Boise’s Turning Pages: a Muslim reader in a shared classroom project

In February 2021, a Boise reading project placed local people in front of the camera with children's books. Among them was Fowzia Adan, identified by the United Methodist Church's Greater Northwest news service as an Islamic Center of Boise representative and Boise State public-health student. Her selection was The Proudest Blue: A Story of Hijab and Family.

A collaboration built around a book

The project, Turning Pages, was organized through Collister United Methodist Church. Its 2021 account describes video readings paired with art activities developed by Boise State elementary-education students. Organizers reported supplying reading kits to twelve Boise elementary schools.

Those details explain what the partnership produced: recorded readings, books and activities that teachers could use together. They do not establish that every school used the material in the same way or that the project continued unchanged after the reporting period.

The collaboration also deserves precise attribution. A church organized the project; a representative of the Islamic Center took part. Neither fact makes the two institutions interchangeable, and the participating children should not be assigned a religious identity.

Meet the reader beyond the recording

A separate 2019 Boise State account names Adan alongside Shukuru Kamulete in student organizing. The university describes work to bring students from refugee and minority backgrounds together. That earlier record gives the reader a public role beyond one appearance on camera.

A 2021 StoryCorps conversation with Georgette Bisoka provides another route into Adan's experience. It is a conversation between individuals with different histories, not a statement on behalf of all refugees or all Muslims.

Use the example in a reading group

A useful discussion can begin with three questions: who wrote the book, who is reading it here and who helped bring the reading to a classroom? The answers reveal different contributions. An author's work, a local reader's interpretation and a teacher's activity are related without being the same thing.

Our separate Ibtihaj Muhammad article explores the book's creator credits and her sporting life. Read that alongside the dated Boise project account rather than assuming the local reader wrote the book. For an educator planning a new activity, check current access to the recording and obtain books through normal library or purchase channels. The 2021 report is a documented example to learn from, not a current school booking service.