Adult Learning Center (ALC)
Plan for Tomorrow. Learn Today!
About the ALC Become a Student Volunteer
Our Mission: The Adult Learning Center promotes life-long learning in Johnson County and helps residents achieve their personal goals through access to literacy resources.
About the Adult Learning Center
Contact the ALC
Tutors' Monthly Report Form
The Adult Learning Center of Johnson County Public Library (ALC) has served residents in this area since 1985. Today, we offer adult tutoring services in English as a Second Language (ESL) and Adult Basic Education (ABE). Our students come from a wide range of experiences and skill levels.
Our free education services include a preliminary assessment in reading, writing, and English language skills. Depending on the tutor's and student's comfort level, lessons are either private or conducted in small groups. It is tailored to the individual student's educational needs and personal goals.
We are able to offer these services to our students free of charge, because all our tutors are volunteers from the local community. The ALC trains each volunteer in a mandatory orientation session and then offers optional in-depth training in specific areas of adult education.
The ALC also promotes family literacy by participating in the BabyTALK program.
English as a Second Language (ESL)
Become an ALC Tutor
Individuals in the ESL program have hailed from many different countries including Bosnia, Korea, Japan, Mexico, Brazil, Iran, Russia, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and China. Some students come to America with prior knowledge of English and need help in their pronunciation and vocabulary. Others have no experience with English and must start with the basics in language acquisition. Our tutors help ESL students gain essential survival and language skills that enable them to be productive and informed members of our, and now their, society.
Adult Basic Education (ABE)
Become an ALC Tutor
ABE students are a unique group of people. They are individuals who are native English speakers and who have a working knowledge of American society. However, for one reason or another, they have gaps in their education which prohibit them from fulfilling their true potential. Despite their lack of skill in reading and writing, these students are very intelligent. Indeed, to develop the survival mechanisms that they have in place to compensate for their lack of literacy skills takes a great deal of street smarts and creativity.
- Talk on the telephone
- Open a business
- Communicate with teachers and help their children with school
- Become U.S. citizens
- Be able to communicate with doctors or emergency workers
- Get their GED
- Open a bank account
- Fill out job applications
- Read their mail
- Read the Bible
- Get a job
- And much more...
BabyTALK
Become a BabyTALK Volunteer
Besides adult education, the ALC has partnered since the late 1990s with Johnson Memorial Hospital in a program called BabyTALK (Teaching Activities for Learning and Knowledge), in which we visit new parents just after their baby's birth. Our BabyTALK volunteers talk with parents about their baby and also give them a welcome packet which contains a board book, a welcome letter, a registration sheet, and a book designed to give parents guidance on introducing literacy skills to their child.
