The Read Into This podcast is sponsored by Canadian School Libraries and voicEd Radio.
Your hosts connect with authors, experts, and colleagues about books, articles, fiction, non-fiction, graphic novels, media texts, cookbooks, and everything in between. They explore how we read and how what we read makes us who we are and helps us learn about those around us.
Here’s a taste of some recent episodes!
Teaching Tough Topics: Interview with Fatty Legs author Christy Jordan-Fenton
Teacher-librarian Lisa Lewis joins Alanna King to speak with author Christy Jordan-Fenton and Margaret Pokiak-Fenton (Olemaun) about the impact of their book on tackling the tough topic of Canada’s history of residential schools and the legacy of this cultural trauma. This unique memoir of the Inuvialuit experience is a must-read for middle grade audiences.
Lisa uses Fatty Legs with her intergenerational book club and speaks about the power of unpacking trauma with middle grade students. Christy mentions how Fatty Legs is also resonating with new Canadians and adapting to new cultures. Christy also refers to the cross-cultural connections of global history including war’s effect on human migration, the Japanese treatment of Korean people. Lisa emphasizes how the impact of migration on family culture really resonates with her students and their families.
Read Into Our Journey Towards Reading Diversely
Beth Lyons and Toni Duval look back at their journey together as teacher-librarians towards reading more diversely. They recount their time at the Ontario Library Super Conference, seeing Jael Richardson as a spotlight speaker and attending the Festival of Literary Diversity (FOLD) as a means to live and read more diversely. Toni talks about her time as a FOLD volunteer and using the resources and learning offered by the FOLD as an inroads to bringing diverse literature into the classroom. The pair consider their learning in a professional development sense and the importance of bringing an awareness to who is presenting the sessions, the messages they are sharing and moving beyond your silo. Both Toni and Beth have started to engage in a diversity audit of the book collections in the school library and discuss the statistics and learning that have come from starting this work. Toni shares about how she connected with Rebeca Rubio and their upcoming session at OLA Super Conference 2021 looking at their diversity audits and the discussions that stem from the data and the work.
Read Into Canadian Content with Jael Richardson
Co-host Beth Lyons welcomes Jael Richardson, author and executive director of the Festival of Literary Diversity (FOLD) to discuss the importance of choosing to bring Canadian content- authors, illustrators, publishers- into Canadian classrooms. Looking at the social responsibility and moral imperative of the Canadian education system to book Canadian authors and activists to speak to students. They discuss how the publishing industry in Canada needs to shift to promote Canadian writers, in particular BIPOC authors, that represent the lived experience of our country. How might we as readers and specifically teacher-librarians work to bring intentionality to the authors we showcase within our schools and with our students? Jael shares her thoughts on how teacher-librarians and educators can work from the geographical space in which their students reside to help share a clear path that has been followed by authors and other artists in order to help students make connections. What mandates and policies exist within an educational organization that promotes and holds people accountable to bringing in Canadian authors and content? How might we advocate to make these policies a reality? Lastly, the role of parents and grown-ups in advocating for the reading materials that are consumed by readers, regardless of the medium or genre, is discussed.
Read Into the Save School Libraries Coalition
Beth Lyons speaks to Maria Martella and Margie Wolfe about the creation of the Save School Libraries Coalition, the role school libraries and Canadian books plays in the education of students, the legacy of devaluing and defunding of school libraries over decades and the most recent alarming closures of school libraries in response to the pandemic. The panel discusses the need to advocate for school libraries, work to educate families and caregivers of how school libraries support their children’s education.
Find Read Into This on the Canadian School Libraries website: www.canadianschoollibraries.ca/read-into-this/