I found DONNA GRUTTER's office just inside the front doors of South School in what used to be the school gymnasium. The old gym floor has been recovered with carpet but one wall of the gym is still lined with a series of climbing bars and ladders. Donna facetiously told me that the "monkey bars" provide great exercise for when the going gets tough.

Donna described for me what she calls a "typical day", "I never know when I walk in this door in the morning what the day's going to bring. Some people have jobs that are predictable; they know exactly what they're going to be doing at 9:00 and at 10 past 11:00, whereas I have no idea."

"I don't know who's going to walk through the door. I've got a student registered in the program who murdered his wife and I have a man in a three-piece suit who makes $120,000 a year who carries his literacy workbooks to his tutoring sessions in an expensive leather brief-case. You can go from the sublime to the ridiculous, all in one day."

"But I really love it just for those reasons. This job really has it all - the contact with people of ALL sorts, public relations, teaching, counselling, administration, entertaining, appearing before TV cameras, marketing, publicity, fundraising and promotion of the program. I never dreamed when I came to this job that I'd be doing all these things. I thought that my teaching skills would be the most useful but they're probably the skills I use the least."

Donna was an ESL classroom instructor for 8 years before she became the literacy coordinator and was an elementary school teacher before that. She was working in South School teaching ESL when David Thompson was the coordinator of the literacy program and "just fell comfortably into the job when David left."

The corner of the gym is a walled-in room which serves as Donna's office. The rest of the gym is set up as a resource library and a learning centre. Diane Jackson, the program secretary who has worked with the program for 5 years, also has her desk close to the resources so that she can help tutors and students with their questions. There is a window cut into one of the walls of Donna's office which allows her to see what is going on in the open area. When I met with Donna in her office there were four student/tutor pairs sitting together at work tables.

"The College requires that all the students and tutors meet on site," Donna explained to me as I looked through the window. "It's mostly for liability reasons. If you're registered with the program you have to meet here. We have made some exceptions where pairs can meet in a public building like the library but most work here."

"I like it because I know exactly who's been here. If at the end of the month I've noticed that a pair hasn't been here much I can call and find out what's happening. I never go very long without hearing from a pair. I have a list of pairs at the beginning of each month and I know that everyone of those pairs is actively working together."

"The only frustration is that planning and keeping records of who is coming when takes a lot of time. And often the tutors want to talk and visit. They depend more on you when you're here like this. Some will take 15 minutes to say hello and another 15 minutes to say goodbye at the end of the tutoring session. But that's OK with me because I like feeling closer to the students and tutors; it just takes extra time."