‘What’s the point of a library?’: This town found an answer in adult literacy programs

Walking into the Harrie P. Woodson Memorial Library in Caldwell after-hours on a weekday, it certainly does not sound like the building is closed.

Small groups of students meet in clusters with their instructors. Sarah Hillhouse will be the first to tell you it gets loud sometimes.

“It’s a lot to try and filter out,” she said.

Hillhouse is in the evening GED class. She was homeschooled in the ’90s and never received a state-recognized diploma.

“I wanted to do something that was just for me,” she said. “And so I decided I was gonna go back to school and I was gonna get my GED.”

The library offers an array of adult education classes — not only GED prep, but also English language instruction and computer courses. Many of the classes are run by volunteer teachers with donated materials.

It’s a model Library Director Heidi Frazier said may become more appealing as communities try to figure out how to keep adult ed services available in a time of increasing uncertainty over federal funding. 

Frazier launched the program in 2021 when she decided Burleson County needed a place where adults could gain literacy skills.

“I thought ‘we’re in a library. Why isn’t there a literacy program?’” she said. “And one day, honestly, like days after that… This man came in with his wife and said, ‘Is there somebody who can teach my wife to read?’ And I said, ‘Well, of course, we have a literacy program. I’ll teach her myself.’”

The program originally paired students with volunteer reading tutors, but Frazier quickly wanted to expand. She looked for places in town that held GED and ESL classes in the hopes of forming a coalition.

“It was during COVID and I found out that the GED program that had been here was gone,” she said. “And the ESL program that had been here was gone.”

» RELATED: A Mexican government-backed program is filling in adult education gaps in the US

Caldwell is a town of about 4,000 residents, 30 minutes west of College Station. Frazier knew there was a need, so she approached the Brazos Valley Council of Governments. It turns out they were looking for a new location to hold adult education classes.

“And literally within two weeks, we went from nothing to almost everything,” she said.

The Council-funded classes are offered through the Region 6 Education Service Center — one of 20 such service centers established by the state of Texas to improve educational outcomes. But Frazier says she didn’t want to just lend out the library space and walk away.

“We really want to be here for the students,” Frazier said. “So we started working together, like really together.”

The library also launched their own classes on top of Region 6’s offerings.

And when Region 6 decided this fall they could only offer one GED course, and no ESL classes, because of uncertainty about federal funding? Library volunteers were able to take over the rest of the classes and the students kept learning, undisrupted.

Among these volunteers are Don and Carol Albrecht, who teach the pre-GED class. Both are retired professors at nearby Texas A&M.

Carol Albrecht said it’s refreshing to work with students who are motivated and engaged — which was not always the case when she taught college-level statistics.

“This is something that they want to do. What they lack is confidence,” she said. “We’ve found that over and over again. So we tell them all the time, ‘you can do this,’ and it does make a difference if people believe that they can accomplish things.”

She said working with adult education students reminds her of the old adage: Give someone a fish and they eat for a day, teach someone to fish and they eat for a lifetime.

“This is teaching them to fish, teaching them how to learn, teaching them how to progress and to reach their goals in life,” she said.

Volunteer power helps minimize the cost of adult education programming at the Harrie P. Woodson Memorial Library. But one expense the library has taken on is the hiring of a full-time adult basic education coordinator.

Paris Chandler started in this role in April. He is also employed part time by Region 6 to teach their remaining GED class.

“Even if I wasn’t the GED teacher, I would still be the adult basic education coordinator – working with all of the students, keeping up on where they are with their learning, helping them decide which way they want to go after their learning,” he said.

This library is not the only one expanding its adult education programming. The American Library Association launched a program this year to help eight libraries across the country meet community literacy needs.

» GET MORE NEWS FROM AROUND THE STATE: Sign up for Texas Standard’s weekly newsletters

Aubrey Huff is the association’s assistant director of Literacy and Continuing Education.

“A lot of people understand libraries as solely places that house books, but really they provide so much diversity of services,” she said. “They’re really these community centers that provide opportunities to everyone, regardless of your background.”

Huff says adult literacy is one of the most important services that libraries can offer to help people move up in the world.

“Libraries are one of the few places left that are universally accessible. They are stigma-free,” she said. “So when libraries take on literacy, they’re not just offering classes. They’re really there to strengthen communities and improve workforce readiness.”

Caldwell Library director Heidi Frazier says their program’s growth has helped to strengthen the library’s position in town.

“Everybody has a library in their pocket. It’s on your phone. You can access thousands of books on your phone. So what’s the point of a library? Well, to promote literacy,” she said. “So I think the future success for libraries is to bring literacy into the building.”

If you found the reporting above valuable, please consider making a donation to support it here. Your gift helps pay for everything you find on texasstandard.org and KUT.org. Thanks for donating today.