 So actually we we our library is very close to Mountain View and Hilda who's coming from Santa Clara we we Yeah, hey, come on up So we pretty much I mean we really share We're about what three four miles away from both worst kind of stuck in the middle in Sunnyvale And we have sort of the same community and actually in a lot of their pictures. I saw their slide shows Hey, he comes to our ESL group, too. So that's a really really cool thing Okay so Every Friday we have an ESL group and we get about 40 to 60 and sometimes more than 60 every week, which is pretty amazing We started about three years ago and the way we started was sort of the same People kept asking do you have English classes and we were like, oh We knew as librarians we couldn't really teach English English classes. We're not qualified and Sort of around that time. It was about 2010 2009 a lot of the adult education schools Classes were also going under so we actually looked in our We found an ESL teacher at the adult education school and she came in and consulted us We paid her a few hundred dollars of friends funding and she Sort of built a format that we have used the whole time Basically So we took her advice and basically she she started our format and our format is you know, you come into the library Yeah, so people come in they get a name tag and we Every week, so a librarian is in charge of that group. We choose a topic. It could be Halloween It could be Thanksgiving. Don't do the Electoral College. Not fun. I Cannot explain that to you or someone that does a non-native speaker. So Yeah, we choose a topic people come in and we sort of write a paragraph about that topic we do like six vocabulary words and So we invite them in and I think our biggest thing is trying to create a really comfortable warm environment, you know Friendly casual we sign kind of do a set up sort of like this people come in they sit down and Right at 11 o'clock. We introduce ourselves. I'm Rachel the librarian in charge we're gonna talk about Halloween today not the Electoral College and You know, then we say stand up find someone you have never spoken to before and You're gonna talk about and we like write three one-on-one chat questions How long have you been coming to ESL? How long have you lived in the area stuff like that? And we actually encourage them to speak for 15 minutes just kind of one-on-one or two or three to a group and This is really like the best part of the group. They get to actually talk They talk a lot because they're comfortable. They're speaking to someone. That's not a teacher or you know So then Rebring a bell we get everyone back in the room is so loud at that point people are Laughing they are having a ball and it's not as much like I feel like Emily's is maybe more fun Not view because it's like come in it's like this rager party and ours is more ours is more like a cocktail party We're you have to be a little bit proper so So anyone anyway, we we bring the group back and the librarian in charge will like Read over that paragraph and just explain what the topic is about So, you know Halloween and I always try to sneak it like I just did birthdays like two weeks ago And I always try to sneak in like idioms like what's a birthday suit? You know something funny and they're like what that's crazy. You're born in it Don't come to ESL group in that So But um yeah like things like that, you know, you want to create this vibe of fun And then and then we just break up into groups of five or six maybe seven depending on who comes Initially, we really relied heavily on library staff like really we would have five or six library staff members leading these groups and I think over what the last two years we've really recruited a lot of Volunteers to come in so that's been really awesome and I This guy right see it doesn't want to go I have really good pictures but Yeah, I think the most important thing is just encourage people to talk and not I mean another thing that our ESL teacher said don't over don't correct people just create this fun environment It's pretty much it. I think it's one of my favorite things to do every week. So I think you guys should do it, too