Aug. 9, 2021
With in-person meetings being curtailed during the past year, Jennifer Wells, TCCL’s Ruth G. Hardman Adult Literacy Service coordinator, has worked to ensure adult learners have access to resources for basic and English language instruction.
“For the majority of the pandemic, students and tutors were strongly encouraged to meet virtually. We began offering our ongoing programming, Conversation Circles and Adult Learner Book Club, via Zoom and were pretty successful.” Wells explained. “We also worked with the tutors and learners to make sure they were aware of all the potential tools they could use during the pandemic to keep learning, from video-conference platforms so they could meet online to various learning programs and materials that were available. For students without Internet access we created learner packets, which were sent to local libraries where they could be picked up via curbside services.”
To keep adult learners connected with literacy options, Wells and her team also found new ways to assess adult learners and train new volunteer tutor during the pandemic.
“Our biggest obstacles were assessing students remotely and figuring out how to do tutor trainings, which are mandated by Oklahoma Department of Libraries.” said Wells. “Each new tutor must complete a certain number of hours of training before being matched with a student. However, we are now close to finishing our online tutor training using Niche Academy. Once we launch that, potential volunteers will be able to take the training at their own pace from any device with internet capabilities.”
One in six adults in Tulsa County cannot read the prescription label on a medicine bottle, understand a newspaper article, or enter complete information on an application. TCCL’s Ruth G. Hardman Adult Literacy Service has helped more than 3,000 adult students improve their reading skills. Today, the program matches approximately 150 students with approximately 120 volunteer tutors.
As part of National Literacy Month in September, you are invited to view Chapters on Sept. 9 at 7 p.m. on TCCL’s YouTube channel, www.youtube.com/TulsaLibrary. Chapters is an annual fundraiser to raise awareness for this beneficial community program. This year’s event features inspiring testimonials from students, tutors and TCCL literacy staff as well as New York Times best-selling author Mateo Askaripour. His debut novel, “Black Buck,” was a Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick and was recently longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize.
For more information on becoming an adult learner, tutor or to donate to the Ruth G. Hardman Literacy Service, call 918-549-7400 or email, literacy@tulsalibrary.org.
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