“It has been an honor to partner with The Reading League (TRL) since its inception in 2017. Reading Buddies – a show for beginning reading instruction – was born out of the pandemic and is going into its 2nd season. It is fun to hear Kelli Johnson, a dynamic member of TRL staff, tell the story of how the Reading Buddies show came about. The show is available on YouTube and some PBS stations. Hopefully, it will continue to spread to more and more PBS stations around the country to benefit children everywhere. Warm thanks to Kelli for writing this guest blog!” – Nora Chahbazi
The following guest blog and accompanying video were written and recorded by Reading League Director of Community Education and Engagement Kelli Johnson (pictured here):
Reading Buddies - One of COVID’s Silver Linings
When the COVID pandemic forced school closures in March 2020, Katie Sojewicz, one of my colleagues at The Reading League (TRL), and I were given the opportunity to film “Language and Letters with Katie and Kelli” as part of a collaboration between the Syracuse City School District and PBS station WCNY’s TV Classroom, an attempt to bridge the digital divide for students who lacked access to electronic devices and/or had unreliable internet service. While the short segment, essentially a distillation of over 90 minutes of Kindergarten classroom instruction boiled down to 26 minutes and 46 seconds, had solid curricular content, entertainment value that excellent educational programming provides was painfully lacking. While everyone was doing what they could with limited resources in a brand-new, COVID-focused world, all I could think was, “I would not want to watch myself!” This planted the seed for finding actors who could learn the content and deliver it in a much more engaging and entertaining fashion.
Serendipitously, I came across a local magazine article highlighting Andrea Dotto and Brendan Malafronte, COVID-displaced Broadway actors creating videos for children on an iPhone in the basement of Andrea’s parents’ house where they had retreated from NYC at the onset of the pandemic. One look at their Dusty & Dott YouTube channel and it was clear their talent would be a great match for the vision of a truly engaging and entertaining educational TV program. Given the go-ahead from WCNY to film a pilot season using the characters of Dusty and Dott, TRL got to work securing grant funding for production and Andrea and Brendan began writing scripts for 20 episodes. In less than a year, season one of Reading Buddies was written, filmed, edited, and released. Oh, if we knew then what we know now…
As COVID restrictions eased, and with it opportunities for including more characters, namely The Alphaboteers, TRL recognized the need to expand and improve upon the success of the pilot season by creating season two, filming of which just wrapped at the end of March. Scheduled for release in September 2022, the new season will feature child actors, an additional set, and some new segments certain to delight viewers of all ages.
Now TRL could use help from the science of reading community to get the word out about Reading Buddies. To that end, we have a few asks:
- If you are not familiar with the show, please watch it on the Reading Buddies YouTube channel and share with anyone and everyone you know who will appreciate it.
- Please subscribe to the Reading Buddies YouTube channel and follow on social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter). In a world driven by search engine optimization and analytics, the more subscribers and followers, the better!
- Please consider the connections you may have with your local PBS station and encourage their programming director to add it to the daily schedule. Reading Buddies is currently available for free to all PBS stations via Wavelength. (Alabama Public Television just picked it up and we are mighty proud of Reading Buddies having more views in Syracuse, NY than Sesame St. and Donkey Hodie!)
Thank you for your support and we will “see you in The Reading Room!”
