>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington DC.
[ Music ]
>> Mark Briggs: Literacy
Volunteers of Greater Hartford,
we've been around since 1972.
We're a private nonprofit
organization.
We are affiliated with proliteracy.
And what we do is -- our mission is
to help improve the lives of folks
in Greater Hartford by ensuring that
we have a fully literate community,
so we provide literacy classes that
are taught by trained volunteers.
Last year we served
865 adult students,
mostly immigrant populations.
So two-thirds of our classes are
English speakers of other languages.
And then our other program is
our basic literacy program,
and that is for native
English speakers.
Two-thirds of our students
are coming to us
because they're learning English
as a second or third language.
So they come from all
different types
of backgrounds both
geographically and educationally.
So -- and then the other
third of our program is
for native English speakers.
So it's important for us to give
our students what they need.
And so we've worked really
hard to improve our curriculum.
We have a very specific
curriculum based
on CASAS Basic Skill Set Standards.
And we also work in life
skills as far as training.
So another thing that we understand,
too, is that our students,
in order to -- because they're
here for very practical goals is
to improve their English for
work and for communicating
with family doctors and
their children's teachers.
They've also expressed that they
need to have more instruction
and experience with
digital literacy.
So that's one of the initiatives
that we've done this year is
that we've taken -- we've
extended our class hours actually.
A half hour of our classes went from
two hours to two-and-a-half hours.
Classes meet twice a week because
we want a half-hour of that class
to be spent in our computer lab
where we've developed
our curriculum,
a digital literacy curriculum taught
by trained digital literacy tutors.
And that's been very
successful so far.
And also this year we
started a new thing
where our higher-level classes
are participating online --
online writing lab where
they contribute their --
some of their writings
digitally to another online tutor
who will provide feedback.
So this is another way that students
can practice their skills outside
of class because that's a barrier,
students not having enough time
to practice their skills.
All of our classes are taught by
volunteers, and so each student has
about four or five hours of
class instruction per week.
So they need opportunities
to practice.
They need homework.
They need a computer lab.
They need an online writing lab.
We've grown 43 percent
in the last five years,
so we want to keep
providing these services
and to increase our capacity.
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of the Library of Congress.
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