Welcoming Falls Church’s Adult Literacy Program Expands to Meet Community Needs

Few community initiatives in the City of Falls Church are as effective and inspiring as the multi-pronged outreach, educational and support programs of Welcoming Falls Church (WFC), a local grassroots, public-private, non-partisan organization of nearly 150 volunteers dedicated to displaying “hospitality toward immigrants and refugees” who’ve come to live in the community. 

Inspired by the “Welcoming America” national movement, WFC volunteers and staffers seek to better integrate and support Greater Falls Church's expanding racially and ethnically diverse population of 90,000, and a City public school system serving students and families who speak as many as 42 languages.

“Our vision is that we – by being intentional, relational, and local – can build a community of neighbors, at a time when we are threatened by division,” WFC’s vision statement proclaims. 

Foremost in the effort to integrate language-learning immigrants to the City is the WFC’s Adult & Family Literacy Center. For this story, The Falls Church Independent sat down over coffee at Godfrey’s to interview the program’s Director, Maria Markus, and volunteer literacy instructor, Ann Niederpruem Anderson. 

We wanted to know more about the program’s scale, funding, and logistics as well as what makes language instruction in the City so inspiring and challenging. 

“Helping new Americans learn English flows naturally from a welcoming spirit while also providing them with the skills they need to integrate fully into our community,” the program’s website says. “We strive to provide a vibrant learning environment where students get to know their neighbors and learn about opportunities that will help them thrive.”

Interview with the Program Director and a Teaching Volunteer

This interview is edited for length and clarity. 

FCI: So, please tell us about your backgrounds and how you got involved with WFC’s Adult & Family Literacy Center.

Maria Markus: I just began as the director in January. This program was really begun by Hannah Jordan. As I understand it, it was kind of one of those lifelong dreams, to set up a literacy center in town and not just serve the adults but their children as well…. And Hannah’s a woman of amazing and fantastic energy. Her background was in education. I only met her through this program.

I began volunteering with Welcoming Falls Church and their Refugees Program and was involved with getting apartments for the refugees we worked with and their families, getting them settled and moved. Then it was through speaking with Christine Buchhulz who was the president of Welcoming Falls Church. She mentioned that Hannah was going to be retiring and they were looking for a new director for the literacy project.... So, I started shadowing Hannah at the Literacy Center last Fall semester to really understand what this was all about.

FCI: And your professional life before?

MM: My professional life was as a Paralegal Litigation Specialist – which is not at all connected to literacy. I actually am not bilingual. [Laughs]. I have a working facility with another language but that’s it. I can stumble through French and a little Italian. The running joke with our students is that, “I will teach you English if you will teach me Spanish.” And then they sit and laugh at me anytime I try to pronounce anything.

FCI: That’s still a great connection.

MM: It’s an ongoing challenge for me and it helps remind me just what they’re up against, right?

Drawing on the Ellis Island Experience

FCI: So what years are we talking about?

MM: I first became aware of Welcoming Falls Church in the fall of 2021 and found out about them at the Fall Festival at their booth. And I actually knew [WFC Co-Founder] Paul [Boesen] because our children also went to school together and we started talking about the needs for the organization when this program came up and it just seemed like it was the right thing for me at the right time.

And it’s something I believe so strongly in because my grandparents were immigrants, so I have a bit of a family ethos for that. They came from Italy. They were actually married in Italy and then moved here. When my grandmother came, she spoke no English whatsoever. They arrived through Ellis Island, the whole 1920s thing, the big Italian immigrant experience.

FCI: Did they keep their name?

MM: Yes, although it was misspelled in different ways at every point along their journey. [Laughs]. And I used to speak with them about that experience. She told me what it was like, sitting at the place at Ellis Island and things. So, that resonated with me.

I certainly don’t think I understand what our students go through in the modern day, but at least it’s a real context and something I feel really strongly about. I think about the fact that at least my grandparents had a brother who lived here, who helped them, and they had a place to stay and a place to go. And back then you had to have a place to go to get into the country. And also in that era there was a certain amount of discrimination and all of that kind of plays into my understanding and my love for this program.

FCI [turns to ANP]: And you’re teaching in the program?

ANP: I am. That’s how I came into the program as a volunteer teacher. That’s my current role. I am not an educator by training or experience. I worked at an investment firm for 35 years. I retired in 2019 and had a few ideas about things I wanted to do, one of which was teaching English. And I connected with the Northern Virginia Literacy Council which is now the English Empowerment Center at James Lee Community Center on Annandale Road.

