Literacy Volunteers of Collier County

LVCC offers both in-class and one-on-one tutoring sessions. Students and tutors meet once or twice a week for at least 1.5 hours and work together on improving English skills. Students are at different levels of English and are assigned to classes accordingly. There are mixed groups of students with a number of native languages including Spanish, Haitian Creole, Middle Eastern and Asian language groups. Students generally remain in the program until their skill level meets their expectation for better employment and they become more functional in the community. LVCC offers programs online as well as face-to-face traditional classes. There was an average of more than 200 adult students per month being served throughout the year. Citizenship: Students attend a 6-week course to prepare themselves for the US citizenship test. All instruction is carried out by LVCC tutors, and all materials are supplied by LVCC. Instruction focuses on improving English skills and gaining the knowledge required to be successful on the citizenship test. The success rate is very high and over 550 students have completed the course over the years and become US citizens. This year LVCC provided 18 students with citizenship preparation classes.

Children and Parents Reading Together: Selected Pre-K, Kindergarten and 1st grade students in Collier County Public Schools, and their parents, meet with LVCC tutors to learn early literacy skills. The program teaches parents how to work with their children on academic skills and teaches children how to practice literacy skills to become school ready. There are three 8-week sessions during the school year and one 6-week summer session. Tutors meet with classes of parents and children once each week. The tutors work with both children and parents to instill in them the love of reading and its importance to success in school. During each of the 4 sessions approximately 100 children, with parents, are served. This year the program served approximately 400 families. To each of those families LVCC provided 28 hours of free tutoring time to both parent and child, teaching pre-literacy skills to the child and English language skills to the parent. Each child received 28 brand new books (approximately 3,200 books) as well as other pre-literacy learning resource material.