Episode 13: Books, Bonds, and Beyond with Kindred Obas

In this special live episode of The Reading Symphony Podcast, Katie sits down with colleague and friend Kindred Obas for a conversation about joyful reading culture, complex texts, identity, and the kinds of classroom experiences that help children see themselves as readers.

Together, Katie and Kindred discuss:

• how to build a classroom culture where reading feels joyful, social, and meaningful
• why classroom libraries should include both mirrors and windows
• what Kindred learned from watching students move from books like Dog Man to much more complex texts over time
• how her sixth grade Jane Austen book club is helping students grow as readers, thinkers, and community members
• why exposure to complex text, paired with support and belonging, can strengthen comprehension and confidence
• how families can talk with children about harder histories with honesty, empathy, and care
• why it matters to offer books about children of color that are not only rooted in struggle, but also in joy, curiosity, and possibility
• Kindred’s next chapter at Stanford, where she will study curriculum, teaching, race, language, and healing-centered approaches to teaching hard history

This episode is a beautiful reminder that reading growth is not just about skill. It is also about identity, access, belonging, and the communities we build around books.

Katie Megrian | 10:15 AM (0 minutes ago) |  | 
to me

Fundraiser by Kindred Obas : Fund Our Journey to Jane Austen's England https://www.gofundme.com/f/fund-our-journey-to-jane-austens-england https://www.gofundme.com/f/fund-our-journey-to-jane-austens-england?attribution_id=sl:e9fcfcf6-52f6-4666-8406-5c5cc968e35a&lang=en_US&ts=1773612248&utm_campaign=man_sharesheet_dash&utm_content=amp17_tb-amp20_t2&utm_medium=customer&utm_source=copy_link

Books and Texts Kindred Discusses

• Kindred by Octavia Butler
• Emma by Jane Austen
• A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L’Engle
• A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
• Persuasion by Jane Austen
• Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
• One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia
• Ada Twist, Scientist by Andrea Beaty
• The Youngest Marcher by Cynthia Levinson and Vanessa Brantley-Newton
• Love Is by Diane Adams
• The Great Cake Mystery by Alexander McCall Smith
• The Breakfast Club Adventures series by Marcus Rashford
• The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
• Millicent Min, Girl Genius by Lisa Yee
• Stanford Wong Flunks Big-Time by Lisa Yee

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to the Reading Symphony Podcast, the place where clarity meets compassion. This is where families and caregivers get evidence-based trustworthy information about how reading develops, how to understand reading progress, and how to turn overwhelming information into simple, actionable steps that help every child thrive. I'm your host, Katie Megrian educator, parent, and relentless advocate for helping every child become a joyful, confident reader. Let's get started. Welcome to this episode of the Reading Symphony Podcast. It is featuring one of my wonderful colleagues and friends, Kindred Obas and also it's the first live podcast I've ever done. So very honored that you're just sitting next to me to have a conversation between colleagues today. I'm excited. So tell the audience a little bit about yourself and who you are and how you got into teaching. My name is Kindred. I knew I wanted to be a teacher when I was in kindergarten. My mom is a teacher, my dad's a teacher, he's a professor. I grew up, in our house, they always had magazines about education or decorating your classroom, I would go through them and like circle what I wanted in my future classroom. Then I got to college, my parents were like, if you wanna be a teacher, we're gonna need you to stay in state. We don't want you going outta state for school. And I was like, but I wanna leave Alabama, which is where I'm from. And they were like, okay, well if you wanna leave Alabama that kind of goes with all the scholarships and stuff too.'cause there were so many great in-state scholarships and they were like, well then you need to choose a different career. So I was like, fine, I'll become something else. So then I went to Wellesley, and I decided to do comedy Screenwriting. I wanted to write for Daily Show and Jimmy Fallon, which I think I would've actually been pretty good at. I was really excited about it. And then I took an education class to fill a requirement and I did it more out of like, oh, this will be easy, quote unquote, because like I've grew up around it and I got into this class, it was called Understanding and Improving Schools with Professor Noah Rubin. And I completely fell in love with it. And I had never been in a class ever where I had enjoyed and looked forward to doing the readings. And so every week I'd be like, oh my gosh, I can't wait to write this paper. Or I can't wait to read this article or I can't wait to watch this video. And at some point I was oh, maybe this actually means this is where my heart is because everything else felt like work except for the education class. I called my mom and I was like, I think I wanna be a teacher. She was like, okay, pray about it, call me back. So I did, and then I called her back and I was like, yeah. I'm switching. And I was like, I just think this is where my heart is. My purpose lies in this. And I think it would be a disservice if I don't pursue this thing that I'm being led into. I just switched over completely. So you went straight from Wellesley to Harvard and tell us a little bit about what you were studying there. Yeah, so I always kind of forget about that part a little bit. What year was that? It was right before COVID. Okay. So it was 2019. 