MM: They’re a big organization.

ANP: Yeah, they have several hundred teachers and hundreds and hundreds of students. And it’s a well-funded organization. But, it’s all volunteer teachers and teaching assistants and some volunteer administrators. And I began working with them in 2020 – not good timing – they actually pivoted to virtual learning quickly so I continued working with them virtually. It was hard  –

FCI: How big were the classes?

ANP: They varied. They may have started with up to 15 students, but not all 15 would come every time. They have childcare responsibilities, they have religious observances, they have other jobs, so it’s hard to get really consistent attendance.

FCI: Did they suffer connectivity issues?

ANP: Sometimes. And often they were [doing class] on their phones. They didn’t have laptops or iPads. So, it was challenging.

MM: Yes, in a classroom setting that’s tough.

ANP: We were using slides.

FCI [Asking MM]: And you were doing this too?

MM: I was not. I didn’t even know Ann back then. 

ANP: So, I carried on in the virtual world until just this past Fall. I continued to volunteer there. Then in early 2022. I ran into Hannah [Jordan] just as we were out walking. And as Maria said, she's passionate and energetic to a degree that most of us could not really sustain.

MM: Absolutely. I told [Hannah Jordan] when I took over that, “I'm committed to making this everything you want it to be. I’m going to do my best. I’m not going to do it the way you do it, but hopefully I’ll be able to maintain and grow it the way you want.” I mean, she’s a powerhouse.

FCI [to ANP]: So you met her on a walk? 

ANP: I met her on a walk. And I’ve known her for many years. But I ran into her while walking and when I told her what I was doing, she said, “Oh!!” And we were off to the races.

So, I started teaching in this program in the Spring of 2022. And that was in-person. I continued with the other program virtually, so I was doing both. And that first semester we had close to 50 students, in three levels. And Hannah’s idea – to go back to what Maria was saying – Hannah thought there was a gap. She was a French teacher at Meridian and was also, I think, involved in the ESOL Program there, but I don’t know that for a fact. And she thought there was a need to connect to the parents of the ESOL students. And there are a lot of them. I think that there are maybe 160 or so parents of ESOL kids. And those parents could benefit from an Adult Literacy Program. And we did outreach through the schools. There were some partnership with the ESOL Programs in the school system –

MM: On average, we get about 60, or a little under 60 students per semester. And then any of their children they want to bring to the program, because many of them don’t have resources for childcare while they go to a two-hour class twice a week. They can’t go if they don’t have coverage for their children.

FCI: So, it’s around 60 divided into 3 classes.

MM: Yes.

FCI: And you have all age levels in the classes?

ANP: It’s just adults, but we have broad age-ranges in the classes. Last year, someone in my class was in his mid-twenties, maybe, and I have a grandma whose kids are at Mt. Daniel, and her kids have been in our program for at least three semesters. So, it’s a broad range.

FCI: So, it’s a free program for them?

ANP: It’s not free. They pay $50 a semester for instruction and then $12 for books.

MM: And there are plenty of scholarships. No one is going to get turned away because they can’t pay the fees. 

So Many Languages Spoken...

FCI: So how many languages have you encountered?

MM: As I dipped into this in January in my very first semester, it’s a two hour session, and in the middle we have a break time, which is helpful, but it serves another purpose. It provides community building and some time together. I don’t know how many languages, exactly, but I know that one of my first things I asked was, “Where are we all from?” And we got 17 countries up on the board. 

FCI: And they range from?

MM [with ANP chiming in]: They range from, well, the majority is Spanish-speaking as you might imagine, but that’s by no means all of them, it’s just more than half. We have China, Ukraine, Russia, Lithuania, Tajikistan, India, Afghanistan – that’s Pashtun, Dari – we have a couple Afghan students. So, that’s a lot of languages. And then if you add in languages like Chinese or Russian where there’s even a different alphabet. And that’s all in one class. I can’t compliment the teachers enough for figuring out how to do classes with that!

ANP: Right. And when you have multi-languages in every class, it’s also a huge range of literacies. We have students who don’t have high levels of literacy in their own language. So, that’s complicating for the teachers. And it’s beginning to necessitate some pull-outs where we can help the students who have low literacy in their own language. 

