Everyday English/Inglés a Diario – A New Program from the Outreach Team

Written by: Karina Segura

Forsyth County Public Library has been awarded a grant from North Georgia Community Foundation to teach intro level English to Spanish-speaking adults. Everyday English (translated to Inglés a Diario) will involve traditional classroom instruction utilizing a workbook. Each participant will receive their own copy of the workbook plus a bilingual book of short stories. Throughout each program session, adult students will have the opportunity to practice their English speaking skills with a partner. In addition to the textbooks, adult students will also be receiving a drawstring bag full of basic classroom supplies like notecards, pens, highlighters, and a notebook.

While the adults are in classroom instruction, their children will be offered a storytime program supplemented with crafts, games, and activities. At the end of each storytime, a new bilingual board book will be sent home weekly to encourage parents to read with their children and to help build the family’s at-home library.

This Everyday English/Inglés a Diario program is slated to run for six weeks with meetings being held once a week on Monday evenings starting on February 27th. We have partnered with Brandywine Elementary School and will be utilizing their media center to present our program. Brandywine Elementary is located in close proximity to one of our busiest Bookmobile stops where we see the greatest number of our Hispanic population – we knew this would work out perfectly for this program series!

The Outreach team has been busy promoting, planning, and researching course materials in order to kick off this brand new program. (Sidenote: We have also been working closely with IT to set up a new Spanish voicemail message on our direct Outreach line in order to streamline our registration process and enhance future communication with our patrons.) We are hoping to learn a lot from this program and make adjustments as needed according to the feedback our patrons give us. (This is going to be an exciting learning opportunity for all of us!) That being said, hopefully with a successful outcome at the end of this series, then we can plan to offer more of these types of programs for our patrons in the future.