2020. But my parents ultimately, they actually apologized to me, told me that they weren't thinking about the future of education or what I could give or what I could receive, and they were thinking just financially. They were like, we just wanted to make sure you were set up well and we didn't know if that would happen if you went to a school where you weren't getting the same amount of financial aid. But they are grateful every day that I teach now. And that's a real thing for teachers, right? A lot of people who could teach and be incredible teachers choose not to join the profession'cause of the salary barriers so it makes sense there was a concern around that. A hundred percent. But also always great when you get your parents to apologize to that. Yeah. They've never done that. It was magical and it's nice because now they're actually on the complete flip which is pretty awesome So I applied to Harvard and then got in, which is really awesome. And then when I was there, I studied language and literacy. Initially I studied it because I was interested in the literacy aspect of things. Children's literature was something I studied in college. Specifically around black and brown children and the depiction of innocence within text. And so I wanted to continue some of that research there, but I was surprised by how much I learned more about the literacy aspect of like how to read and how to engage students in reading. And I hadn't been thinking about that prior. So when I was there, I worked in the Jean Schall reading lab and then I got to do a lot of really great work with Catherine Snow and people that were there too. And then I graduated in 2020 online because COVID hit in the middle of my time there, which cut it short a little bit. And then I went for Brook. So then you did your associate teacher year For those who, don't know what that means is essentially kindred spent a year long as a teaching apprentice, paired witha very strong team of teachers and slowly taking on responsibility. And then the following two years, you were a third grade teacher? Second grade. So I came back and I co-taught second grade. And then I loop up with my kids to third grade. Taught third another year. Went to work with you? Yes. With curriculum, which was super awesome I'm so grateful for the experience and the opportunity. It has transformed my understanding of how schools work. And then taught sixth grade, which is where I'm now. I want to eventually go back to the curriculum work but you're a sixth grade teacher right now and there's this magic that you make in your classroom. Can you tell us a little bit about how you're getting this bunch of 11, 12-year-old kids really obsessed with reading. And then can you tell us about your Jane Austen book club? Of course, so I guess generally it starts with my parents'cause they are big readers and they named me after kindred by Octavia Butler. So it's always been something that we've talked about in my home. reading for me always felt like a really beautiful setup. We would be on the couch together and my mom would read to me as I went to sleep, she'd read chapter books. And so I wanted to somehow model that in the classroom. I was really big on reading in comfortable spaces as much as we possibly can. That was the first preliminary piece. But as I kept going, I was, okay, well that helps somewhat, but how do I actually make them passionate to keep reading new texts and not just have the novelty of sitting in a cute chair for a little bit because that wears off and so then I introduced this idea of working together as a class to reach a hundred books. That was a really simple idea, but I found that my students were really driven by it. So they would read the book and my way of making sure that they read the text fully was that I had these forms. They would fill out a summary, if it was a nonfiction or a fiction text, and then some other questions for nonfiction text. They'd fill that out and then once I reviewed it, I would have them color in how many books they read. And so we'd do that for different genres we'd celebrate with some type of book oriented fun activity it was cool because the reward was still books and it kept them in this mentality of oh, I get to read and then I'm trying to get that so I can read more, but a different way. So I would do a Star Books day where I would have hot chocolate that was coffee for them or whatever. And then they were reading their books and drinking their hot chocolate coffee. I think that really helped to get them excited about it. So it never felt like a chore in our class. Mm-hmm.'cause you always knew you wanted to achieve something else. My library is very intense. I have books from everywhere. No matter where I go, I come away with children's books. And I try to make sure I can find things that are as much mirrors and windows as possible. I find things that are reflective of the students' identities, but also very different from students' identities and this middle ground, one of the things I try to have fully stocked in my library often is books about API Heritage because a lot of our students don't necessarily identify in that particular way. And I wanted them to still have books that were about black and brown folks, which is a lot of my library. Mm-hmm. But I also wanted them to have books where they could identify and say oh, I can get being an immigrant I can understand having parents that have a different language this one piece of this particular character is Chinese is really different for me. I think it pushed their background knowledge of new subjects, new people, but also had the connection piece. I realized when one of my students was Dominican, one of her favorite books was, called Maisie Chen. And she loved it. I remember seeing her eyes open up and she's like, this is amazing. I think it was the first time she read a book where the character was so different. From her, but also felt so similar to her. And that's really a big part of it too, is that I want there to be a plethora of books so that there's anything that you can read. I think within our classroom library, one of the things I've been trying to push, is that there's no bad