Training Up Teacher Volunteers

FCI: You alluded to it, but how do you get a volunteer ready to jump into a class like this if they’re not formally trained as a language instructor? What methods have you used?

MM: One of things that happens is some volunteers think they’ll just show up at a class and help out. And that’s lovely. I mean, I love that spirit, and we’ll take it. I interview everybody. I instituted, in January, a process of assigning them for their first couple of weeks to different classrooms. Then I can get feedback from them about their comfort level, their takeaways, and the teachers. Because, we try to assign the aids to the same classrooms, because that familiarity – when the students become comfortable, they engage more. So, you have to kind of mix it all up. We have an orientation that’s sort of the bare bones, where the teachers kind of introduce themselves and talk about expectations in their classes and how they conduct their classes. Every teacher has a different way they come at this.

ANP: And, in terms of instructors, there are just 5 volunteer teachers and one of us is a retired ESOL teacher, so she’s actually very helpful to us all in terms of providing us all with curriculum ideas, ideas for assessing progress, and ideas for engaging students in the classroom when you’re in a multi-language-learner environment. So, the teachers, I think, are reasonably well prepared for this.

MM: Oh, they absolutely are. 

FCI: And is the ESOL specialist from Falls Church?

ANP: She is. Yes.

FCI: So, she’s aware about the ESOL Program in the school system.

MM: Oh yes. She’s retired, but years and years ago she served on the ESOL Advisory Board for the school. So, she knows all about it.

FCI: So, if people were interested in volunteering, what would you say?

MM: I would say, “Yes, please!” [Laughs]. And we’re going to be beginning a summer volunteer push because I think there’s a preconception that if you’re thinking of volunteering at the Literacy Center, the Classroom Aid is not hard to visualize. And if that’s not your thing, it’s easy to dismiss – “Oh, that’s not for me.” – But there are many places where if you can help out from time to time, I can use you. If your strength is really more like, “I don’t want to show up every week, but I like to help from the wings,” then I’ve got something. So, our volunteer push is going to be an effort not just to recruit but to identify choices people could make, because there’s a huge volunteer spirit in this town. 

FCI: So a lot of people say, “I don’t know how to do that, so I can’t volunteer”?

MM: Exactly. What we found was – and, as I said, this was a real trial by fire getting started – was that so many people thought they needed to have been teachers. But as you heard from both Ann and me, we’re not teachers by training.

FCI: But you’re both able to get up in front of a class now?

MM: Yes. Transferable skills. You never know what you’re capable of until you try it.

ANP: We have good resources. We have a good textbook and follow a program called Intercambio, so there are teachers’ guides, listening tapes, and games. So, that helps us plan our sessions.

FCI: So when you think about it, language is passed along naturally without professional teachers all over the world. It’s kind of a natural process, even though in a classroom, it’s got to be very challenging.

ANP: Right. It’s true. It’s very challenging. Yes.

MM: It’s very challenging. 

Class Sizes and Teacher-Student Ratios

FCI: So, class sizes are up to 15?

MM: It’s actually up to 24, when we started. It starts bigger, but typically you lose a few people. But also work schedules, childcare schedules, and just regular life, so I would say, when I did the average over the semester, it was anywhere from 15 or 16 –

FCI: So the teacher-ratio is really good because you’ll have at least one assistant?

ANP: Oh, yes. At least one assistant. Sometimes you’ll have three.

Community-Building

FCI: So people might not be aware how many immigrants living amongst us today don’t have literacy skills. Why is it so important in the community?

MM: I think that’s a great question and there are maybe two ways to answer that. One would be our understanding of non-immigrants as immigrants. They’re coming from everywhere. Some people we registered in January had been here for only 5 days. But, we also have a grandmother who’s lived here for 15 years and she doesn’t speak English. She decided she didn’t need to. But her daughter said, “You need to, you’ve got to sign up!” So, it’s all over the place.

But, I’d say in general – what I keep going back to – is what it took for these people to get into this country, then to find us, then to show up, and to commit to this. This is no small thing with all the other things pulling on them. I mean, culturally, we have students bringing their own culture and we have to be very aware. But our teachers and our aids have to be sensitive to that too. I would say one of the biggest things I’ve seen is the tendency to kind of put them all into one box. But they’re as diverse as any Americans. And across the board, what I’ve seen is a student who’s willing to work two jobs with three kids and come to classes from 6:30-8:30 p.m. twice a week is a committed person and most of our students are underemployed. They have jobs, but they’re not at the skill-level –

FCI: So the literacy training will open doors to jobs and opportunities?

