April | VOLUNTEER NEWSLETTER | 2026

Teacher Appreciation Week, May 4-8, is a chance to recognize educators across the country for the skill, care, and commitment they bring to their work. At Literacy Source, teachers are a critical part of helping adult learners build confidence, strengthen skills, and create new opportunities for themselves, their families, and their communities.

Happy Global Volunteer Month!

Volunteers, you strengthen communities, and throughout the month, we recognize your vital role. All year, and especially this month, we appreciate the time, talent, and passion you have shared to make a real difference in your own backyard and create a ripple effect around the world.



To all of our incredible volunteers, thank you for the time, energy, and care you give so generously. Whether you’re helping a beginner learner troubleshoot computer problems, tutoring students to help them achieve their goals, or helping someone gain vital work skills, you are an essential part of our mission to provide accessible education to adults in our community.

We’re also especially excited to celebrate with many of you at our 40th anniversary fundraising luncheon tomorrow. It feels especially fitting that so many of you will be part of the day, including helping make the event possible, just as volunteers have helped shape Literacy Source across so much of our 40-year history. Your generosity, commitment, and belief in our learners have been part of this community for decades, and we’re thankful to celebrate that together.

We’re so grateful for the compassion, creativity, and dedication you bring to everything you do. You help build a stronger, more connected community, and we’re lucky to have you as part of it!

Learn more here: https://socialpresskit.com/points-of-light#global-volunteer-month

In community,

Sawyer Auer 

April is Neurodiversity Celebration Month, a time to recognize and celebrate the strengths, perspectives, and contributions of people with neurological differences such as autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and Tourette syndrome. It is also a chance to challenge stigma and reflect on what true inclusion looks like in our schools, workplaces, and communities. At Literacy Source, where literacy and diversity are both at the heart of our work, this feels especially meaningful. Many of our students, volunteers, and staff bring different ways of learning, processing, focusing, and engaging with language, and that diversity is something to honor, not diminish.

A recent article, "Reading While Neurodivergent: A Librarian’s Guide to Loving Books on Your Own Terms", offers a warm and affirming reminder that there is no single “right” way to be a reader. As Sawyer, our new Volunteer Program Manager, noted, the piece pushes back on narrow reading “rules” and instead highlights how many people read more flexibly: moving between books, rereading favorites, listening to audiobooks, or choosing graphic novels, manga, and comics. One part that stands out is, “The problem isn’t with the readers. It’s with the rules.” For those of us who support adult learners, that message resonates deeply. Too often, reading is treated as performance, measured by speed, consistency, format, or completion, rather than connection, confidence, and meaning.

The article closes with three gentle truths that feel especially relevant to our work:

1. All formats count.
2. You do not have to finish.
3. Joy matters more than rules.

That perspective invites us to think more expansively about literacy and belonging. What changes when we stop defining “good reading” in narrow ways? For many students, those narrow definitions have shaped how they see themselves as readers. At Literacy Source, we can help foster something different: flexibility, affirmation, and encouragement, along with space for each person to build a reading life that feels meaningful and sustaining.

Manipulatives in the Library

Routines are an activity you do regularly in class or session that provide practice for key learning objectives. Often they start with a lot of demonstrations and then grow to allow for students to do a task independently. As such games used in teaching are often games that use tools or manipulatives. We have manipulatives available in the Wangari Library at Literacy Source that cover common topics our students need practice with. 

The nice thing about using resources from a library is that students can get those resources outside of their time with you, and possibly discover other resources in the process. This way, they know the tool and can practice on their own if they want!

Ask a teacher if you have questions about the manipulatives at Literacy Source!

Darlene Lytle, Instructional Advisor

Flyer Table to Donate?



We are looking for a small table for flyers to place in our office, ideally about 18 inches wide and up to 67 inches long. If you have one you could donate, we would be very grateful.

We appreciate all the ways you support Literacy Source students, and our backpack/laptop bag drive is one more practical way to help. From now through June 12, we’re collecting clean, new or gently used backpacks and laptop bags at our office so students have what they need to carry books, supplies, and technology to classes.

Experienced Tutor Training: Building and Adapting Routines (In- Person) 

Saturday, May 2, 10AM-12:30PM at Literacy Source (12360 Lake City Way NE, Ste. 301) 

In this training, tutors will receive individualized support on how to access the class materials and slides from their students' classes and develop tailored routines for tutoring sessions based on each student's personal learning objectives. Tutors will have the opportunity to work with an instructor to identify and modify class routines, ask questions, and learn more about their students' classes and how best to adapt tutoring sessions to each student's current objectives.  

Please join this Google Classroom to sign up and complete the pre-activities. 

Volunteer Roundtable: Know Your Rights (KYR)  

Monday May 11, 4:30PM (Online) 

The focus of this work is not to give legal advice or recommend particular actions. Instead to discuss resources and help students know their civic rights. This work will again be focused around red cards, their use and the rights listed on them : https://www.ilrc.org/redcards 

At Literacy Source we believe by having these difficult conversations, we share important knowledge helping to empower our community to make informed choices for themselves. Students with specific legal questions will be referred to a vetted legal provider, which, in some cases, may be Cory, our Citizenship Program Manager.  

Please Join this Google Classroom to sign up and complete the pre-activities.  

