Using my Voiceover and Teaching Skills to Help Children with Learning Differences
As a piano teacher for almost 25 years and a volunteer classroom story-time reader to first graders, I have spent a lot of time speaking to and interacting with children. So much so, that I was often told back when I first started coaching in voiceover, that my reads sounded like I was talking to little kids. Well, that’s because that’s who I talked to the most, for the majority of days in the week!
As I have scaled back from teaching piano over the past few years to spend more time on my voiceover business, and have stopped story-time due to the pandemic, I don’t hear that as often. Now I just teach one-on-one in my home and I also am teaching private lessons online. I really enjoy and treasure these teaching times with students, but I had been feeling lately that I was really missing reading out-loud to the kids.
I had heard about a service a few years ago that provides assistance to children, through volunteers, who need a little help with reading, for a variety of reasons; they are blind, have low vision, dyslexia or have other learning differences.
I reached out a few years ago to the organization, Learning Ally, and was told that there were 1,800 volunteers in line ahead of me! Glad that so many people want to help out!
Training as a Textbook Narrator
I decided to give them a try again, and while there still weren’t any openings for Narrators, which is what I had really wanted to do, I signed up to work on their quality control team.
Before I could get started with my online training, an email arrived stating that they were looking for Textbook Narrators who had a background in Science; specifically in Biology, Chemistry or Math. As a licensed medical professional with a degree in Science, this is right up my alley, so I quickly said YES to training as a Textbook Narrator.
A New-to-me Area of Voice Acting
I am just starting on my journey of learning what it takes to work with a full production team to help produce an audio textbook. There are some things that I already know very well, some things that I am slightly familiar with and other things that are brand new to me.
I'm excited to be exploring this new-to-me area of voiceover, knowing that I can take what I'm learning as a volunteer and translate it into an avenue of my voiceover business that I hadn't spent time on before. As audiobook narrators seem to be in demand, it will be nice for me to throw my hat into the ring,
But mostly, it will be nice to spend more of my days talking to children. While I may not be back in an actual classroom in front of first graders, with their expectant, receptive faces (and the occasional squirmy bodies and out-of-the-blue hugs) I can imagine myself voicing characters that I know they will enjoy getting to know, remembering what it felt like to hold and balance an actual picture book in my hands in a comfortable position so that I can see the words while at the same time being sure that all the kids seated in front of me can see the pictures, and then seeing their smiles as I close the book when we come to the end of the story.
Voice acting is really acting in your mind; you picture who you are, who you are talking to and why, and know what your setting is.
I feel lucky and fortunate to be able to help children with learning differences be able to enjoy a good story and to assist with their learning. I won't have to make up the images of what a setting might look like being a reader to children, and try to picture who I am and who I am talking to.
I get to just reach back in my memory and I can picture that image. Whether I'm reading outloud from a textbook or from an actual picture book!
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