"I had a teaching background but I found that it was working with literacy students that really taught me how to teach. Teaching junior high school was like 'crowd control' - teaching came second to discipline. And I always felt like it was 'them and us'. There weren't those kinds of problems with the adult students. It was asking - 'What does this person know and what can we do to start building on the technical reading skills that they have?' and 'How can we identify some starting points for them and develop a program that will meet their needs and keep them interested?' - all this to be accomplished tutoring two nights a week for an hour and a half."

"That sums up what the tutor training came down to. I would have this group of people and say to them, 'Ok, let's be imaginative and try and develop and deliver a program for each student as best we can.' It always impressed me to see the tutors' genuine efforts to carry out my ideas as well as develop their own."

David left the Red Deer program 3 years ago. I asked him if looking back there was anything he would have done differently. "Dealing with the College Administration," he answered without hesitation. "I had to be assertive in negotiating things with the College; I feel much stronger as a person now so I would definitely do things differently."

"I never had any solid sense from the College Administration about how well based our program was. That wasn't a good feeling. I always struggled with being a 'legitimate' program. I worked hard at earning the support of the College - it always seemed that the life of the program rested on a pretty flimsy thread."

"When I look back at it there was a world of difference in attitudes between Red Deer College Administration and John Fisher and Keith Anderson in the provincial government."

"I didn't know John and Keith very well but I always felt that it was heartfelt when they said, 'We know it's tough out there, we're doing what we can'. They were really pretty successful in coming up with a lot of money and a lot of good ideas and putting energy into making things happen."

"When Don Snow came along he was a big shift from the frustrating interactions I had had with Administration. Unfortunately, it took me awhile to lose the almost paranoid and negative feeling I had about working with an Administration that didn't really seem to care about the literacy program."

I had one last question for David. I wanted to know what values or learning he had brought with him from his literacy work to the counselling work he hopes to do when he completes his studies at the University. "Somewhere along the line", he said thinking a moment, "I lost the connection between working for satisfaction and working to make money. I think (given my present circumstances as a starving student) I need to recover the desire to go out there and earn money! I entered that mode of 'work for satisfaction' during my literacy work and I haven't quite gotten out of it."

"But I don't regret it. The richness is what we experience everyday in our lives; it's not the balance in your chequebook at the end of the month or at the end of your life. A lot of my values were deepened in my experience with literacy. I know now more than ever that people's life experiences are a tremendously valuable asset and deserve to be valued and validated. Working in literacy was real enjoyment; it wasn't frivolous. I learned that I like being deeply connected with other human beings."