JoelShep

For years, people have said that they "hear me before they see me"; this isn't just due to the low tone that gets carried in my speaking voice, but because of the various voices and characters that I would broadcast out of my open doors and windows and down the corridor for the rest of the school (you can thank Covid for that). 

Having worked within schools teaching 4-18-year-olds, I have various different tones and styles of communication to best suit my audience. For older students, I was a history teacher and regularly had to explain difficult and complex language, read long passages while maintaining the attention and interest of the class, and would occasionally drop in snippets of other languages (with attempted authentic pronunciation). For my younger students, I was a cover teacher so I taught them whatever was planned for that day. My fallback, if the class were unsettled, was to read to them. If they were talking over my teaching or refusing to follow instructions, I would start reading a book aloud with as much enthusiasm and interest as possible to get them to stop what they were doing and listen to me. This was an incredibly useful tool and gave me something of a reputation at the school as students would regularly come up to me requesting and certain accent, impression, or noise. 

Reading aloud is something I have done for pleasure for over a year now. When I was a child and teenager, I hated reading and would do anything instead of it. When I was at University I was diagnosed with ADHD which provided some explanation as to why I disliked reading. The only situation where I could tolerate it was performing and reading lines. So last year I started not only reading aloud but also doing differing voices for the characters to bring the work to life and to keep me interested in what I'm reading. All to myself, with no (intentional) audience. (Please find extracts from books that I've read this year)

I'll be completely honest, I am new to all of this. The only experience I have with voicework is the careers podcast that I made last year which is currently on hiatus. But, the range of voices I can perform is wide, I'm a fast learner and a very cooperative and conscientious colleague. 

Trailer for Podcast (Getting Into It) - https://open.spotify.com/episode/384HNqnZv6f4Das9jjLkvd?si=451a165d92f24eed

Don't hesitate to contact me if you've got any questions. 

Thanks for reading.