By Jacinda Hall
With shelves upon shelves of books and other resources, libraries can be an inviting place for those who already love to read.
But what about those who don’t feel as confident about their reading skills?
To help adults looking to build their skills, the Wichita Public Library is now offering a class to help teach the basics of reading.
The class, “Reading Basics for Adults,” is being taught by Wichita Public Library Adult Literacies Manager, Steven Kelly. The next session of the course is scheduled for Sept. 21 at the Walters Branch Library. More sessions will be offered once a month throughout 2026.
Kelly started the class as a way to raise awareness about literacy struggles and let people know that the Library has something for everyone, even for adults.
“I have a lot of ideas and dreams about how to expand what this reading basics for adults course is,” Kelly said. “But for right now, we’re focused on trying to reach people and help them understand that, A, reading is hard, B, that it’s a science, there’s a methodology to learning how to read, that it’s worth the hard work, for sure, in terms of both practical needs but also in terms of finding joy and pleasure in life.”
But there’s also the goal of making the library an accessible resource for more people in our community. “No matter what your reading level is or your skills,” Kelly said, “ the library has something for you.”
Using the library isn’t limited to checking out serious books for adults. Kelly said people might use to library to check out a kids’ picture book, audiobook, or a movie on the library’s streaming service, Kanopy.
“We just want people to know that the library has got their back, regardless of where they are in their reading journey,” Kelly said.
The class was initially offered every quarter, but Kelly made the move to offer it every month instead and the format will be the same as of right now but he hopes to gain a little bit more momentum for the program and expand it.
“I always want to drive those lessons home because there might be new people who come, who might not have gotten those lessons,” Kelly said. “Part of the ways in which I look forward to expanding it is to start doing some basic reading lessons. I’m talking about lessons about phonics, lessons about the reasons and the history for why some English words are so weird and trying to demystify some of the strange things about English.”
According to Kelly, attendance for the course has been low with no more than a handful of people attending over several sessions.
“There’s a built-in disadvantage to reach people struggling with reading, since we advertise almost wholly through print,” Kelly said in an email. “I’m hoping word-of-mouth help and [we] do our best to reach those who are already fully literate but who may know some folks who are struggling and can connect them with our resources.”
Kelly plans to help those attending practice reading skills and then possibly adding some more advanced methods for how to improve the speed of reading and different strategies for finding and using books in different ways.
“There’s a wide range of ways in which it could happen and develop,” Kelly said. “We’re just trying to see what sticks so far with what people’s needs are.”
One thing Kelly wants people to know is that the class isn’t just for those who struggle with reading. It’s also for those who may know someone who is struggling.
“I think we all probably know somebody in our life who doesn’t like reading and part of that might be because it’s hard for them. They struggle with it, they might feel a sense of shame or embarrassment about not being able to read,” Kelly said. “It’s really difficult to connect with those people with a library for a number of reasons, so if we can reach those people who are that middle person in between those who are very literate and those who are illiterate or functionally illiterate, they can help us help them.”
Jacinda Hall is a Wichita freelance writer. She was the summer 2025 intern for the Wichita Journalism Collaborative.
