tary School, delighted her students with
the occasional appearance by her cat Zoe
and taught a lesson on primary sources
by assigning her students a video or written
diary of their pandemic experiences.
She began to share her tips with other
teachers via short how-to videos on You-
Tube. After two weeks, her first effort had
more than half a million views and she
had 4,630 subscribers.
“It’s crazy how popular that first video
is! It has been shared around the world.
I have teachers reaching out to me for
help from different states and countries,”
she says. “Zoe hasn’t made an appearance
in them yet.”
Christine Letts, a retired Harvard Kennedy
School of Government philanthropy
professor, says the pandemic has barely
budged most philanthropic institutions
out of their rigid formulas of releasing no
more than 5 percent of their principal
each year. As for the rest of us:
“The virus has been the lesson in how
we are able to connect better,” she says,
and may shift our emphasis away from
wealth and finance to what’s really valuable
in our society — “the barista or the
grocery store checker who’s known your
name for ten years. We actually care
about that person; it’s just so obvious
now. Those are the people who always
get hurt [in a financial crisis]. This time,
it’s so abrupt and in your face. Maybe it
will help us.”
Dupee’s production was as homemade
as her turkey enchiladas. The camera stays
put, so the action at the stove remains out
of view. She teaches in a narrow vertical
window of her phone screen, with sous
chefs eleven-year-old Brady and eightyear-old
Hunter jockeying for cameos at
the edges of the frame. There’s no editing;
once she had to pick an entire jar of peppercorns
out of her pizza sauce. The phone
fell and cut off the live feed. Another time
she appeared sideways. These hiccups
only endear the Dupees to their fans.
“I get emails saying ‘I love your kids’
and ‘You guys are a bright light.’ This is
not how I envisioned it — inviting all of
these people into our family,” she says.
“But this is real life.” �
Ellen Liberman is an award-winning journalist
who has commented on politics and reported on
government affairs for more than two decades.
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RHODE ISLAND MONTHLY l MAY/JUNE 2020 35