Shared Literacies Blog

Tuesday, November 18th, 2025. 7:30pm
Reserve your seats now on the Tampa Theatre website

Hillsborough Literacy Council is presenting a free film screening at Tampa Theatre.

Join Tampa Theatre and the Hillsborough Literacy Council for an evening of film and conversation exploring a quiet problem that impacts the lives of children and adults across the country.

From Emmy-Award^® winning director Nick Nanton comes an eye-opening new documentary, The Truth About Reading. Literacy experts from across America, including Emily Hanford of Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong and Lacey Robinson of UnboundEd, emphasize the gravity of the illiteracy crisis and share how the implementation of science and evidence-based practices can transform lives and ensure that every child learns how to read.

The documentary highlights the stories of David Chalk and John Corcoran, two men who didn’t learn how to read and write until they were adults. Following their stories gives a glimpse into the hard truth of how illiteracy and sub-literacy impede a person’s ability to truly thrive. While the film illustrates the painful reality of life for individuals impacted by illiteracy, it also reminds viewers that the issue is not one that affects just a few struggling readers, but one that affects countless children and adults and weakens the very fabric of our society.

Filled with powerful emotion, a deep sense of urgency, and an overarching spirit of hope, The Truth About Reading brings light to a hidden crisis and compels audiences to take action to end illiteracy once and for all.

Guests are encouraged to stay after the film for a panel discussion and audience Q&A with members of the Hillsborough Literacy Council.

Tickets for this special screening are FREE, courtesy of the Hillsborough Literacy Council. RSVP is required by clicking this show time.

The Hillsborough Literacy Council is pleased to announce that starting in March, 2021 we will be beginning individual tutoring online. These online services will help reinvigorate our tutoring programs while we await our ability to conduct tutoring sessions in the library branches. We are very excited about these new tutoring sessions for multiple reasons. Of course, they resume the services that many residents of Hillsborough County desperately need; and furthermore, online tutoring also alleviates other issues that many of our tutors and students encounter, and which have blocked many people from getting a tutor in a timely manner. The main challenges are conflicts in student or tutor schedules, lack of transportation, being located too far from a library branch, or lack of child care for students. Online tutoring can solve all of those problems as well as keep people safe during the pandemic.  

We are aware that there are some technical challenges to getting all of our students tutored online, as well as the challenge of getting people with limited reading ability to have digital access, but we are already working to resolve those issues. 

The student and tutor matching process will proceed as it had in the past, with some modifications. Tutors will take a new training to get acquainted with the online tools we will be using. After the training they will be eligible for a student match. We encourage everyone who is interested in tutoring online, either tutors or students, to contact the Literacy office so that we can be sure to get you signed up. 

Email: adultliteracy@hillsboroughcounty.org 
Phone: 813-273-3650 

As you all know, the services of the Hillsborough Literacy Council have been disrupted for the past number of months due to the Covid pandemic. Since we rely heavily on the library for our tutoring space, and since the libraries have been closed since March, we were not able to continue with our normal mode of service. Although the libraries are reopening soon, study rooms will remain closed, and we will not be able to resume our typical mode of operations in the near future. Therefore we are taking steps to move our operations online for now. We have begun by offering online Conversation Corners nearly every day, and sometimes twice a day. Please look here for the schedule. We are also working on getting some other digital learning tools up and running. People will be able to access these tools on their phones, no matter what type of phone. Keep an eye out for that in the next few weeks.

Once we and our tutors have some experience working online under our belts, and once we have some lesson plans and materials for  an online format, we will begin offering one-on-one online tutoring. We hope to have these services all running fully by January.

I would like to note that during the Covid pandemic, the two members of the Literacy Department are often called to provide emergency services to the county as part of our duties, which has divided our attention; however, we are working to get the Hillsborough Literacy Council running at full steam as quickly as possible. We appreciate your patience.

Many of you may be wondering if the library has other ways people can improve their English and Literacy skills from home, especially during these times of social distancing. If you don’t know about your free access to Mango with your library card by now, I would be shocked. We promote that wonderful product everywhere we go. However, we do offer more than that for online use. Much more, in fact. Fortunately, our amazing Melissa Nye has made a video with our great Matthew David that shows you how you can use several other online library resources to pursue language learning goals. The video is called Learn English with the Library and not only does it cover language learning resources, some of these resources can help you improve your writing skills even if you are a native English speaker. For example, we can help those of you who need more help getting your writing up to a higher academic level. Oh, and there are great international movies to watch and so many options that I simply have to recommend that you check out the whole video here.  

Thank you for watching! I know you will find ways to carry on your educational adventure until we can meet in person once more.