book. So I think that sometimes graphic novels get a bad rep. And I would have parents come to me and be like, oh, they will stop reading Dog Man. And I'd be like, well, they're reading. And I think that is actually way more important. It's funny having students who were second graders that their parents were nervous about Dog Man. And now I looped up with the same group of kids. So now having sixth graders that are reading. Way more advanced texts i's like, oh, Dogman did not hurt that. Actually, I think it moved them towards reading more advanced texts. A particular student, who now he's in one of my book clubs. A wind in the door which is super complicated and I was reading it today and I was like, I have to go back and reread. Yeah. Because it's way more complicated than a Wrinkle in Time, but really beautiful. He's so excited about it and references different things within it. And his mom was one of the ones that was worried about Dog Man and is no longer worried about Dog Man, that's so interesting. And just to make sure, I'm not sure everyone caught this because it's a subtle reference, Kindred made, but she taught her sixth graders, most of them. She had a second graders. And so yes. That is so interesting to think about the concerns one may have if you're just seeing your kid read the same type of book over and over again. I think that's so cool that you can look back on that same kid who was voraciously reading something what may seem simplistic on the surface, like Dog man. That is something I've tried to model with our class too, I don't use labeled bookshelves of what type of genres are the only thing that I label. Because I wanna make sure that kids know, I'm actually interested in historical fiction, but I don't label anything else because I don't want them to pull based off of well this book's too hard for me. Or this one's too easy, but this book looks interesting and I want to read it. Especially if we're being careful to expose them to grade level text during classroom instruction. Every single day. When there's an element of choice. We're on a good balanced diet, tim Shanahan talks about this. The importance of not relegating students to specific levels. And giving them exposure to complex texts, but also having there be a balance. So let's talk about your Jane Austen book club. What's this all about? It started with one student who read Emma and really loved it. I was like, you know, there's others. And she's like, what? So then from there we started the book club and so it was four students and then I started to expand none of my boys have gotten into it, but it's never been a thing they couldn't it's just happens to be all girls this time around and so they've all gotten really into it. And then I got in contact with, the Jane Austen Society of North America, the Boston chapter, co-chair. So she comes once a month and just talks about whatever book we're reading for that month. And it's so fun because sometimes I just don't talk at all. And the girls are just super engaging with her. All of the students within it are black or brown students. And that just happens to also be the demographic in my classroom this year. But I think what was really beautiful was because. I do think Jane Austen texts have not always been thought of in that particular light, even though Jane herself was an incredible abolitionist in many ways and very silent but vocal. And also did some really amazing work when she started introducing characters of color into her work that we didn't get to see because she didn't finish it, but she starts it and then she passed away before she was able to finish. But you see that a character's coming up and she's rich and she's a woman of color and it's so cool. All my students were no, she died before. And I was like, yeah. But I wanted to make sure that that was something they could connect to is this woman was not necessarily, people think she's not writing about people like you, but she actually was. And so that's the only character she explicitly says As a woman of color, there's so many other things you could read between the lines about, so. That's the makeup of students. They opt into it. There are some guidelines of making sure that you finish all the texts before a meetings. We do some meetings that are not directly about the text but are adjacent, we'll talk about afternoon tea and we'll read a text on tea and tea culture which is super cool and such an amazing knowledge building. And I think learning so much from you all at Brook, especially with the reading rope. So I've been thinking about what other pieces can I tie it to? So we did recently, a whole conversation on tea culture from the Boston Tea Party website. And we talked about how tea culture influenced Jane, but also how it influences the text and then watching them make connections as they were reading. They were like, oh, well, that's why there's like T involved in Emma, right? And they were like, yeah, because Emma's. Rich, and they were making all these different connections, which is pretty awesome. One time we looked at maps and analyzed some of the fictional maps and looked at the map for Emma. And talked about how her town is so small and she's the only character who never leaves her area and why that's important and how she's the character who's the richest of all the other books. And so like, why do you think she never leaves? Which was a really incredible conversation that they just completely led. And then we did another on letters and letter writing. The girls learned how to do embroidery, which was silly. We did super small embroidery kits over break and they all came back and were like, I couldn't do it. It's so stressful. I just keep thinking of little synapses spreading and firing across their brains with the different ways in which they're learning about the world through this experience. Right. And themselves as readers and a community of readers. They're in a little book club. They are. That's amazing. And it's so incredible to watch