Population Served:
36,853 Project Contact: Marilyn Belcher Project Title: Clovis-Carver: Building the Foundation for Literacy Project Description: We bought two computers and software to help patrons learn to speak English. We also bought 2 different DVD’s to study for the citizenship test. These are in house use only. We did buy another set of 20 DVD’s that are checkable. These are made to teach English to non-speakers. |
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Notable accomplishment, promising practices, or human interest stories: It took us a great deal of time to get the equipment in, then the City IT employees over to get it installed and ready to go. We do have a few people who are using the language computers which are located in a room away from the public computers connected to the internet. We do have a new employee who also teaches ESL classes at the local Community College. She has been spreading the word to her students there, so we feel the use here will increase as the Library is more centrally located than the Community College.
Key lessons learned: To allow plenty of time for paperwork to go through, then the order to arrive, and especially allow for getting outside help in getting the equipment set up and operating. Nothing runs at as fast a pace as one would like!
Advice for other libraries serving adult English language learners: Give them a private area in which to work as often the entire family will want to work together to learn a new language and will be very self conscious if others are nearby.