Episode 111: Rethinking Literacy Through Community Collaboration

Episode Summary:

What if libraries played a central role in transforming literacy instruction? In this Changemaker Voices episode, Jenny Emery Davidson shares how a rural community library became a hub for science-of-reading-aligned professional learning, teacher collaboration, and joyful literacy advocacy. This conversation will inspire educators and leaders to rethink how communities can help build a true social fabric of literacy.

Guest

Jenny Emery Davidson
Executive Director, The Community Library (Ketchum, Idaho)

Topics Discussed

• Libraries as community-based literacy leaders
• Supporting teachers through collaboration, not mandates
• Professional learning grounded in the science of reading
• Literacy access and equity in rural communities
• Creating joyful, meaningful learning experiences for educators and students
• Building a “social fabric of literacy” beyond schools

Organizations & Programs Mentioned

• The Community Library (Ketchum, ID)
  https://comlib.org
• The Community Library Literacy Summit
  A multi-day professional learning experience for Idaho educators focused on the science of reading and literacy instruction
  https://comlib.org/literacy-summit
• University of Idaho (Moscow, ID)
  https://www.uidaho.edu

Scholars & Literacy Leaders Referenced

• Dr. Louisa Moats https://www.louisamoats.com
• Dr. Anita Archer https://explicitinstruction.org
• Dr. Carol Tolman https://drcaroltolman.com/
• Dr. Antonio Fierro https://readinguniverse.org/contributor/antonio-fierro-edd?page=1
• Dr. Sally Brown (College of Idaho) https://collegeofidaho.edu/people/sally-brown/

Books & Resources Mentioned

• Speech to Print – Louisa Moats https://products.brookespublishing.com/Speech-to-Print-P1167.aspx
• Idaho Dyslexia Handbook
  https://www.sde.idaho.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Idaho-Dyslexia-Handbook.pdf
• Sold a Story (Podcast by Emily Hanford)
  https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story

▶️ Watch the full conversation on YouTube. https://youtu.be/6GOksQx4vt4

If this episode resonates with you, share it with a colleague or community leader—and consider how your own community might help build a stronger social fabric of literacy.

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Transcript

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Narrator: 0:03

Welcome to Literacy Talks, the podcast for literacy leaders and champions everywhere, brought to you by Reading Horizons. Literacy Talks is the place to discover new ideas, trends, insights and practical strategies for helping all learners reach reading proficiency. Our hosts are Stacy Hurst, a professor at Southern Utah University and Chief Academic Advisor for Reading Horizons. Donell Pons, a recognized expert and advocate in literacy, dyslexia and special education, and Lindsay Kemeny, an elementary classroom teacher, author and speaker. Now let's talk literacy.

Lindsay Kemeny: 0:46

Welcome to this episode of Literacy Talks. I'm Lindsay Kemeny, and I'm here with Stacy Hurst and Donell Pons, and we are excited to be running a series all about change makers, and our first episode in this series, we discussed some of the things that you know need to happen to make true change in our schools. I'm really excited to introduce the guest that we have today, Jenny Emery Davidson, who is the executive director of a community library in Ketchum, Idaho, and Jenny, when I met you not long ago, I was really just in awe of your journey and your background. I thought it was fascinating. So I would love to start off by you just sharing a little bit about your background and how you came into this science of reading world.

