Lincoln Literacy

Thanks to the Mayor's office (City of Lincoln – Lincoln, Nebraska) for proclaiming Sep. 16-22 National Adult Education and Family Literacy Week. The proclamation celebrates Adult Education programs and shows support for how they provide a social and economic boost to participants, families, employers, and the community. To further amplify adult learners’ success, once a year, educators across the country come together with additional adult learners, community partners, business leaders, legislators, and supportive friends, which is how National Adult Education and Family Literacy Week began! #coabe Learn more about National Adult Education and Family Literacy Week at https://buff.ly/3aldQXv.

Our awesome crew, speakers of 19 languages, can’t wait to begin #classes alongside nearly 200 #volunteer #tutors. Our #students come from 75 different countries, and we believe we will serve over 2,000 students for the first time this year. Check out these photos of our 2024 Annual Staff Retreat. Learn more about the event at https://buff.ly/3M9Xu7U.

#Volunteer tutors needed! We have a record number of #students from 75 countries coming to classes and we need your help to serve all our new students. No teaching experience required — we will train and have 200 fellow tutors teaching now! We try to keep #class sizes small at 5-7 students per #tutor, so if you are interested in #volunteering, we’d love to have you. Sign up at https://buff.ly/4dJVgbo.

Our 2024 Global Celebration is coming up Sat., Nov. 9 from 6-8 PM. Thank you to our Table Sponsors Hexagon Agility, HoriSun Hospice, Ryan and Molly Wieber, Diane Wilson and Kay Richter. If you would like to become a sponsor yourself, visit https://buff.ly/3XpTOVO. #2024GlobalCelebration

We teach #classes 6 days a week, including evenings and weekends, all over Lincoln where our #students live and work to make it easy for them to get to #class. We are so grateful to our site partners for hosting our classes, like Grace Lutheran Church - Lincoln, NE. Thank you! You're doing great work in our community. Learn about our other class locations at https://buff.ly/475EjWq.

We don't just teach English language #classes. We also support pre-literate #learners. We participated in a webinar on ESOL Basics with Preliterate Adult Learners led by Steven Reid at https://buff.ly/3BkEBNr. The webinar focused on understanding the pre-literate learner, strategies for working with pre-literate learners, and activities to use in your lessons. “We have a lot of people who come to us who have little to no literacy in their first language," said Reid. “Because of that, it’s something that we have spent a lot of time learning how to properly teach them how to speak, and read, and write in English.” Some other resources for #tutors include https://buff.ly/4emTgq6, which focuses on where to start with low-level learners and https://buff.ly/4emTg9A, which focuses on building phonemic awareness and foundational literary skills with pre-literate ELL #students.

We can't wait for our 2024 Global Celebration! Guests will enjoy traditional Ukrainian music and a Kokyo Taiko drum performance. Tickets and sponsorships are still available, so there’s still time to participate. Learn more about the event at https://buff.ly/3WWn45h. #2024GlobalCelebration

We teach #classes 6 days a week, including evenings and weekends, all over Lincoln where our #students live and work to make it easy for them to get to #class. We are so grateful to our site partners for hosting our classes, like St. Paul United Methodist Church. Thank you! You're doing great work in our community. Learn about our other class locations at https://buff.ly/475EjWq.

Lincoln Literacy was at the Lincoln Unites! 2024 event held at the Lincoln Children’s Zoo on Sep. 20 as part of Welcoming Week. Lincoln Unites! is an annual festival that brings community members from all walks of life together who are proud that Lincoln is inclusive and welcoming to all of its neighbors, including #immigrants and #refugees. Free to the public, this year’s event had music, art, entertainment, international food, and fun. Sharing the heritages of the many faces of Lincoln and celebrating new citizens helps create one strong and vibrant community. Check out these photos. Thanks to Donna Stadig for snapping a shot of the Citizenship Ceremony held that afternoon.

When an EF3 tornado destroyed employees’ former place of work, Hexagon Agility and Lincoln Literacy stepped in, providing new jobs and English #classes to help people get back on their feet. One such employee, Mohamed Aresou, moved to the U.S. from Sudan. He completed Lincoln Literacy’s foundational English #class and is one of the first graduates of our workplace English class. The first graduation ceremonies for that class took place this summer. “Before this class, we don't know about even our area," he said. "We don't know a lot of things like the real name of the parts, and how [we] just would try to point and describe the thing. But now we know. Everything now is better." Aresou added the classes have helped him feel more confident at work, and his two daughters have told him they’re proud of his efforts to learn. He's developed many friendships with the people he works with from Africa, the Middle East, and South America. And that’s good news for Erica Birky Rios. She teaches the classes as the workplace English instructional coordinator. Although she’s employed through Lincoln Literacy, she has a Hexagon Agility ID to allow her access to the early morning and afternoon classes. “It is incredibly profound," she said. "The students in these classes feel seen. They have a chance to be empowered by their workplace, which is giving them this space to develop their skills, and that brings team members together across languages." Read the full story from Nebraska Public Media at https://buff.ly/4doMHSk.