MM: It does, because without being able to express themselves to all of us, we may make assumptions, and they’re not able to reach their full potential.

FCI: So, their employability and their ability to get an apartment or house are all affected.

MM: Exactly. We have students who are engineers in their home countries but who are cleaning houses here. And we’ve all heard stories about doctors who are driving Ubers in D.C. The language piece of it is just so important.

ANP: I think I hear two things consistently from the students when I ask them why they’re here and what they hope to get out of the class. And they want to be employed and get promoted in their work and the other is they’re doing it for their children, so they can talk to their children’s teachers, they can make their doctor’s appointments, they can help them to navigate school and other life events. 

MM: And I would say the uniqueness of Hannah’s program here as she set it up, is we will try address some of that, outside of just learning English and I think that kind of makes us a little different than just, “Go learn some English.”

ANP: Absolutely. It’s been very interesting to see students in the classroom build their own communities. They create WhatsApp groups. This has happened in almost every class I’ve taught. They get together on the weekends. They’ve gone to parks. They’ve gone to museums. They’ve gone for coffee. But, they tell me, anyway, that they’re practicing English, and I think they probably are. [Laughs].

FCI: That’s so great to see the community-building. 

MM: Well, I also think some of my students aren’t able to afford to live in Falls Church City, but they do work here. So kind of making that distinction of whether they live here or not doesn’t really answer the question of whether the City benefits from [the literacy program.] 

ANP: And we can almost quantify to show that what Maria says is right. The benefits to the City of our program.

FCI: Employees are more integrated and on the rise.

MM: If they happen to be working here [Godfrey’s restaurant], they might improve their ability to do service. For the schools, they’re getting a boost from the fact that our students are feeling a little more comfortable going to that meeting with whomever or for whatever. And there’s so much overlap between the communities we serve with our adult classes and the rest of the City. So, I’m always talking with the schools. I’m talking with the Falls Church Education Foundation. There’s all kinds of overlap. 

FCI: So a better integrated community for young people, employees, adults in the community all around?

ANP: That’s right. And I have a couple of examples of that. I was talking with one of the teachers I met at a football game and he asked me what I was doing working in the program. And she said, “Oh, is one of your students so-and-so?” And she was. And she said, [the student] comes to me with questions now and ideas. It was really satisfying to hear that. Another woman in our program is a parent liaison to the ESOL Advisory Committee of FCPS. That could not have happened a few years ago. They might not have had the language skills.

FCI: So that’s a good example of the integration of the community. And you can imagine that not only in the school system but in all the businesses as well.

ANP: That’s right. 

MM: … I had met a person at the library who is a Ukrainian immigrant and she had taken classes at the Literacy Center. And I was in this meeting and she’s telling me about the great benefits. Her son is in law school and she’s so proud. And she was talking about the fact that without that boost to get there, she really did credit the whole English literacy piece to that. When you hear stories like that it’s not something to just throw in a box and say that’s nice. It matters to people’s lives.

How the Program's Funded

FCI: And the Literacy Center is where?

ANP: At Oak Street Elementary. And we should say something about our funding.

MM: We should because we are – just like Welcoming Falls Church – a public/private kind of combo.

ANP: So, FCCPS has been very supportive of the program. They let us use the space at Oak Street. We have classroom space and we have access to a room that they call the Family Resource Center. I think it’s been repurposed now for classrooms. But, they give us quite a lot of space.

FCI: Do you have an office there?

ANP: We don’t.

MM: Basically, we can use their classroom space and also they’ve given us storage space because there are necessarily a certain amount of materials.

FCI: And, If people wanted to find you?

MM: The first reach-out would be email for sure.

ANP: And we hand out flyers in apartment buildings and stores.

MM: Yeah, there’s literally a spreadsheet for how to go about registration and stuff. It’s all over town. We do both an English and Spanish version. It’ll be coming out soon. I wish we could do it in every language. I’m looking, and that’s one of the volunteer issues – I’d like to have a go-to translator for languages. When I said there are little volunteer pieces, that’s one of them. But we do a flyer that’s in English and Spanish.