Unknown: 1:43

Thank you, Lindsay, and I want to say to you and Stacy and Donell, it's such a privilege to be part of this conversation with you, and I honor the work that you are doing to encourage a world of readers. So thank you, and thank you for including me. I guess I first want to salute Mrs. Pack my first grade teacher at sawtooth Elementary in Twin Falls, Idaho. And like with so many things, I think we don't know how much it mattered until we are so much further down the road, and Mrs. Pack just fed my love of reading, and because of her, I had the Boxcar Children, and I had the littles. And because I had those books, I feel like over time, what I have is a lifelong friend in reading and a deep reservoir of inner thoughts and the ideas that have been nurtured by a lifetime of reading. So that is really I feel like, where my involvement with this sphere of the science of reading started, although I certainly didn't know it. Then I've been a lifelong reader after I went to graduate school, which was actually in American Studies, and I focused on the literature and history of the American West, I was living in southern Idaho, the landscape where I grew up, the place that I call home, the place that I love, and I got a position teaching at the community college that's in the town where I grew up, and I was assigned to teach developmental English, and I will boldly confess to the audience that I did not really know what that was. So I was stepping into teaching these developmental English classes in the community where I was raised, not knowing what developmental English was and not understanding the landscape of literacy. And I encountered students, some of whom were older than me, some younger, who were not prepared for college level English. They were not prepared to construct sentences, paragraphs, essays. And it was a huge eye opener to me, and I felt deeply ill equipped. And frankly, I would say, my whole first year of teaching, I felt like I was failing these students. I did not know how to teach the tools that they needed. After that first year, I connected with another colleague in the Department, and we were interested in there was a lot of talk about students being ready for college level English, college level English, and here we're supposedly teaching college level English, and I felt unclear what the definition was, and honestly, have my only experience in high school English was having been a student in high school English, so I knew nothing about what high school English teachers were addressing wrestling with. And so we organized a day long. Symposium to get high school and college English teachers together in southern Idaho to talk about how it is that we teach writing. And I feel like that was really the beginning of my conscious and deliberate investigation of literacy in a way that I had not thought about it before. And it's humbling to admit that, because I had gone through a lot of school and had been an avid reader myself, I think it was at that point getting high school and college English teachers together and having seen a wider variety of student reading and writing skills in the classroom from adults that I began to really investigate what's going on with how we understand and teach literacy, and it also really grew my awareness of what it means to teach in places like the rural West, where teachers don't have a lot of colleagues, and how hungry we can be to just connect with other people in fields that we may be passionate about. But how do you fuel that passion when you don't have people immediately around you to be discussing it with? So that's that is the preamble to where where I am now, which is working at a library in the middle of Idaho.

Lindsay Kemeny: 6:27

So how did, how did that transition happen to working at the library

Unknown: 6:34

as I was becoming increasingly passionate about education in in flexible forms, I would say, in the Idaho landscape. I also became, frankly, a little discouraged with the world of higher education in Idaho, and an opportunity became available to apply for a job this director position at the Community Library in Ketchum. And the community library is unique in that it is a privately funded public library. So it has a wonderful origin story. It was founded by 17 women in 1955 and so these are women in what was then a pretty dusty town. You know, Sun Valley has a reputation for being kind of glamorous. In 1955 there was some glamor, but it was also a really small town and pretty dusty. And these women thought, if this community is going to thrive, if it's going to be a resilient community, it needs a library. And I think that is such a story of like western communities and community building generally, that groups of women come together and say, This is what the community really needs, and they make it happen. And it is truly a community institution. Interestingly, these women, in 1955 which would have been the wake of the McCarthy era, they decided in this kind of rugged, independent way, that they wanted to maintain an independent institution and not have government involvement. So they did not seek any government funding. Instead, they started a thrift store in a little mining shack and had a little corner of books, and they started selling used goods and raising money. And over time, that institution has grown to now, you know, more than 120,000 people come through the doors every year. There's a Center for Regional history department. We have a robust slate of programs. All of that is to say, it seemed to me that libraries in general and maybe this library in particular, had the real potential to provide educational services for in a flexible way, in a nimble way, in a way that sometimes public institutions can't be as nimble, and so we could fill a particular niche. And so I applied for and got this position, which I have just loved, because I really think, you know, to be a literate society means we have to create a social fabric of literacy. It's not something that just happens in classrooms. We can't depend on exceptional teachers to get all the work done in the course of the school year, like let's just flood the community in words, in a love of reading in access to learning, and that's what libraries do. So I switched from working at a community college to working at the community library, and in some ways, I feel like a lot of the work is in the same vein. It is the same ethos of work. And we have the opportunity here to just be a little more agile, I would say sometimes in responding to community needs, to identifying where there might be gaps and how we might slide in and help to bridge a gap. Amazing.

