Tell You A Story? Just Watch Me

The idea stemmed from something simple.  Most ideas do.  Last spring, the rug got pulled out from under me like everyone else.  A pandemic.  A pandemic in the 21st century.  Wait...what? How do I manage this unpredictable “fluid” situation as a parent, as a caregiver daughter, in my role as an educator? If it’s true that you can’t control anything except your response to situations, then how do you manage when there are so, so many situations and information to respond to - and not just for yourself, but for the others in your lifeboat with you? And so, as the information gets disseminated, you become innovative and creative with the ever changing and unfolding pandemic landscape.

Sometimes you are lucky and you have a partner who is also innovative, creative and has the uncanny ability to know when to pour you a cup of perspective.  I have one of those. Truly blessed already to have him co-parent with me and to support me in my role as a caregiver, he also came through in a major way in helping me forge through the pandemic sea as an educator.  

Can you say abrupt? Can you say topsy-turvy?  Last April, deemed an essential worker, I returned to my school’s campus.  I tended to my library.  I had a multitude of projects that I could attend to while the students were virtual and until all the library books and textbooks came back to be checked in, inventoried and stored safely over the summer break.  Surely we would be back after the summer break, right? I had a bulletin board to take down, a library to undecorate, a website to complete. I had...no students to look for books, ask me about books, share their weekends with me. One of the best ways I know to grow literacy with students is to share my love of it through the books I read to them.  There were no students to read to, to share my decision process with, to talk to about reading and writing. 

Soon after we went back virtually, a Kindergarten teacher asked if I could read a book to the whole Kindergarten (or however many showed up) via Zoom.  Since none of the computers in the library had a camera, I brought an Elephant and Piggie book home with me and read it to them in the Zoom session.  The lighting wasn’t great, it was a challenge to angle the book so they could see it...to me, it wasn’t an ideal experience.  By this time, first grade had also come to me to share a story.  I conveyed this to my husband and wondered if there was a better way for me to do this.  Maybe a video - maybe I could create a YouTube channel and share a recorded video.  

I recorded reading a book on Zoom and saved it.  Remember that innovative, creative partner I have?  He has over thirty years of experience in video production.  I may be able to write my way out of a paper bag, but he can visually make that bag dance.  He asked me what I wanted to do.  I told him my issues.  I also told him I wanted to read stories, but I wanted the pictures to be more prominent in the telling. I wanted kids to see the words and I hoped to convey why I picked that particular book to read to them.  I hoped that maybe, just maybe, a few of them would want to read that book, too, after they saw the video.  Big dreams, right?

On a Saturday in April, 2020, our living room became a makeshift studio - a Canon camera on a tripod, a roll of green paper behind me, a stack of eight books at my side. Away we go….

Preparing to record

It’s been less than a year since we’ve uploaded the first episode of “Reading With Mrs. DeGagne.”  In that time, we’ve uploaded over 60 videos.  I’ve sent many links to teachers for them to either watch with their classes over Zoom or add to their Google Classrooms. We’ve improved how we record and edit the stories.  The biggest challenge for me is recording the wraparounds, since they are not scripted and I’m reading off the teleprompter inside my brain.  Often, I’ve researched the featured book before going on camera and I want to share some of that quality information with my students.  The second biggest challenge for me is throwing my vanity out the window.  Listening to my voice as we’re editing and seeing my face on the computer screen during that process is quite humbling.  

I never really expected to get subscribers to my channel, but I have.  I never expected huge numbers of views for the videos but one from that first batch, Tell The Truth, B.B. Wolf by Judy Sierra, has gotten more than 1,000 views.  That’s very cool, considering I just wanted to share some stories with my students while we were figuring out this virtual/hybrid schooling situation. It’s been a fun and entertaining process for both my innovative husband and me to volunteer our time and talents to.

I’m looking forward to next fall when I can welcome students back into my library.  The void I have felt in the year they’ve been gone is vast. While creating these videos for them has been rewarding in ways I never imagined, it can’t replace that connection I feel while sitting in my reading chair, interacting with them about the story I’m sharing with them that week. Even after they are back in my library listening to stories and reshelving my books in ways I’ve never anticipated, there may still be an occasional episode of “Reading With Mrs. DeGagne” recorded and uploaded.  Promoting literacy comes in many forms. A simple idea is like a seed.  Once planted, you feed it, you tweak it and you see it grow.  Sometimes it surprises you in how it blossoms. 

Reading With Mrs. DeGagne Tell The Truth B.B. Wolf Mother Bruce

My Reading Journey

I was asked to think about my reading journey for a group that I am a part of that wants to increase literacy.  I realized I have a long one, not because of age per se, but because books have always been part of the fabric of my life.  

It was my father who read to me at bedtime.  We had a thick anthology of nursery rhymes and fairy tales.  We also had little Golden Books.  I think my favorite story for him to read was Cinderella, it was beautifully illustrated. Hans Christian Anderson’s The Red Shoes made me cry and, honestly, a little afraid of dancing.

It was my mother who brought me to our town’s public library and procured my first library card.  It was a small white rectangle, my name neatly typed on its front.  Imagine my delight when I learned I could take out three- no- four-no- sometimes even five books at the same time! Some of my first stacks included The Cat in the Hat and Are You My Mother?  As I progressed in my ability, I moved onto Carolyn Heywood’s books about Betsy, Beezus, Ramona and Henry. While I occasionally read a stand alone story, I drifted toward series and delved into Maud Hart Lovelace’s tales about Betsy, Tacy and Tib and solving mysteries with Encyclopedia Brown.  I explored the land of Oz and discovered The Great Brain books by John D. Fitzgerald.  We were never rushed when we went to the library, we lingered, for my mother had a voracious appetite for books as well. When we relocated from Connecticut to Florida, one of the first places we located was our public library.   It was air conditioned and there was a healthy supply of new books to discover.  It was there that I ventured into the adult section and checked out Gone With the Wind for the first time. 

