Volunteer Spotlight: Parent Literacy Program

The Literacy Council has been quietly growing its English-language instruction to parents of children in Frederick County Title 1 elementary schools.   

Founded in 2017 with three schools, the Parent Literacy Program has now doubled the size of its reach to six schools, and last year, helped 70 parents learn how to speak, write, and read in English. Prior to this initiative, there were no programs offering free English-language instruction within the county’s public schools.    

The Literacy Council, which serves 195 FCPS parents across all its programs, pursued adding parent instruction classes at the schools to make it easier for parents to attend, says ESL Program Coordinator Holly Bohman. Now, parents can find classes or one-to-one tutoring at six of the county’s elementary schools: Butterfly Ridge, Hillcrest, Lincoln, Monocacy, Tuscarora, and Waverley.  

“We wanted to have the hub of lessons at the school since transportation can be daunting,” Bohman said. Living with limited language proficiency can be very isolating, Bohman explained. It can make it difficult to figure out how to engage with many aspects of daily life that fluent speakers take for granted – such as understanding how the public transportation system works.  

The Parent Literacy Program gives FCPS parents who don’t speak English the tools to confidently move through their lives here in Frederick, starting with their children’s school community.  

Ana A., who moved to Frederick from Jalisco, Mexico with her husband 14 years ago, is one such parent. With an 18-year-old son and two daughters aged 12 and 10, Ana joined the Parent Literacy Program at Waverley Elementary, where her youngest daughter attends school. “My goal is to learn better English, understand better English, and I try to speak better,” Ana said in a recent interview with the Literacy Council. “And understand my daughters.”  

She used to drop her girls off at school and quickly leave without talking to anyone. Now, after three years in the program, Ana is an active part of her school community, volunteering to chaperone field trips and as a coach for the program Girls on the Run. She participates in parent-teacher conferences confidently.  “Now I have a meeting with the teachers, and I don’t need a translator. I try to speak with the teacher in my way. Yeah, but it’s me and the teacher, so I think it’s good,” Ana said. 

The Parent Literacy program has been such a success at Waverley that school administrators invited former student parents to be on an advisory council to the school.  

To make it convenient for parents to attend, classes are held during school hours and free childcare is offered through the Judy Centers located in each school.  

Judy Centers, known formally as Judith P. Hoyer Center Early Learning Hubs, are federally funded and located at Title 1 schools in every Maryland county. They are tasked with providing families with high-quality early-childhood education services.   

The Judy Centers fulfill the adult education aspect of their mission through their partnership with the Literacy Council. Judy Center staff not only help coordinate the classes but work with school community liaisons to get the word out about the program to the parents at each school.   

“It was a good place to slot ourselves into,” Bohman says. “People at Judy Centers speak Spanish and do whatever it takes. Over time, we have become a good partnership.” 

The Parent Literacy Program currently offers classes at three of the six schools: Waverly, Hillcrest and Butterfly Ridge.  The classes run throughout the school year and meet once or twice a week. Some schools like Waverly hold several classes with different levels of instruction so that students can build on their language skills.  

The other three schools offer one-on-one tutoring, but no classes.  

Bohman says she is constantly asked to run more classes and would love to have classes at these schools as well – if only she had enough volunteer instructors to teach the classes. “The need is there. If we had volunteers, we could set up in the other schools and have different levels,” Bohman said. “We could offer more classes at more schools.”  

Volunteer instructors don’t need previous experience teaching, and are trained by the Literacy Council, which also supplies their teaching materials. If you are interested in volunteering, please contact info@frederickliteracy.org, or call the Literacy Council office at 301-600-2066.