Donell Pons: 10:23

So that made me think, Jenny, in telling your story, first of all, I've got kudos to the library, because we were chatting a little bit before we started, and I have visited this library, and it's kind of my thing. I love to visit libraries wherever I go. So I'm a bit of a connoisseur of libraries. And it's that when you walk right in, there's a certain feeling that you get from a library that just really has it all together, and this library has it all together. And the origin story, as you were talking about that caught my attention right away. In fact, I read that online first before I went to the library, so intrigued. But what I loved was just how comfortable it was. Very inviting environment come stay was the welcoming message. And then also, in talking to folks who worked at the library, recommendations, I always if they have ready recommendations, they're really good and interesting. And even the books that are pulled aside for your attention, those things really matter. So I was so impressed with the library itself. Talk to me about finding ways to bridge those gaps, because you're absolutely right having the ability to be agile, which your organization does talk to me about some of those gaps that you might find and how you fill them, right?

Unknown: 11:26

So one perhaps to focus on, which really brought me into and brought the library into this world of the science of reading was a symposium, an annual symposium, that we have developed. So again, I had this background of I had developed all of one conference with a colleague. That was a day long thing, but I found so much value in getting together with colleagues and talking about literacy. And over the years of living here, I had had the privilege of getting to know Louisa Moats in a social way, at different events. And honestly, I knew she was involved in literacy. I think because she is such a lovely, unassuming person, I don't think I realized what a total rock star she is. Until later, years later, a teacher tells me I broke my ankle running to get my picture taken with Louisa. So then it really hit home, like how lucky we are to have Louisa Moats and her generous spirit in this community. And so I very boldly went to Louisa Moats and said, You know, I feel like Sun Valley is a place that people like to visit, and we have facilities here where we could convene people, and we're all about reading at the library, and we don't have other skin in the game in terms of, we're not we're not a vendor, we're not a school district, you know, we're not someone that's going to try to tell people what to do. We want people to fall in love with reading and to live lives that are uplifted by that, and we want to work with teachers to do that work. So I went to Louisa and said, What do you think of this idea we could do a little conference. How long would it be? Do you Do you know people? Turns out Louisa knows people and they love her, and so she connected me with Antonio fiero and Carol Tolman and Judy Donson. Yeah, these amazing leaders in the field of literacy who are also dynamic teachers themselves. And so again, I look back and it all seems so brash. You know, call up Antonio Fiero. You don't know me. I'm in the middle of Idaho. Would you like to come to this conference here? Could we invent this together? But he said, you know, literally, I think he said, If this means that Louisa Moats will make me pancakes, I'm there. So we convened these wonderful scholars, put out an invitation, were able to find a local philanthropic family to support this work, and invited teachers from around southern Idaho. And we thought, you know, we don't know if teachers. Is this, in fact, interesting to teachers? Will teachers show up? And the first year, we said, we think we could handle 32 teachers. And I think we ended up having 34 we took a few more. So people were interested. They came. And they came from, you know, from Castle Ford, to catch up, just a whole spectrum of communities, and they came for three days, and I will just never forget the moment where Carol Tolman was giving an overview of the reading brain and. She stopped and paused, and one of the teachers from Castle Ford, the room was just silent, and one of the teachers from Castle Ford just said, Thank you. No one has ever told me this before, and it was an absolute. I mean, it gives me chills, actually, to remember the moment, because you just realized like we have these amazing professionals convened, convened in this room, and there is information that has not been offered to them, that they will put to work as soon as they know it, and then to see the camaraderie between the teachers so that first year, we got tremendous response from the teachers. We learned so much from the teachers as a library, we learned what they see in the students who come into their classroom in kindergarten and maybe don't have oral language skills or they haven't developed dexterity in their hands to hold pencils and hold crayons. Okay? This is in the wheelhouse of a library, right? We can encourage kids to talk. We can give them crayons. We have a bookmobile. We go out into the community. And so this gave a whole new intentionality to the work that the library does. So that was four years ago. This year, we will be doing our fifth literacy summit and reunion day, because once we fall in love with these teachers, we never want to let them go, so we keep inviting them back to keep talking, and we're thrilled. This year, Lindsay is going to come and focus specifically on teaching writing in those early elementary grades. But Donell circle back to your question about filling in gaps. I myself, and I don't I don't know if it was Louisa or another friend who, as we were beginning to conceptualize this idea of the literacy Summit, said, Oh, you need to really listen to the podcast, soul the story. So like many people, that was a huge education to me as someone who my literacy education had worked for me, and then as a teacher, I saw it had not worked for a lot of people, and I didn't even have the words to articulate what what it was that had occurred in my own or other people's literacy education. So I have been growing my own vocabulary, my own understanding, exponentially, and it has seemed increasingly natural and necessary for an organization like a library, to be involved in that, in that work, and I think the way that this library has been able to fill that gap is understanding that there has been a kind of a state of confusion, right? And I look at a state like Idaho, and you know, there's not a singular curriculum. Teachers get different messages. There can be great statewide efforts that then it's like the game of telephone. You know, by the time it gets to the teacher, it's no longer clear what the program is. And I think it often doesn't feel good to teachers when they feel like there's an ultimatum from the state, which is 10 layers away, whereas a library is like part of the neighborhood, and again, we don't have anything at stake other than an abiding devotion to A world of readers. So like we're truly in it to learn alongside the teachers. I also think because this library does not receive government funding, as we had become increasingly involved in this field of the science of reading, by coasting this summit, as we learn things, we can speak up at the state level, and we're not going to have any funding that's cut, because that's how our funding comes from. Whereas I think sometimes it can be hard for teachers in districts or administrators even at higher education institutions, to speak up, because they're having to navigate a whole political machine that we are just apart from. And so all of that is to say Donell, I think it is so beneficial to any work, and maybe particularly the work of literacy, for there to be multiple entities and kinds of entities involved, in order to grow the momentum and also encourage alignment,

