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Thank you for your interest in volunteering with the Durham Literacy Center! All of our
programs are driven by volunteers, so we wouldn't exist without the gift of your time and energy.
Tutors typically start in January and August, but if you are interested and it's not one
of those times, let us know and we can talk about what's available.
Now we will provide an overview of our four main programs and the volunteer positions
associated with each. The Adult Literacy program serves adults who
want to improve their ability to read or to get their GED.
The Adult Literacy program has two consistent areas of need: tutors for students who are
improving their basic literacy skills and tutors for students who are studying for the
GED. Students working on basic literacy skills
read somewhere between a 0 and a 4th grade level. Tutors for these students follow a
set curriculum designed to help someone who has struggled with literacy as an adult.
Learners studying for their GED need tutors who can teach math, science, social studies,
reading, and/or writing up through a high school level.
Adult Literacy tutors work one-on-one with the same student each week. Hopefully each
pair would meet twice a week for an hour and a half each time.
Our ESOL program serves adult immigrants and refugees from all over the world, helping
them to learn the English skills necessary for their new home. The bulk of our English
classes are at our main site at 1905 Chapel Hill Rd, but we also hold classes at a few
Durham County Libraries and at El Centro Hispano in downtown Durham. Each class meets twice a
week for two hours per session. Volunteer tutors commit to teaching regularly one night
a week for the duration of the semester. Tutors are typically paired in teams of two to teach
on their selected day of the week. Then, correspond via email with the second pair teaching the
other session of the class. All classes are based on a textbook and have a syllabus to
help guide the semester. The teachers' edition of the textbook has a built in lesson plan
and thus, tutors don't have to come up with their own lessons. Nevertheless, volunteers
will be taught techniques for supplementing lesson plans and using main site library resources.
The Teen Career Academy is a program designed to help young adults prepare for the GED.
Tutors are asked to provide students with one on one tutoring in one of four subjects:
language arts, math, science, and social studies.
The Computer Literacy program mostly serves students in other DLC programs. We teach computer
skills with the end goal of giving students the confidence to navigate computers on their
own. Our oldest program teaches beginning computer skills in a class format. Classes
meet once per week for two hours over the course of twelve weeks. We practice mouse
and keyboard skills and learn the basics of Windows, word processing, the Internet, email,
and computer safety. New volunteers can become class assistants to help individual students
in class. For more advanced computer skills, we have a pilot program that follows a modified
version of Adult Literacy's one-on-one model. Tutors and students are matched by schedule
and interests and they work for two hours per week on setting and meeting the student's
goals together.
Here is a full list of our tutoring opportunities.
If our tutoring opportunities do not seem quite right or fit your schedule, you can
still volunteer! Consider staffing our reception desk, assisting guests in our public computer
lab, or joining a board sub-committee.
For most of these positions, you will receive training by sitting down with a member of
staff at a time convenient for both of you. For the Adult Literacy basic literacy tutors
and ESOL classroom teachers, you will need to attend our twelve-hour Tutor Training.
No matter which program you are interested in, please contact us at volunteer@durhamliteracy.org.