Middlesboro Independent students started reading books for others to hear by calling into the Jacket Storytime Phonebook last year. Photo courtesy Rian Johnson, Partners for Rural Impact.
As a senior at Middlesboro High School (Middlesboro Independent) last year, Bryce Bowling was preparing to start classes and the upcoming football season when teachers asked him to join a new literacy program they were starting.
The program: a new phone line, called the Jacket Storytime Phonebook, where anyone could call in and hear someone reading a children’s story.
“The teachers really came to me and asked me if I’d like to read to the kids, and I mean, of course I wanted to,” Bowling said.
Bowling was part of a group of football players and cheerleaders that initially started reading books to get the program off the ground. School leaders paired the readers with younger kids to read to them in person as they recorded the audio for the phone system.
“It was really fun for me because I got to kind of break character a little bit and just enjoy it and have fun,” Bowling said. “And the kids ended up loving it, so it was really cool.”
One of the lead organizers from Middlesboro High School was Nick Shoffner, an algebra teacher and football coach. He said the district already had a tradition in place where football players would greet elementary school students every Friday morning, so developing the reading program around that would be easy.
“I think the readers enjoyed it more than the listeners,” Shoffner said. “You walk in that room and they’re having a blast with it.”
As for how a math teacher got involved in a literacy program, Shoffner said he’s part of a committee of district educators and other community members working on efforts to improve school spirit in the area. The Jacket Storytime Phonebook seemed like the perfect project to encourage collaboration with students and the community.
“I saw what I thought the potential for this project was,” Shoffner said, “and I don’t try and get my hands in everything, but if I see something and I see value in it, I really am intentional about getting involved and trying to make it as good as it can be.”
Shoffner and Middlesboro Independent joined with Partners for Rural Impact (PRI) to start working on the phone line during the summer of 2023. The project is funded through the Innovative Approaches to Literacy grant from PRI.
“Our mission is to get books and technology into the hands of all the kids and their parents and families in the community,” said Doug Coots, project director for the grant.
Coots said the idea developed when a team member talked about a program one of the banks in Middlesboro used to have when she was a child where kids would call and hear someone read them a story.
“I thought that’s a great idea, so let’s try to see if we can make that happen for ourselves,” he said.
Once they started searching for partners, they discovered LibraryCall, an organization that has been working almost exclusively with libraries up until this point. Lori Ayre, who runs LibraryCall through her consulting firm The Galecia Group, said libraries mostly utilize the Dial-a-Story program, and having Middlesboro Independent join has bolstered the number of books they’re able to offer through the platform.
“Along came Middlesboro and Doug Coots and all of a sudden, some of the things that we had been hoping people would do started happening with this organization,” Ayre said.
The football field is where the program grew. Announcements went out over the public address system at home games, boosting awareness which led to a boom in calls to the phone line. Coots said LibraryCall metrics show that the phone line received 360 calls last September and has averaged about 100 calls per month since.
“I think at one point, our phone book was one of the most called lines in the country,” Shoffner said.
Community members have also promoted the program, putting signs in their yards advertising the phone line.
Eventually, student-athletes from winter and spring sports got involved and Shoffner said academic club members also joined in to read to kids. Middle school and some older elementary school students began reading for the hotline as well. District leaders plan to keep it going into the new school year and beyond.
Brandy King, literacy coach for Middlesboro Independent, said the program provided new learning opportunities for the students involved.
“I could talk to the kids and be like, guys, you don’t want to read in a monotone voice. We talk about inflection, and you can even use character voices,” she said. “And it’s great to see them be so creative and use really different voices and really have fun with it.”
“It was a blast just being able to like, return the favor, and flip the perspective on it,” Bowling said of the opportunity to be a reader and be a role model for the younger kids, just like the high school students he remembers interacting with as a student at Middlesboro Elementary.
“It was just really joyful. I mean, (the students) just had a big smile on their face. They loved every bit of it.”
Anyone interested in hearing a story through the Jacket Storytime Phonebook can call (606) 752-0352.
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