Narrator: 19:58

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Donell Pons: 20:39

I was just going to say, you know, you've crossed so many things have come together in the conversation, just in that short bit that you're talking about, the fact that you're so poised as a space, as you say, to be so welcoming to everyone. You're the community hub, and the community hub that promotes reading for everyone, and there's something for everyone at the library. That's the thing that I'm always telling my students is that there's something for everyone. So maybe you don't enjoy this, or you don't enjoy that you're not exactly like this person, there will be something for you at the library, trust me. And one of those first things I love to do when I was teaching English with my students in ninth grade was to take them down to the local library. And so whether we'd go to the school library, or sometimes if it was close enough, we'd walk over to the public library and get them introduced to the library. And many of them hadn't been there ever, and some maybe this was their first time, and some were more familiar than others. But what was interesting is everyone found something, and so we'd go back and talk about that at the end, everyone found something. I love this idea of libraries being involved in this very crucial conversation around how reading isn't the same for everyone, and for those of us who need more support, then we need to be proactively helping individuals to make those leaps and to find that help. Lindsay, what about you?

Lindsay Kemeny: 21:51

Well, I was going to say so you know, I remember when you were first describing this summit to me, and it's just there's something really special about it. I can tell the way you're describing it to me, and you're kind of saying, you know, like you, you'll do your presentation and it's not one and done, right? You're kind of telling me, you know, you stay. Our speakers stay throughout the day, and they're interacting with the participants and the other speakers the whole day. And it's kind of really this, you know, I don't know, this connected kind of group experience. And I just thought, Is there anything else you want to say that makes this conference, this summit, so special?

