WAUCONDA - Four partners in the Wauconda area have come together to offer Family Literacy English classes for parents with small children, at no cost to the families.
The newest session, which will begin Jan. 22, is the third session since the program restarted in January 2008 after previously running out of money. The College of Lake County, the Wauconda Area Public Library, the Wauconda Park District and school district 118 have all contributed to the cause.
The purpose, CLC Family Literacy Coordinator Sari Oosta said, is for parents to become actively involved in family education and become their child's first teacher. The first step, she said, is teaching parents to speak English.
"These parents want to learn English because they know their children will soon surpass them in English," said Oosta, who taught the first session last January. "They're doing this for their children. They want to be able to participate in school with their child. And that's what we want them to do. They know that if they go to a parent-teacher conference, they need to know English. [And] we want active parents who can help with homework."
The program is based on five components, four of which stem from a nationally recognized Family Literacy program: adult education (ESL for parents), child education (preparing children for kindergarten), parenting, and parent and child together, or PACT.
"That's the heart," Oosta said of PACT. "It's really kind of neat. The parents and children are meeting at the same site. They're going to school together. They get together for the PACT and they receive a good children's book for that age. It would be like Eric Carle's book, 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' - things like that, good alphabet books. The parents learn to read it; they learn how to read it, how to get their children interested in it, and they have an activity to go with it."
The books are brand new, bought specially from Scholastic Books, and each family to gets to keep the book they read every week to start their own home library, Oosta said.
The fifth part of the program involves the use of the Wauconda Public Library - a component unique to the Wauconda literacy program.
"The parents are learning how to use the computers, what the resources are," Oosta said. "We have a parent book club, where the parents will read a book in English. It's really popular. We teach them how to find the Web sites for their kids' schools and how to use them."
Carmen Dolgin, a retired elementary school teacher of 25 years, taught the fall session of the program and also will teach the winter session.
Her first session went well, she said.
"What I find the best about it," she said, "is it involves the children at a young age, so when they start school they're already speaking the language. But the best part is it gives them such an advantage when they start school. Not only that, it helps the parents. It's a model for the parents [of] what they can be doing at home."
Though the winter program will take place during the day, from 1:15 to 3:15 p.m. Mondays and Thursdays, Dolgin's fall session was run at night. The dedication of parents was astounding, she said.
"What does stand out is the parents who would come in the evening after working all day, and they still came because they thought it was important for them and their children," she said. "And I can't say enough about the parents that do that. I was impressed with that."
The program is funded by two grants: one by the Illinois Community College Board (through the College of Lake County) and the other by Congressman Mark Kirk and the Families Involved in Reading Stories Together program.
At a glance
Registration for Family Literacy English classes will take place at 6:30 p.m. Jan. 12 at Wauconda High School in room B101. The program is for parents with children ages 2 1/2 to 6 years old. Classes will be held from 1:15 to 3:15 p.m. Mondays and Thursdays, beginning Jan. 22 and running through May, at the Wauconda Chamber of Commerce, 100 N. Main St., in Wauconda. The program is free of charge.