them make connections that I never would've made when I was their age, and I have seen this reflective on their assessments like, I'm always trying to figure out how to make sure my kids are consistently doing well in assessments. But it's so challenging because there's fluctuations all the time. All of the girls in my book club have consistently every time since they've joined Gone Up. Did they all start at the same level? No. The first girl that read, she's more of a higher reader. And then I added in a sampling of kids with two mid, and then one that's a little bit lower was the original group and then it's moved from there. Originally, the two students I had written down that I was concerned about with reading'cause of how they did on the first assessment, they started the book club and now are my highest scores, and I was looking at the statistics and I was like, is this true? And I was like it matches up to when kids joined. This is consistent with research. Like the complex text kids are exposed to and sometimes they need support accessing it. And part of that support is developing a schema for it, which you are. And a community around it and just a general belief that they can do it. And so, we talked about this a little bit, but you do need a balanced diet. Not everything. You can be Jane Austen, right. But, when you're consistently practicing that, you put a standardized state test in front of them that's not Jane Austen. Right. That's a lot simpler. Yeah. That's so true. The syntax, the language, the vocabulary, the knowledge, demands. It's incredible and a lived example of the research we're seeing on the importance of bringing kids into complex texts as opposed to watering it down. I love that you didn't gate keep it by level. No, of course. And I the ones that we read are actually these ones that I found when I went to London, which I think they're only published in the uk, but they're these adapted but they're not truly adapted. Mm-hmm. Which is really cool. So they keep the language the same and they just take out some of her more flowery descriptions. Mm-hmm. But everything else is really, the way that Darcy proposes to Elizabeth is exactly written. So he's still stating ardently. And so it's been interesting because I told them recently, I was like, I don't how to share scores, but I do want you all to know how much you've grown since being in the book club. That's been really great. The book club is lovely and they're obsessed with reading in a new way and I don't have to force anything, which I think is really great as well. So across the board they're all learning from each other. So this is building toward a very exciting trip Yeah. That you're taking at the end of the year. What is this plan to take this group to London? Yeah. Are you guys gonna do, it's wild. I don't know how I found myself in this, but it started because I was home, and I was just sitting on the couch during break with my family and we were watching, I think actually, a Christmas Carol and I just shouted and I was like, huh, that's a great idea. And my parents were like, what? And I was like, bring the girls to London. I started thinking about it like if it's not as many girls, it's not as much money. It's still expensive, but I think we can. Ultimately what happened was that I left break being like, I think this is a bad idea, but there's a part of me that thinks this could be done and so maybe I won't completely get rid of it as a concept. A couple of the girls came over and I talked with them often. I was like, yeah, it just had crossed my mind. One of'em was like, but can we do it? I was like, well, maybe it would be really awesome. The idea would be to go to London also go to Bath for a day so that we could see locations from Persuasion. And north Injury Abbey. Within London it's the 250th birthday of Jane Austen, everything was really focused on her. There's exhibits at the British Library with her reading glasses and first copies of Bread and Prejudice. I've been to see them firsthand and it's made me fall in love even more with the texts that I've already loved as a kid. I was like, I'm not gonna say yes until we've thought through all the details and so the closer we got the girls were like, if we put some legwork in, and I was like, yeah, that's a great idea. They made a group chat and planned everything out. And they brought it to me and I was like, you know what? I think this is enough of the bones of something that I can fill in all the extra pieces. And so from there I sent out my first letter to families. I was like, this is a crazy idea. And I'm so sorry. If you don't wanna do this at all, please blink once. And they all came back except for one and were like, please do this. And this is eight families. Oh my goodness. And I was like, really? And then I started getting calls from parents that were like, please make this happen. We'll do anything we have to take them. And so that's where we are now is that I sent out the official forms and they're starting to come back to me, which is cool. We're fundraising right now and we have a GoFundMe, but still have a good ways to go before we go in June, which is the plan. Ultimately the goal is to expose'em as much as they possibly can to it and take advantage of the fact that they're excited about reading the books of this woman that is 250 years old now. One of the most beautiful parts for me is that it's a woman, and as they're growing as readers and writers as young women they are seeing themselves reflected in her books because there's so many heroines. And I think that's something we don't talk about quite often, that the heroines were way ahead of their time. that's why her books are so easily adapted into movies and shows, because they're really realistic to us now. All of my girls are obsessed with Emma because Emma's a lot like them. She's kind of immature and she's silly. I want that to continue. I don't want it to just end where they leave my classroom and they're like, great, that was awesome. I