Unknown: 22:29

I'd love to, you know, and even just using the word summit, I remember talking to Antonio Fierro, and we're like, what do we call this? And we were looking for a word that was sort of, yeah, would give the sense of we're around the table together, that we're engaged in this work together. And again, this isn't some sort of we're not dictating that. This is how things are done. We are working through it together. And so a summit felt more like a convening of minds. And you know, any one of the presenters certainly has plenty of experience, whether we're talking about, you know, Carol Tolman or Judy Dodson, Sally Brown from the College of Idaho is involved as well. You know, they could do the whole conference. What teachers have really appreciated is seeing them respond to each other. I think it has really made a discourse community come alive. And frankly, my whole time in graduate school, I don't think it was as real to me as it has been through the summit. What a scholarly field is, yeah, but it is a living organism, and there's real people who are shaping the knowledge in it and grappling with the knowledge and responding to each other. And to have these scholars who are so attuned to what is being researched now as well as what is happening in classrooms, and they could respond to the changing nature of knowledge, they could reinforce things that each other said. I was looking back at some of the feedback forms from last year, and I forget if it was Judy or Carol who talked about, you know, the drip, drip, drip of learning and and how the conference itself did that, and teachers noted that that they felt like something that was addressed, you know, by Sally here, was then reinforced by Carol here. And so there is this connectivity to a living conversation that is different than hearing a series of presentations. It's like being a part of a conversation, and if we can't find that in the field of literacy, I think, yeah, where are we going to find that? And I think for teachers to see themselves as part of that conversation, not just recipients of it. It, or spectators to it. Is is vital because teachers are doing the work. So I think it is that interactive nature between the scholar presenters and between the scholar presenters and the participants and between the participants themselves that has really defined the the tone and the learning atmosphere of this three day Summit. You know, something that we think a lot about is every day, teachers are asked to go into their classrooms and create the conditions in which learning can happen. So can we do that for three days? For goodness sake, for these teachers, what does it mean to create the conditions for learning to happen? And the very first year we did this, as we were thinking about it, one of the library staff people, we actually charged her with her job, was joyful participation. What is going to make this a joyful participation? Because the first year we did this would have been what 2221 you know, we were on the heels of the pandemic, and teachers were feeling it, and so we thought the first thing we have to do is just get these teachers some Love and help them remember their love of teaching and their their love remember themselves as readers and remember themselves as learners. And so this one staff person, Nicole, really took that charge seriously. And you know, it was small and meaningful gestures. For example, we give everybody a little library of books like speech to print and various books related to literacy instruction, and we tie them with a bow. Yeah, it's a small thing, but it gave a sense of respect, I think, to the teachers, we every day, at the end of the day, would have something celebratory at the end of the week, everybody gets to choose a book, like a book for them, like an adult reading for pleasure, book to take home with them. Often, pretty small gestures, and yet, I think really meaningful. And frankly, I feel like I will just say this, because I developed such a conviction for these weren't hard things to do. And what we have heard over and over from teachers is, yeah, this is, this is, this is one of the best professional development experiences they've ever had. The core of that, I want to emphasize, is there are amazing scholars that are presenting because I think teachers are smart, and they want real information, and they want substance. And so at the core, it is the substance of it that it is meaningful, but also the presentation of that substance. I don't think a little library in the middle of Idaho should be doing the best professional development that these teachers ever get. Like anybody, anybody can do that this. And so if we can help to raise the bar, or just establish a bar, because I think learning is something to be respected. And so let's create. And I guess now I feel like I might be overstating it, but, you know, kind of a sacred atmosphere like this isn't a slapdash endeavor here. This is a meaningful endeavor that shapes people's lives and these leaders, these teachers, are leaders charged with this work. So let's create an atmosphere of respect and joy for the enterprise in which we are engaged.

Lindsay Kemeny: 28:59

Yeah, and it's free. It's free for Idaho teachers, right? Which is amazing,

Unknown: 29:03

yes, and through an anonymous Family Foundation, we are able to provide a stipend to we hope make it even more accessible, because you have teachers travel distances. We've had multiple teachers come from schools where they are one of only two teachers for the entire school. They're coming from very rural areas to get a hotel room or rent a VRBO in Sun Valley is not a cheap endeavor, and so we want to make it as accessible as possible. So we provide a stipend people, the teachers, all go home with quite a set of supplies and things for their classroom and things for themselves. And then we encourage ongoing connections. People can access the recordings of the summit through the library's website forever, you know, in an ongoing way, and we provide ongoing opportunities for the teachers to connect via. Zoom during the school year, and even if they're not able to actually join the zoom, what I hope is they're receiving that email and just remembering I'm not alone in this work. Yeah, others are doing this work.