Literacy Minnesota Featured Trainings

Join guest presenter Andrea Echelberger for one (or all) of her upcoming webinars! 

Andrea has worked in the field of adult education as a classroom teacher and an instructional trainer for over 20 years, providing training and support for English language teachers on both a state and national level. She focuses on educational equity, literacy-level instruction, and practical teaching techniques and activities for instructors of all levels. 

Engagement and Interaction in the English Language Classroom 

April 30, 4:30PM - 8:30PM (PST) 

Developing community and creating opportunities for engagement are essential ingredients for a successful learning experience. But what does this look like in an English language class where there are multiple languages spoken and/or people at the very beginning of their language learning journey? In this training, learn classroom management strategies and instructional approaches that provide multiple opportunities for adult language learners to interact with one another, practice their language skills in a variety of ways, and help people to stay engaged and interested throughout the entire class time. Register here.  

Promising Practices for a Multilevel Classroom 

May 8, 11:00AM - 1:00 PM (PST) 

English language classrooms feature a wide variety of educational backgrounds, abilities, and learning preferences, which contributes to a multilevel dynamic. This training will highlight promising teaching practices for supporting learners who need additional support, learners who move ahead quickly, and everyone in between. Participants will see concrete ideas for modifying activities to support a range of learner needs and abilities, and get ideas for teaching that can be implemented immediately. Register here.  

How Adult Brains Learn Languages 

May 29, 11:00AM - 3:00 PM (PST) 

Learn what research has to say about how adult brains learn a new language, how trauma and stress impact learning, and how this influences the teaching practices that we use in the language classroom. Participants will leave the webinar with suggestions for ways teachers and tutors can apply brain-based teaching practices as we are helping adult ESL students develop their language skills. Register here.  

Congratulations and thank you to these volunteers who have achieved a year of service! We are so appreciative of all your hard work and dedication to Literacy Source.

• Alex Spivey (ABE Class Assistant) 
• Anjuli Goring (Conversation Partner)  
• Jeanne Macbeth (ESOL Class Assistant)  
• Mimi Cheng (Program Support)  
• Pam Obst (Tutor)  

As a celebration of literacy and in honor of our 40th anniversary, we asked staff to share their all-time favorite book.

The Secret Garden

Staff: Britt McCombs

Homegoing

Staff: Shira Rosen

How Much of These Hills is Gold

Staff: Miles Beran

The Ride of Her Life

Staff: Sharon Griggins

Lady Tan's Circle of Women

Staff: Liz Wurster

Yellow Crocus

Staff: Tiffany Ban

Additional Staff Favorites include:

• Laura Kalmanson: Pride & Prejudice
• Sawyer Auer: One Hundred Years of Solitude
• Cat Howell: Residence on Earth

• Denika Set: The Housemaid
• Cory Ihrig Goldhaber: Braiding Sweetgrass
• Stacey Hastings: Little Women

Earth Day Cleanup

Saturday, April 25, 10am-12pm (Magnuson Park, FREE)

Join Puget Soundkeeper in celebrating Earth Month by helping us clean up Magnuson Park. Please park at the E3 Magnuson Park Back-Lot and look for tents, flags, banners, and Puget Soundkeeper staff! Everyone is welcome to join – pets too! Bathrooms, supplies, and snacks will be provided and available. RSVP here!

Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander Heritage Month Celebration

Saturday, May 2, 11am-5pm (Seattle Center, FREE)

Recognizing Seattle's strong ties with Asia and the contributions of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in our region through culturally-influenced music and dance and a celebrity hum bow eating contest. Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander Heritage Month Celebration will take place May 2: 11am-5pm in the Armory Food & Event Hall. The festival is part of the Seattle Center Festál series. It is free and open to the public.

Seattle Center Festál is a year-round series of 25 free cultural festivals, produced in partnership with community organizations. In 2022, Festál celebrated 25 years of stories and traditions, ushering in a new era of hybrid programming. Learn more about Festál and subscribe to the newsletter for updates.

Red May 2026: ICE-Age Policing

Tuesday, May 5, 7:30pm (The Wyncote NW Forum, Town Hall, $10-$35)

Red May, a month-long spree of red arts, red theory, and red politics based in Seattle, Washington, gathers each spring to discuss a world beyond capitalism. For this year’s event at Town Hall Seattle, Red May brings together a panel to discuss policing in the age of ICE.

“Counterinsurgency has come home. Since the end of the Vietnam War, innovations in militarized policing have come one after another. No knock raids. AI surveillance. Clear and hold neighborhoods. Each new tactic or strategy has been rubber-stamped in Congress by both Democrats and Republicans under the guise of a never-ending War on Crime. Now, the Trump administration has fashioned its own masked Gestapo; it has taken an existing organization designed for border control (ICE) and built it into a private army serving at the prerogative of the President, most egregiously for assaults on Democrat-run cities like Portland, and Chicago and the murder of protestors, reclassified as ‘domestic terrorists.’ How did we get here? How do we get out of here?”

Join Red May and a panel of scholars to guide us through the labyrinth.

Our next New Volunteer Orientation (via Zoom) will be on May 6 at either 1pm or 7pm. 

Potential volunteers are invited to register online here. 

Miss any of our past volunteer newsletters? You can access archived newsletters at the bottom of the Volunteer Page of our webpage.