Education

Expansion of Family Literacy Centers

By Mary Ann Zehr — November 20, 2008 1 min read
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The National Center for Family Literacy has announced that it will expand its family literacy centers for Hispanic and immigrant families to five new cities. They are: Las Vegas, Las Cruces, N.M.; Long Beach, Calif.; Memphis, Tenn.; and Springdale, Ark. The center already operates family literacy centers in 20 cities in partnership with Toyota.

Sharon Darling, the founder of the National Center for Family Literacy, which is based in Louisville, Ky., explained to me that through the program parents typically spend several half-days per week at their child’s school. The program targets parents of children in kindergarten through 3rd grades. The parents take English-as-a-second-language classes and also visit their child’s classes for part of the day. “They sit right with their children and participate,” said Ms. Darling.

The program draws mostly mothers, Ms. Darling said, noting that in the Hispanic community a fair number of mothers are homemakers and are available to participate because they don’t work during the day. Most of the family literacy centers have waiting lists for mothers who want to participate.

She acknowledged that it would also make sense to have more night programs in schools, particularly for fathers who work during the day, but that isn’t in the scope of her organization’s work. Ms. Darling said that schools often use their own resources to add night programs after they have a daytime family literacy center up and running. In January, the center will begin taking grant applications for the next expansion of family literacy centers.

A version of this news article first appeared in the Learning the Language blog.