Lindsay Kemeny: 30:11

So if anyone else out there wants to do start do something similar in their state. You know, do you have any advice that you could share to get something like this off the ground.

Unknown: 30:23

I think the first thing I would want to share is just great enthusiasm for it. And again, I feel so strongly that to be a reading culture, to be a culture of literacy, requires a whole community effort, and so lots of people ought to be involved in it, and it's elevating to the whole community, if it's more of a widespread effort. So go for it. Is what I would say. We'll share everything we've got with you. I think a key thing is to have a strong team, I mean, so to start with Louisa modes, of course, is a tremendous privilege, but you get a few people who are your ankle anchor people, and then it's amazing how the network grows from there. In some ways, I feel like I don't deserve to be part of this conversation. You know, this isn't, this isn't what I formally studied. But if you start asking questions and you start listening, you know people, I have found the field of literacy to be an incredibly magnanimous field, and the world of teachers is a world that works toward connections. So start with your committed core and watch your watch your network grow here in Idaho, after we had done this program two years, the University of Idaho, which is based in Moscow, expressed interest in, could they do something like this in North Idaho, which is tremendous, because Idaho, in some ways, is a bifurcated state. You know, in the middle of the state, there's a stretch of wilderness, you have to leave the state and change time zones to get to north, the north part of the state. So we would be hard pressed to get teachers coming from Moscow to our summit here in central Idaho, and so we had a lot of conversations with them. They connected with Judy Dodson. We gave them all of our outlines and materials, and they have now done the program two times in Moscow and are looking to expand it as well. So I think it's a model. I think there are things about the model. It works well too in terms of the timeframe. I think three days is a significant enough amount of time that you can get somewhere that you can really dig in. And it's not so long that it becomes hard for people to commit. I mean, it is an ask for teachers. This is after the school year has ended. They're starting off their summer holiday. They surely have other commitments. They may have other jobs. So I think the three day timeframe has worked well, and the focus has been clear. Of course, there is so much that one can talk about related to pedagogy and teaching and early grades, early learning. And I think we have stayed very focused on literacy. And I think that clarity helps as well. So I think Go for it, find a committed core of people and then stay really clear about what your focus is, and lean on partners that I have found people to be very sharing,

Lindsay Kemeny: 33:53

and any other anything else you do to support literacy instruction as a librarian that you Want to share.

Unknown: 34:01

You know, there's so much that we do. I feel like this literacy summit has in some ways changed the DNA of the library, because, of course, like any library, yeah, we are forever providing books, doing storytime, having book discussion groups, doing free community programs, and I think now we do those things with a different lens, a different intentionality, when we ourselves, in fact, we now, we've nerded out about this so much that by the copy machine in the admin area, we have a giant picture, one of the diagrams of The Reading brain there, you know, store orthographic mapping, so that it can be influencing how we're thinking about what we're doing. We have a bookmobile that just this year, we have started operating it year round, because we see that as a way, and I would say, really inspired by the teachers that we have gotten to know. On through this program, it's like, try to get out to more communities, bring books to kids where they are, and think about what books they need at any point in time. And then this might seem so obvious to all of you and to all of the listeners, but let's really talk to kids thinking about oral language. And I think there are two things that are often singing in my head. I can hear Judy Dodson saying, wash them with words. Wash them with words. And really deepening our understanding of growing oral language means having lots of conversations with kids. And that's something at the library that I feel like we're really poised to do with people of all ages. Just ask them another question, say something else to them, expand that oral language opportunity. And then I think of Carol Tolman saying this little jingle, read, read, read, read, read, read, read some more. And so like, how do we just keep getting books to people and trying to encourage excitement around the very act of of reading? Yeah, often say to people, I ride the bus into work. I live in a community just south of where the library is, and that's often my reading time. And sometimes a foot is kind of a radical thing to do, you know, to have a physical book out in public. And I hope you know that's my analog way of trying to be an influencer. Is I'm going to read in public. And what if we all read in public such that it becomes a thing to do. I've been thinking a lot about also, you know, how do we expand this to twains and teens? And I read an article recently about high school students being called upon less and less to read whole books. And so, you know, students can graduate from high school and never have read a whole book, and I think we are really doing a disservice to young people if they are missing that opportunity to grow the reservoirs of their own imaginations by not prompting them and creating the time in school, because that is one of the great things about school, is it makes you make time, right? It has assigned your time for you, and if we are not maximizing that time for people to read deeply in a sustained way, I think we risk shortchanging their imaginative worlds into The future. So that's something we're thinking about. You know, what more could we do to inspire tweens and teens to keep reading, to read whole books? One small thing we do in this regard is we will pay teenagers to write book reviews that we publish in our newsletter. So we call it the book B. We pay them $25 they have to be willing to do one revision. I will say they are some of the most popular reviews in our weekly newsletter. Yeah. So it's a way to encourage reading and writing in an authentic way. We think they really get an audience. And, you know, we're eager to find more activities, motivational points like that, to get young people to read, to keep reading.

