Châteaudun: the Sound Library in support of struggling students in Nermont
Created in 1994, the Sound Library of Châteaudun and Eure-et-Loir (BS) now stands alone in the department – hence its name – since the closure of the Chartres branch. Made up of twenty-five volunteers and led by Jacques Mallet, it is aimed at adults and, as we don’t know, at students offering “books to listen to” in MP3.
“For students who are struggling, this is a great way to regain confidence and overcome their dyslexia”, underlined the director of the private agricultural school of Nermont, Xavier Marin, who renewed, Monday morning , the partnership agreement with BS.
156 students helped in Eure-et-Loir
In three years and the health crisis, no more students from the Dunois establishment benefited from the help of voice donors when they were thirteen between 2018 and 2020 to register for this free service.
The cooperation has been relaunched and for the deputy director, Marie Levassor, it is important:
“We should not underestimate reading and reading comprehension problems. In Nermont, they are not only concerned with three or four students, but thirty to thirty-five of the entire workforce, from fourth through high school. The sooner we can overcome their difficulties, the better it will be for the rest of their education. »
Marie Levassor (Deputy Director of Nermont)
Currently, in the department, 156 students are benefiting from the services of the sound library. “They are distributed to twenty subsidized colleges and high schools where almost 500 audio books are sent throughout the year”, says Bernard Bouriaut, school manager within the association.
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The goal is simple: “to make reading accessible and enjoyable for students who have difficulty with a book or a literary work to facilitate their understanding of the text”. In this way, BS also aims to “give them access to reading, information and culture, and help them discover the joy of reading: the ultimate goal”.
To benefit from these audio books, students must, on a voluntary basis, take “very simple steps” together with their teacher, the librarian and their parents. All they have to do is fill out a registration form, sign it and send it, keeping their medical certificate proving their vulnerability.
Once registered, the student (or his teacher) can inform the title of the book he needs in BS, which is downloaded and sent by wetransfer.
“13,000 books, available on the national server or recorded on demand”, are accessible. But, according to Bernard Bouriaut, “they may be more, about 20,000”. Every day, volunteer readers offer the association their voice. It is not synthetic.
For optimal cooperation, the association asks teachers to send the list of books to be studied quickly, “so that they are not registered in haste”.
“does well in school”
According to French teachers Fabienne Daubert and Christine-Laure Flavien, the demand is real: “a dozen fourth-grade students would be interested” in these audio books.
The reviews about them are good. Bernard Bouriaut presented two of them, including that of Christophe, who was assisted by the association of Dunoise from the fifth to the last year and then carried out a higher education. “He wrote to us: ‘I can follow the lessons normally. Before, I couldn’t understand the books I read. The help of the Sound Library has helped me a lot at school and on a personal level. »
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It was also reported that a mother of a student assisted offered her services to be a voice donor. The association continues to look for them: “It is getting harder and harder to find volunteers and our difficulty now is that the whole department is ‘sprinkled’ because we are alone. »
Philippe Provot
