July Volunteer Hours: 505 |
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As we wrap up our first quarter of the 2023-2024 school year, it's a perfect time to reflect on how much we've accomplished in the past year. We've run the numbers and here is some insight into the accomplishments the time and energy our amazing team of staff, volunteers and students have yielded:
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Between our on and offsite classes and one-to-one tutoring sessions, we offered nearly forty thousand hours of instruction to more than 650 students!
- Our average class completion rate was 90%, and three out of four quarters we had more than 90% of student completing the quarter.
- On top of our on and offsite ESOL, Ready to Work, Citizenship, ABE, and English for Community Connections (ECC) classes, we added some additional classes this year such as the Democracy Voucher Program and Drivers License class.
- Last but not least, YOU, our beloved volunteers, spent nearly 7,000 hours partnering with our students to create a better future for them, their families, and their community.
Thank you for making the 2022-2023 school year such a success. We look forward to continuing to respond to the needs of our community and offer high quality, personalized basic skills instruction to those who need it.
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In community,
Liz Wurster
Communications Coordinator
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Literacy Source's Summer Party |
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It's Time to Celebrate!
August 31 5pm-7:30pm
Please join us for this festive event to celebrate summer and all the hard work students, volunteers, and staff have put in to making this such a great year. We are so thankful to you as volunteers for all your hard work and dedication. We are excited to be able to have this outside event in-person at the Lake City center again!
Tutors, please share with your students these announcement slides that are going out to the classes this week. We will provide some food, but more is always welcome. Also, we are looking for some music/sound help, do you have speakers that we could use to run a playlist and/or microphone and speaker we could borrow?
We look forward to you joining us!
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"This was not only a coup. It was a revolution. I mean, this had reverberations across North
Carolina and the South that inspired white supremacists across the South. The effect
of the coup and the aftermath was that blacks did not hold elected or appointed
offices in Wilmington or in eastern North Carolina for another 70 years."
~David Zucchino, Author of Wilmington's Lie
As we continue to work on increasing our diversity, equity, and inclusion work here at Literacy Source, we have recently started including information share-outs in our staff meetings. Each week, a designated staff member brings some information to the meeting either as a presentation, resource link, or activity relating to either Native American or Black culture, history, or current events, and once a month the share-out focuses on the national social justice theme, which we also feature in our newsletters.
You may have seen in our E-newsletter that it's Black Business Month. There are many ways to pay tribute to this month, from patronizing Black-owned businesses in your community and beyond to learning more about America's complex and harrowing past that made Black business ownership such a daunting and impressive feat.
The massacre that occurred in 1898 in the port city of Wilmington, North Carolina, which Cat Howell, our Co-ED, shared about in our recent staff meeting, is just one example of the many acts of white supremacy that were perpetrated against the Black community in the past several centuries. This event was brought to life in David Zucchino's Pulitzer Prize winning book, Wilmington's Lie, which is a three-part account of the tragic coup d'état of the multiracial elected government there.
He was also interviewed on an NPR "Fresh Air" Episode, and the revelations he shares, from the lies and propaganda that fueled the massacre to the fact that it was openly called a "white supremacy campaign", are stark reminders of our insidious past, which set the framework for the systemic injustices that highlight the importance of celebrating and supporting Black Businesses this month and every month.
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This month we offered a new summer experience for our students: "A Walk in the Park". On August 3 and 10, eight students joined four volunteers as well as the class instructor, Cynthia Putnam, to visit different interpretive stations at Meadowbrook Park where they stopped, sat, and talked about what they saw, heard, smelled, felt.
Cynthia created a “Can You Find It?” (see right) sheet that students used to focus the walk on observing things in the park. There were also some delightful highlights, such as students learning how to focus the binoculars that were loaned by Birds Connect Seattle (formerly Seattle Audubon), and using them to observe two young in a Great Blue Heron nest in one of the trees in the park.
One of the volunteers, Soh-Leng Culhane, shared her beautiful description of the experience: "The park was an ideal setting for our students to commune with nature and converse spontaneously without classroom distractions. Here, dragonflies evoked memories of childhood games; ducklings, of delicious Chinese dinners; cedars, of other trees back in their home country; and, unfortunately, there was graffiti too - a reminder to city dwellers that this is an urban park after all."
Students also expressed their appreciation for the class, highlighting how much practicing English on these walks helped them to learn more about nature and how they hope to do it again. It sounds like this may be a class we need to repeat!
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Literacy Source partnered with three individuals that became new citizens in the past month: two from Eritrea and one from Cuba. Congratulations!
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Courageous Conversations Book (above)
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Various days and times from July 7 - Sept 8, (Various locations downtown, FREE)
Free live, local music is back in downtown Seattle all summer long! With nearly 40 performances from July 7-Sept. 8, Downtown Summer Sounds 2023 continues a four-decade DSA tradition of bringing outdoor summer concerts to downtown workers, residents and visitors. From glitch-hop and neo-folk to indie pop, country and rock, there’s a genre for everyone. Join us at Westlake Park, Occidental Square, Bell Street Park and more spots across downtown, and enjoy some of the best local talent from around the Pacific Northwest.
August 18 (Dreamgirls) and August 25 (Black Panther: Wakanda Forever), 9pm (Seattle Center, FREE)
Experience FREE movies outdoors at Seattle Center each summer. Picnic on the gently sloping Mural Amphitheatre lawn, in front of a state-of-the-art 40-foot screen, with the Space Needle looming above. The series features popular movies, both classic and contemporary, appropriate for all-ages. Movies at the Mural is an outdoor cinema experience like no other!
August 20, 2023 12:00-7:00pm (Alki Beach, FREE)
Stacy and Jolie Bass-Walden started with a simple idea: to gather with their LGBTQ+ friends, those looking for something to do in celebration of Pride other than the local club scene, and do it around a bonfire each year. Through these gatherings at the beach, a reputation had blossomed for hosting wonderful, fun-filled celebrations intended for people to connect. People began asking if Stacy and Jolie had considered doing something bigger, so in 2014, Alki Beach Pride was officially created in order to build new ways to better connect and strengthen our community in West Seattle.
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Literacy Source is hiring!
Submit a resume and cover letter to Cat Howell: cath@literacysource.org
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Our next New Volunteer Orientation (via Zoom) will be on September 6 at either 1pm or 7pm.
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Summer Classes run until Sept 7 (Summer Class Schedule). Literacy Source offices are open for all classes and tutoring M – Th 8:30am – 3pm.
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Miss any of our past volunteer newsletters? You can access archived newsletters at the bottom of the Volunteer Resources of our webpage.
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Literacy Source acknowledges that we are on the unceded ancestral land of the Coast Salish people, the land which touches the shared waters of all tribes and bands within the Suquamish, Tulalip, Duwamish and Muckleshoot nations. Indigenous people are still here and continue to honor and bring light to their lived histories. We affirm Native American sovereignty and acknowledge the sacrifices and contributions of Indigenous people of Puget Sound. We acknowledge the ongoing disparities, racism, and political erasure they face today and pledge to donate, promote resources, and educate about the struggles of the Coast Salish tribes. We raise our hands to honor Chief Seattle’s Duwamish tribe of Indigenous peoples past, present, and future. |
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