loved books, but I want them to go on this trip and potentially see something that they're like, whoa, I didn't know that this other person wrote in this language. Or maybe they're like a darker thing and they're like, Ooh, Bronte. Seeing the other connections they can make or even just getting there and learning about some of the history of women of color and how they were involved. And there's some really great things about Di Bell. So that's also our goal is to go visit at the very end, the home of Di Bell. She's a woman of color from that time period. I remember the first time I walked into her home, I was completely in shock because these manors, I'd never thought of a woman of color, a black woman owning and walking around it and seeing the library and seeing the rooms. I was like, whoa. She walked these halls and this was her space. And I really want that to happen for the girls because I wanna make sure that they are actually able to connect this deeper and know this is meant for them too. If you're listening and you have the ability every little bit counts and even sharing this with five friends who you think might be open to donating We'd love to make this possible. So you have such a special talent for diving into some of the harder history behind books. I'm thinking about last year you helped to write the second and third grade curriculum. We cover immigration. And, the systematic racism toward indigenous people of North America. In upper grades we talked about the civil rights movement and had to get into some really tough realities about what happened. I learned so much from how you, approached teacher preparation for talking about tough topics. So I'm wondering if there's any transferable lessons for families listening to this. It's a great question. I know I talk about my parents a lot, but I think that being educators they did this really. Well, and I think one of the aspects to it was that they were really open to our questions. And so they would put books in front of us and we would read through them and they were never judgemental. If we came to it with them with a question that wasn't fully formed, and even if they were unsure about something, they would be like, let's talk to so and so about that. Or figure out a little more details about that. So I think being open to ask for questions is really important. I also think that it requires work as a parent to be reading articles when they pop up. If even if you as a parent, as an adult is reading random articles about fry bread and indigenous cultures or about black church experience or something like it, it will at some point translate into the other things that will come up with your scholar and your student. I think that is one piece that is really important. I've found that my lens is always through honesty and empathy. The honesty piece is like, we're really tempted a lot of times to not want to engage the harder pieces because they scare us. We don't think about that our students or kids are actually a little more ready than we are to engage in things. And so I found that a lot when I was writing things that I'd be like, this actually might feel a lot harder for you as a teacher than it does for a kid. Especially depending on the kid's identity or what they've already heard or what they already might know. And so dealing with that and being like, oh, am my uncomfortable for reading this particular text about enslavement. Does this make me uncomfortable because I'm worried about my student or my child, or it's making me uncomfortable'cause I'm worried about me and my own fears and my own discomforts. And I think being honest with those is really important. I'm black my dad's Haitian American. And so I grew up with different stories of our identities and books that were about people of color, about black folks black history. But I remember too, when I read, joy Luck Club for the first time, I was like, oh, this is so different than what I knew. And I think my parents have done a really strong job of allowing questions and allowing empathy but I think also start where you feel comfortable. And I guess what I really mean to say with that is for instance, if you are a big soccer family and you guys love soccer, finding a text that's about a soccer player of color or a black soccer player or a soccer player from another country and reading through that together. Likely there will be some things in there that are harder things to tackle. People that love baseball, Jackie Robinson's a great way to get introduced you might find if you're a white family or a family that's not black, that you'll read it and go like, oh, there are some harder pieces here. It's in the frame of things that you do know. You're tackling it with you understand baseball and your child may understand baseball. But the part that is challenging to talk about is this part about race and identity and how Jack Robsinson experienced racism within baseball. I think that can be a great way to tackle it. There's one aspect you do know and there's one aspect you don't, and this will be easier to understand if we understand one aspect of it. And reading as many books as you can about people of color that are not super upsetting and super tragic. Yes. There's so many of them. Yes. My favorite book growing up was Millicent Men Girl Genius, which is about an Asian American student and child, and it gets into model minority stereotype a little bit too but there's another one about Stanford Wong, who's the complete opposite. He struggles with model minority stereotype because he doesn't feel like he fits in with it. But there was not this constant mention of how she felt depressed or how there were challenges. And so I think that making sure that when you're looking for windows for your child, that the windows are really positive and reflective and hopeful windows too. Because I think if every book that they get as a window is always about the oppressive aspects of things feel really overwhelming. And then in some ways you are