inspired by that.
And a little black girl from northeast DC became a doctor because of books.
And because my mother was kind enough and thoughtful enough and brilliant enough to go to the library when I was in middle school and say, my daughter likes to read, I want black books.
And she brought home, um, Maya Angelou's, autobiography, and Jay, California Cooper and James Baldwin, all of these books.
, I got to see black brilliance and I got to see that people like me could then be brilliant and smart and do, and be, and travel and write and do all of these incredible things.
So reading inspires me.
It inspires future and inspires possibility.
It inspires hope, it inspires that I can inspire somebody else.
, It's my lifeline, it's my joy.
It's what makes me smile.
It's what makes me happy.
Books are my friends,
Erin Bailey: Oh, thank you.
Oh, Dr. McNally, and you're here to inspire other generations to be readers, and we appreciate you so much.
Thank you.
Dowan: Thank you.
This was wonderful.