ANP: And we have some grant money from FCCPS which is great and we have a community service grant from the City and it’s just enough to cover our expenses, which is fine. And we’ve applied for other grants and we’ve got several others.... And, there are also individual donations.

MM: We do get donations. We just got a grant from the American Association of University Women. It’s a small one, but it’s going to help with one of our reading initiatives so we’re very grateful and we’re always looking for more grant opportunities. We have a few more we’ll be applying to in the next few months.

FCI: You’ll be doing fundraisers?

MM: We haven’t done one. Part of it is simply we don’t have the human bodies to do that and do everything else. Again, another piece of the volunteer puzzle, right? Although we’ve done drives in the community for coats in the winter and we’ve done drives for books. 

Providing Family Assistance in Addition to Literacy Training

FCI: You mean Welcoming Falls Church does these drives?

MM: No, the Literacy Center. Before that we had a callout for children’s books and early readers and pencils and markers and crayons and stuff for our Children’s Program. And we got a lot of donations through that. We have an Amazon Wish List that’s going to get re-launched in August…. But at this point we’re so grateful to the schools and the City because they’re the backbone that allows us to continue. And it’s a symbiotic relationship. They’re getting benefits and we’re getting benefits. It’s all part of this community. 

FCI: And your staff is currently 5 volunteer teachers?

MM: Our staff is me as Director, the 5 lead teachers, and they’re all volunteer. And then another 25 volunteers who are in the mix as classroom aids. And then another 10 adult volunteers in the mix for the Children’s Program and then this past year we had another 17 student volunteers from Meridian working on the Children’s Program. So, if you put us all together we’re about at 80-100 at any given time.

FCI: Fantastic. So, it’s pretty wide-scale?

The Children's Program

MM: Well it needs to be. And even with those numbers, let me tell you, I had to cover the Children’s Program up here at night this past semester.

ANP: And the Children’s Program, we call it “CLAP!” It stands for Children’s Literacy Activities Program. So, it’s more than babysitting. It’s meant to be literacy games that help them. It’s for ages 4-12. 

MM: It’s for the children of our students and there’s no charge or anything. And it’s designed to be more than babysitting. But, it’s difficult because you’ve got 4-12 year olds who’ve been in school all day. They might have taken a bus to get here. 

ANP: And, they might not have had dinner.

MM: And it’s 6:30-8:30 p.m. and that’s a long day for a 4-12 year-old. And if they bring homework, we’ll help them with that. But, they’re not going to sit down with a phonics book at 7:30 at night.

So, we’ll play a matching game with a 6-year-old and really emphasize the pronunciation and try to draw out the shy kids who are just not used to speaking English because they don’t think they’re good enough in school. So, we just sort of draw them out so they can have a place where they’re comfortable trying it. So those are big goals for that Children’s Program.

And we’re looking for an adult to be the touchpoint for that position – and it’ll be a paid program, to kind of run that program with me. We can’t do that program without an adult who’s been background-checked and all of that and that’s the hard part. Getting that consistently two nights a week. So, we’re recruiting. It’ll be stipended. 

Gender Balance

FCI: And, is it all women in the classroom?

MM: It’s not 50-50, but it’s probably 60-40. Volunteers is probably more than 60-40 on the women’s side.… But we’re lucky enough to have volunteers who are retired teachers and as you know women tend to be more involved in teaching.

FCI: Those numbers are actually pretty good.

MM: Well, I’m glad you brought it up because it’s important to have not just one gender, especially with various cultures and where that all sits, it’s really important and the connectivity with our students, they need to identify with the people they’re seeing every week if they’re going to really commit to it.

Thankful for the Dedication...

FCI: Anything else you’d like to add?

MM: Well, one thing we haven’t covered is the dedication of these volunteers because the volunteer teachers, they don’t just walk in for two or four hours a week. There’s lesson planning. They have to meet with me. What does the training for volunteers look like? Is this the best book to be using? And that level of commitment is just unbelievable. And even our classroom aids. “Yes, I can do Tuesdays.” And they're there. That’s a level of commitment I don’t take for granted.

They are why this can continue and I just can’t say enough great things about that. So, why did I get involved in this? The people. Everyone’s got this kind of energy and commitment and it’s a real community within a community.

To find out more about the WFC's Adult & Family Literacy Center and opportunities to volunteers or donate, go here.

By Christopher Jones