gonna not wanna read about those groups of people because you're like, oh, but it comes a lot of sadness. And so balancing it really well I think is really important. And I think one last thing too is opening up imagination on books and character descriptions, especially in chapter books. My mom would read to us, like I found that like if it was a chapter book, there was never this description of a character. Unless it said explicitly this character was white. My mom would just read it. And so I imagined how I wanted to imagine it. I think allowing for that is awesome. Even opening that up, maybe you do choose that version of a Jane Austen book that has Emma depicted as a black woman. Allowing for that freedom can be a cool way to have a mirror or a mirror turned window with character descriptions. There's some really amazing texts that might have some harder topics, but are not overwhelming and making a black child feel like everything is falling apart for them in that moment. What are some of those books so I recently read one Crazy Summer. I read the graphic novel version of it and I just got into it'cause I saw three black girls on the cover and I had never read it. And everyone loves this book and then I opened it and I was like, oh my gosh, this is about the Black Panther Party. Mm-hmm. And as I was reading through it, I was like, oh, this's great. And it's such a great way of talking about the Black Panther party. And there's some really deep themes in that book, but under this like vein of three black girls having a summer in San Francisco. So that one is really great. Ada Twist Scientist. The youngest marcher is a really solid one too. What other ones do I really love? There's this one called Love Is that's really fantastic and it's just a black girl with a duck that she really loves and it's just her and the duck doing different things. For more middle grade books, there's tons but I like the Great Cake Mystery. Oh my gosh, I love that one. And that one's a different country too, i've also found some in other countries that I've really loved, like Marcus Rashford. He's a soccer player in England and he has a whole series called Breakfast Club Mysteries. It's imagining him as a younger kid, doing mysteries with his friends at this boarding school. I think it's an excellent book for having a mirror, in some ways because a lot of characters are different races within the book, but heavy on the window because it's England and it's a black character. And I think that's also really important is that we're making sure students recognize that different people exist outside of the US and different races exist in different spaces too. I do think reading through them first. Because one of the ones that I remember seeing that I hate, and you can't find it anymore, thank goodness, but it's George Washington's birthday cake or something. It was a children's book, written about George Washington, one of the folks he had enslaved, but also was like a right hand man for him within being enslaved. I think his name was Hercules, but he was baking a cake for george Washington for his birthday. And there's this weird idealization of enslavement within it. Mm-hmm. And it's told from the daughter's perspective and things are really beautiful and very gorgeous and it's written by a black author. And it's a really upsetting book because the real story is actually that Hercules ran away on George Washington's birthday. I think it can be really tempting to see a black child on a text or see an Asian child on a text and be like, oh my gosh, it's perfect. We love this. And then you don't read it and you start reading it with them and you're like, oh, this is actually a really disappointing depiction of this identity. So making sure you read that, including author's notes too. And not just seeing a book with an author of color and assuming that it's strong that you really wanna make sure you're diving deeper into them to find really strong authors. There are certain authors, you can really trust. Like Jason Reynolds. I will trust with any book ever, forever and ever. Kwame Alexander Po Alexander I'll trust with any book. Lisa Yee is really great. Then last thing, ensemble casts of characters and books I think are really great. So if you can find books where you get a lot of different character perspectives and each chapter is a different character'cause certain chapters will be very much mirrors and some chapters will be very much windows. And so having that go between can make it a really enjoyable text, but also really strong in understanding different groups of people. Kindred, what's next for you? I am going to Stanford, I'm going to be studying, within the RL program, which is race institution, language education, and then, CTE, which is about curriculum and teaching and combining those two things. So I can examine how to teach within K through five classrooms about enslavement, civil rights movement and a trauma informed, but healing centered way. Kindred you are such a beautiful soul and you're just getting started, which is so exciting. I know I'm taking so many lessons from this conversation. You're a gift to everyone. Thank you so much, Katie. Thank you so much for listening to the Reading Symphony Podcast. My hope is that each episode leaves you with more clarity about what actually helps children become skilled, joyful readers. If today's conversation was helpful, I'd be so grateful if you would follow the show. Leave a quick five star rating or review and share this episode with a friend or teacher or another parent who cares deeply about kids. Those small actions make a big difference in helping this work reach more families. You can also find resources, deep dives and practical tools for families by subscribing to my free weekly substack newsletter at katiemegrian.substack.com And you can connect with me on Instagram thereadingsymphony Until next time, take care. And remember, reading doesn't happen by accident. It develops when the right parts come together.