Fran acknowledged that her students value writing skills and want to be better writers, but at the same time, she has seen her students struggle without showing significant progress or improvement in the development of their literacy skills. She recalled a student who identified her strengths as a learner only with her ability to do well on a weekly spelling dictation.

She just kills herself with her attempt to learn spelling and dictation. She kind of goes bananas over it. She focuses on that endlessly. That's come to represent her failure completely.

In this student's view of herself, her ability as a good speller was synonymous with her perception of her overall intelligence. Fran explained how she attempted to untangle this damaging relationship by pointing out the student's numerous strengths, which were demonstrated regularly in the coffee shop. She admitted that she faced an uphill battle in trying to convince the student that her achievements in other areas of learning outweighed her ability to spell correctly.

Stacey, like the above student, also identified herself and her self–worth with her literacy skill achievements. Despite being in the program for many years, Stacey felt she would never reach a point at which she could feel satisfied with her literacy abilities. She explained how she saw herself as a literacy learner for life.

Nobody try like me. I'm the best trying, but it's still hard you know. It's hard… I'm [too] old to learn. That's why I have to say I have to keep learning, keep trying. Keep active, do lots [of] things until the end.

More than the other students, Stacey placed a strong emphasis on the value of the learning that occurred in the classroom above all other settings. She explained that she felt she was missing important classroom learning time while on her placement. She said, "I missing like English words, like the reading is important for me. I learn to spell the word that I need very much." She went on to explain that she needed to learn to read food labels and ingredient lists so she could know if there were ingredients in the product that could cause an allergic reaction. This task is important, she added, for her own knowledge and her placement in the bakery department at a grocery store. She explained that the only way she felt that she could learn this information was in the classroom, and not on her job placement where she was surrounded by food labels.