Lindsay Kemeny: 38:53

I love that, Jenny, I feel your passion and what incredible work you're doing. Just wow. This has been a great, fascinating conversation for me, and I don't know I'm inspired. Donell Stacy, are you guys inspired?

Unknown: 39:07

Absolutely, absolutely, yeah. Turn it over to Stacy

Lindsay Kemeny: 39:11

to close things out for us. Yeah.

Stacy Hurst: 39:13

And thank you so much, Jenny for joining us. I like Lindsay. I'm feeling your excitement and thinking about all different ways I can even approach our community libraries and the idea of a bookmobile. You guys have a book mobile that you that's so cool, like, I that's that's a dream job, like, you're doing great. And I kept thinking like she has the dream job she really does. And then what nailed it for me is when you said you ride the bus to work every morning you get to read. I was like, that is the dream job. Thank you.

Unknown: 39:49

And if I may just add one more thing, you know, something I think we get to experience at the library, because we're just surrounded by shelves of books, right? And so it's very palpable. How Learning is a field of abundance, and I think everybody ought to get to experience that. And I think sometimes teachers, you know, what they feel is scarcity in their schools. I mean, I've been impressed where teachers are like, Oh, well, I couldn't print out the Idaho dyslexia handbook because it exceeded my, you know, number of pages I get to print at the school. Well, we'll print it before. You know, learning is a space of abundance, and I think that's something that libraries in general can embody, because you see the books around you, and it's something we want everybody deserves to experience.

Stacy Hurst: 40:43

I love that, and I do love the focus on making sure that people learn how to love that. And when you're talking about even giving them opportunities for sustained reading, I keep thinking to myself, and I do teach at the university level, so I students who even want to be teachers tell me they haven't read a book since, you know, they're younger, and I'm thinking it just takes once, if you make it through that one book where you see everything you get out of a book, then we're going to be way more likely to have students and people and humans engaging in that activity just one time, stick with it and see what you get out of it. And it sounds to me like you really are putting a premium on that, which I love, because that is so important. We're also in a rural area, so I thank you so much for sharing the impact it can have in rural communities too, because that is not unimportant, right, as you know. So yeah, thank you so much for joining us. And to our listeners. I know you're getting a lot out of this, and I'm guessing we're going to have these little literacy conferences maybe pop up all over the country, and you might get some people reaching out and saying, share with us what you do.

Unknown: 41:58

I hope that's a thrill. That would be a thrill,

Stacy Hurst: 42:01

wouldn't it? Though that'd be so great. Thank you so much. Jenny and Lindsay, thank you for leading our conversation and to our listeners. We hope you will join us on the next episode of literacy talks.

Narrator: 42:15

Thanks for joining us today. Literacy Talks comes to you from Reading Horizons, where literacy momentum begins. Visit readinghorizons.com/literacytalks to access episodes and resources to support your journey in the science of reading.