This is a series about efforts to improve literacy in Floyd County. National Literacy Day is today.

Around the world today, students and educators are celebrating the great achievement of learning to read and write for International Literacy Day.

But for those who continue to struggle to achieve understanding of the written word, today is just another day working with tutors and teachers to gain needed skills for the modern workforce.

Students like Claude Weatherby come in twice a week at the Language and Literacy Center at the Rome-Floyd County Library to learn skills they missed out on learning long ago.

“I learned how to work and not how to read,” Weatherby said. “So I beat myself out of some opportunities over the years.”

Weatherby, who decided to come to the program because he couldn’t read signs, said the program has been a big help.

“It has meant a lot to me,” he said. “I couldn’t read at all; now I can read, and I understand what I read.”

But for the 50 matched students and volunteers at the center, the work only begins once a student realizes they need help.

“Some of our students come from referral, while others come from the Adult Education Center,” said Barbara Raybon, volunteer coordinator for the center. “But some come through the doors because of word of mouth that we can help them.”

That help includes everything from learning the basics of the alphabet to helping tutor someone for the GED testing done at Georgia Northwestern Technical College.

But then there are students like Myung Sook Yoo, who moved to the United States last year when her daughter came to study at the University of Georgia. Without any English language skills, she found herself in need of help. The Language and Literacy Center filled in that gap.

“I thought this program is a very important way to make the rest of my life easier,” Yoo said. “Everything is easier now, because I can speak, read and write in English.”

The confidence she’s gained from the center comes from not just the hard work of the volunteers, but from the students like Yoo as well.

“(The center) helps on different levels because people come in with all different levels of education and background from all different countries,” said Cathy Mitchell, the ESL coordinator for the center. “Some come in and don’t speak a word of English but can read and write, some come in speaking beautifully.”

Before the end of the latest quarter of instruction at the center, Mitchell said there were about 140 students learning English as a second language in the classroom environment.

“The number of students varies, because you never know how many students will walk through here,” Raybon said.

None of this would be possible without the support of the library. Providing the center with everything from the power they need for computers to phone lines and the classroom space, the library’s role in improving Floyd County’s literacy rate is one of the most important parts of the whole project.

According to library director Susan Cooley, the program wouldn’t work at all if patrons weren’t also acting as tutors.

“People who have been coming to the library for years volunteer, and Barbara has done a great job of recruiting for it,” Cooley said.

Cooley also said she felt encouraged by the progress being made to help those students who need it the most, and the library will continue to provide the materials for the ESL classes in the hope of generating new patrons.

“They actually teach all of those students how to use the library, because a lot of them have not been to the library in their country before — so it’s mutually beneficial,” she said.

Cooley added that Raybon and Cathy Mitchell, the ESL coordinator for the center, are the two who make the program work the most.

“(They are) the best employees that we’ve ever had from Georgia Northwestern,” Cooley said. “They nurture the students and they keep coming back and back.”