Reading was a constant - a book was always with us.  Except at breakfast.  In desperation, I read the cereal box, learning how much niacin was included and how many proofs of purchase I needed to send away for a free toy.  My mother found a second hand bookstore in St. Petersburg and we would spend some quality time there, too.  We could turn in books and use the credit earned for new ones.  That was cool.  I traded a lot of comic books there.  I loved the adventures of Archie, Betty and Veronica. 

In my teen years, my sister and I could often be found at the B. Dalton bookstore at Tyrone Square Mall.  At that point, I saved my money to buy certain books rather than check them out of the library.  Books like SE Hinton’s The Outsiders and Judy Blume’s Forever. Authors like Paul Zindel and Paula Danziger commanded my money and my attention.  My books were read and re-read, with worn, wrinkled pulled back covers and dog-eared pages. Books like Go Ask Alice and The Late Great Me freaked me out enough about substance abuse that I walked the straight and narrow line throughout high school.  It was in high school that I got lost in The Thornbirds and Mary Stewart’s Merlin Trilogy.  I was also blessed with the ability to take elective English classes (in addition to my required ones) my junior and senior years in high school, so I was exposed to Brit Lit, Contemporary Lit and Shakespeare (a whole semester- not just one play).  When I wasn’t reading, I was writing, so to have such a base of different styles to examine and learn from was integral to my development as both a reader and a writer.

I also loved reading plays.  Our public library had thick books with the scripts from the best of Broadway for specific years.  So, while I saw little theater in those years, I read lots of it and learned to appreciate the art of writing for the stage. It led me to reading biographies about Alan Jay Lerner and Rex Harrison.  I read Moliere, Wilde, Henrik Ibsen, Lillian Hellman.  I preferred comedy over drama, I appreciated plays on words and verbal banter.  While in college, my favorite classes were the ones that I got to either read interesting novels (like my American Women Writers class) or hone my creative writing skills.  My freshman year I got a job working in the college library.  I really enjoyed interacting with and helping the patrons, and I had the best boss - Trudy.  After working there through my sophomore year, Trudy asked me to consider staying on and working there as a summer job. I had to take a second job to cover my living expenses, but it was worth it.  Trudy sometimes let me leave the circulation desk and taught me how to shelve books. I learned about Melvin Dewey that summer and I got to explore the stacks.  That was the summer I read One Hundred Years of Solitude.

During my twenties I lived in New York and San Francisco -- bookstores were at my beck and call and I spent many a weekend afternoon curled up with a good read.  It was also during that time that I read a nonfiction book that profoundly affected me - Motherless Daughters  by Hope Edelman.  My mom had been swept into the later stages of early onset Alzheimer’s. She no longer knew who I was. I was in my mid-twenties and wasn’t done needing her. My family was 3,000 miles away. The book was a life preserver tossed to me by my sister.  

When I was pregnant with my first-born, What to Expect While You're Expecting was a constant companion.  While my son was in his first year, I read more magazines than books - my attention was constantly diverted by his wants and needs.  Around his first birthday, I started to feel the yearn to read something more, something that wasn’t an article. I was in a book drought.  I didn’t know where to begin. My mother-in-law came to my rescue by giving me a Mary Higgins Clark book.  Mysteries and psychological thrillers were not always on my radar, but some of her titles sucked me in and kept me up late, reading into the night.  

It turned out that other moms of young kids wanted and needed to read - and so a book club was formed with fellow MOMS Club members and my sister who, by now, had moved out to the west coast.  Honestly, I think some people came more for the conversations than the books, but I definitely read varied and interesting choices during that time. When I was pregnant with my second son, my sister introduced me to the Harry Potter series.  I quickly read the first four stories and was forced to wait for the rest of the series like everyone else.  As a child, I read and reread books multiple times,  As an adult, I rarely do, but I have revisited Harry Potter.  I think I enjoy reading it so much because it is written so well - the layers, the characters, the dilemmas.  

While my older son was in his second grade year, I walked into his school library for the first time.  My first day volunteering, I felt like I had come “home.”  I volunteered for several years assisting Mrs. Hucker, the librarian, with managing the volunteers, checking books in and out, barcoding textbooks and shelving books.  At the same time, I read my children’s library books with them as they were navigating their own early reading journeys. I met Jack and Annie from Magic Tree House, laughed at Dav Pilkey’s Dumb Bunnies, attended Dan Gutman’s Weird School, and met Stink and Percy Jackson.  I observed the students’ trends and patterns of both library behaviors and selections.  I learned picture books are fascinating and not just for early learners.  

At one point, at the encouragement of our school librarian, I tested and interviewed with the school district to be added to their elementary library eligibility list.  When our librarian moved onto a middle school position, I took over hers.  I am now in my eighth year of sharing stories with students, encouraging their development as readers. I hope I inspire them sometimes.  I know they inspire me to find the right stories for them, to find books that make them laugh, make them question, make them want to share what they’ve taken away.

One of the thoughts I share with my students when we talk about reading is that I think reading makes you a better writer, a better speaker, a better thinker.  I honestly feel that.  Reading a variety of genres and titles helps us to develop as learners and as emotional learners.  Life has taught me that there is always more that I don’t know than I do - that there is always something new to learn, a new path to explore. Reading is how I make that happen.