Impact on Student Success
The Library supports children and teens with in-person and virtual programming, including Homework Help, virtual tutoring and other programs. We also work with community partners to distribute books, support teen wellness, and more.
Impact on Student Success 2022
Bringing Homework Help back
- Restarted our free, in-person Homework Help program at six locations in September 2022, focusing on branches in neighborhood with students furthest from educational and social justice.
- Over 290 students attended Homework Help sessions in the fall of 2022, and we planned to expand to eight branches starting in January 2023.
- Continued to offer free, one-on-one virtual tutoring with Tutor.com, which offers live, multilingual tutoring in over 300 subjects, 7 days a week.
- Students participated in over 3,200 virtual tutoring sessions in 2022, and more than 2,000 new accounts were created. 96% of students reported Tutor.com made them more confident in their schoolwork.
- Restarted weekly in-person Kaleidoscope Play and Learn programs at Beacon Hill, Columbia, Lake City, Rainier Beach and South Park branches in collaboration with partners.
Global Reading Challenge
- The Global Reading Challenge, a reading competition for fourth- and fifth-graders from Seattle Public Schools, started 27 years ago with three schools and nine teams.
- In 2021-22, more than 2,900 students from 72 schools across the city competed in the Global Reading Challenge. Thirty-three participating schools were recipients of Title 1 funding for their qualifying low-income students.
- The eight Global Reading Challenge books included two graphic novels and a wide variety of reading levels. We prioritized books centering Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) and LGBTQ+ characters and authors with a personal connection to the material.
- The Global Reading Challenge held two author talks with Seattle Housing Authority and two events with Title 1 schools, and another 11 virtual author talks.
- Distributed around 9,000 Global Reading Challenge paperback books for the competition and an additional 268 as prizes, and 32 audiobooks. More than 5,000 copies of the books were downloaded.
Summer of Learning Superheroes
- With a theme of Superhero Summer, the Library’s 103rd Summer of Learning program offered ways for kids to read, learn, explore and grow all summer. We collaborated with families, youth and the community on an assets-based program that understands and centers their priorities, interests, needs and expertise.
- Distributed over 20,000 Summer of Learning action guides, which included book recommendations, coloring sheets, and 40+ activities.
- The Library partnered with more than 50 community-based organizations to distribute more than 13,000 books to historically underserved youth and families throughout the summer. Books were distributed to youth who are Black, Indigenous, youth of color, insecurely or formerly insecurely housed, or LGBTQ+.
- Over 4,000 books were in languages other than English, including Amharic, Arabic, Chinese, Khmer, Korean, Oromo, Russian, Somali, Spanish, Tagalog, Tigrinya, and Vietnamese.
- Over 600 youth and families attended an end-of-summer celebration at the Burke Museum for Summer of Learning participants.
- Co-designed Summer of Learning with partners, including South End Stories, a trauma-informed, anti-racist arts education program.