Happy February, Literacy Council tutors! I hope the new year finds everyone well. I’d like to introduce myself and also bring you up-to-date on current happenings. I plan to turn this into a monthly newsletter, letting you all know about upcoming events, helpful resources to use with your students, and progress we’re making together.

I’m Erin, the new Director of Educational Programs. I taught English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) for two decades at both Carroll Community College and the Community College of Baltimore County. I’m a fluent Spanish speaker and active in our local Latino community, so I’m familiar with a lot of our students’ struggles and needs. I look forward to putting my experience to use in my new role at the Literacy Council and to getting to know each of you individually. You and our students are the backbone of this organization, and I hope to serve you well.

Here at the office, we’re getting ready to undergo a bit of a facelift. They’ll be taking down the wallpaper and painting. We don’t have dates yet but will keep you informed, especially since many of you use the conference rooms for tutoring. In preparation, I’ve been combing through the bookshelves and pulling some of the more outdated material. Feel free to stop by and take a look at the growing collection of texts up for donation. There may be some material still of use or well-loved by you that you’d like to take home. Along these lines, if anyone has any recommendations/preferences for printed material to use for GED or any of our other tutoring areas, I’m all ears. Please e-mail me at estacks@carrollliteracy.org.

In closing, I’d like to offer an idea I came across in an old copy of Hands On English, an ESOL newsletter published in the 90s and early 2000s. Many of our students make more progress than they realize; an effective method to make them aware of this fact is recapping what they learned that session at the end of each class – something you may already do. This can be in the form of a dictation, where the tutor reads a sentence or two summarizing that class’s content to the student, or by having the student keep a log or chart at the end of class, filling in work studied or completed. This provides a visual reminder that they are indeed learning and on their way to achieving their goal(s)!

Stay warm and keep doing great work. Feel free to stop by the office and say hi!