Jacksonville Public Library Blog

Many adult learners in Jacksonville look to the Library for help. When the pandemic forced cancellation of ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) and GED® classes, instructors in the Library’s Center for Adult Learning guided their students to try other online library resources. Stories in this series entitled, “Unintended Consequences of Learning at the Library,” describe some of our successes in light of 2020’s greatest challenge.

When the Jacksonville Public Library shut down in March of 2020 due to the global pandemic, students in our ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Language) classes at JPL's Center for Adult Learning (CAL) were hit especially hard. Fortunately, CAL responded to the disruption soon after the Library began its reopening processes. We launched our pilot Summer Session of ESOL Virtual Classes in August.  Despite the somewhat steep learning curve, CAL staff and its students comfortably navigated this new technology, specifically virtual meetings and Google Classrooms. We believe this is a testament to the connections we made prior to the shutdown and the resiliency displayed by our students.

Human Rights Day is observed every year on December 10 — the day the United Nations General Assembly, in 1948, proclaimed the inalienable rights to which everyone is entitled as a human being and adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The purpose of the document was to create equal opportunities for all - regardless of race, color, religion, sex, language, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status - and to re-build the world through this lens of interconnectedness and shared humanity.

When the Jacksonville Public Library shut down in March of 2020 due to the global pandemic, students in our ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Language) classes at JPL's Center for Adult Learning (CAL) were hit especially hard. Their learning was truncated and more importantly, our students who are adult immigrants were also suddenly separated from friends and teachers they’d come to rely on in a country that was still foreign to them. When CAL launched its pilot Summer Session of ESOL Virtual Classes in August, this critical lifeline was restored, literally and linguistically.