By Kate Gardiner | Photo by Holly Leitner
Sei Lim spends a lot of her time standing next to her husband, Minyoung Han, the pastor of Elkhorn’s Bethel United Methodist Church, greeting members of her church community. And when she first arrived from South Korea, that posed a significant challenge for her, due to her limited English.
“In my country, I trained as a counselor,” explains Lim. “I would like to train to be a counselor here and go to counseling seminary school, too.” But conversational English — which Lim studied growing up — didn’t come naturally to her, and she ended up standing next to her husband, waiting for him to translate her words to the parishioners she was meeting.
Then one day, a member of the church named Diane Bustamante saw her struggling. “I saw her standing there at church and asked her if she wanted to learn to speak with people [in English],” says Bustamante. The Elkhorn resident is a volunteer tutor with the Walworth County Literacy Council (WCLC), and she knew that the organization could help Lim practice speaking and reading in English. Ultimately, Bustamante took on Lim as one of her own students through the WCLC’s program.
Like Lim, Bustamante grew up speaking a language other than English in her home, and learned English as a second language. She recognizes that many of those who want to learn to speak and read English might not have access to the tools they need to achieve the language skills they need. “With Sei, it’s mostly about confidence, and she’s so much more confident now than when we met,” Bustamante says. “And with many students that’s all it is. But for others, there are achievable goals, like earning a GED or passing the U.S. naturalization test.”
Lim’s journey and desire to learn English is similar to that of many immigrants who come to America for educational opportunities. “We first moved to Evanston for my husband’s schooling, and he still goes to school there in addition to being at the church here in Elkhorn,” Lim explains. “My son is 7 now. He speaks Korean at home and English at school. I would like to keep up with him and my daughter.”
By connecting Lim with the WCLC’s programs, Bustamante opened a new path for Lim to learn and practice her English speaking and reading abilities. At the WCLC, trained volunteer tutors provide individualized one-on-one and small-group instruction to adults throughout Walworth County, both in person at local libraries and through virtual sessions. WCLC offers tutoring tailored to student needs ranging from beginner to advanced ability, and is available free of charge to any adult 18 years of age or older residing in Walworth County.
Lilly Barrett of Williams Bay is the executive director of the 21-year-old organization, which is growing as fast as she can find volunteer tutors like Bustamante. “We have 90 tutors right now,” she said. “But we can always use more.”
While some of the tutors are bilingual like Bustamante, the majority of tutors only speak English. “It’s [actually] better if you don’t speak another language,” explains Bustamante. “That way your student is forced to use English. The curriculum we use is focused on confidence-building, too, so the students come out very eager to use what they’ve learned.”
Elkhorn resident Elisabeth Partyka is a member of the WCLC’s board of directors, as well as a frequent tutor. “I just think education is just so important for people’s well-being and livelihoods, and it’s always been a passion of mine,” she says. “I’m working with a student named Ana right now. She comes from Mexico. We’re working on English as a second language and we’ve been working together since COVID. We are working virtually still because she’s a mother of three, has a husband, has a house and she works two jobs. She works in the restaurant industry as a result of her improved English.”
Executive Director Barrett says Ana’s experience is similar to that of many of the WCLC’s students. “We’re doing a lot on an annual budget of $87,000,” she notes. “We serve approximately 150 adults per year, and their average age is 39. Many of the students are employed but have limited income, working in industries such as hospitality, manufacturing and lawn care.”
“We have lots of students, but we need more funding to continue to expand,” Partyka adds. “We rely on donations and small grants. We’re always in need of more money and volunteers.”
Approximately one-quarter of the WCLC’s current annual operating budget is raised through their annual fundraiser — the Adult Spelling Bee. “The fundraiser is a unique event in the area, for sure,” says Barrett. “We did some research and it’s the most popular way for literacy councils to raise money — and it’s incredibly fun to get dressed up in costumes and spell.”
The event takes place in September and the theme of the most recent Adult Spelling Bee was “Can You Bee A Citizen?”, which emphasized the difficulty many immigrants to the area have gaining citizenship. Participants who answered most of the civics questions correctly “became United States citizens” for the night. English language skills are approximately half of the requirement for passing a citizenship test in the United States; knowledge of U.S. civics is the other half.
More than 160 people filled the ballroom at Lake Lawn Resort last September, raising $25,000 for the council. This year’s Adult Spelling Bee winners were Geneva Family Dentistry’s Dr. Mark Bartosz and Gretchen Witowich (vice president of the Barrett Memorial Library Board of Trustees), with the winning spelling of the word “obsequious”, meaning “obedient or attentive to an excessive or servile degree.” (The trophy is on display at the dentistry office.)
According to the National Literacy Institute, 21 percent of adults, or around 43 million people in the United States were functionally illiterate in 2022. This means that they have difficulty with tasks like comparing and contrasting information, paraphrasing or making low-level inferences. In Walworth County, the WCLC estimates that approximately 1 in 6 adults are categorized as “low literacy” — a statistic which works out to be approximately 15,807 people in Walworth County.
“The past few years, we have experienced a tremendous demand for service,” Barrett says. “We need human resources — staff and volunteers — along with financial support to match the growth which we anticipate will continue for years to come. In the next 18 months, we hope to build capacity so that the WCLC can meet the evergrowing educational needs in our county.”
