Jan leaned forward, looked directly at me and said, "Sometimes my students come to me and say, 'I don't know how to write a story; I can't do it', and I say to them, 'That's OK, you just can't do it yet. '"

"Maybe you don't know how to write a book yet but you'll learn. You'll have to learn as you go, the way we learn everything in literacy. Getting started is the hardest part. The rest is pure adventure. "

One of the first things I learned as a literacy coordinator in Camrose was not to be afraid to reach out and ask for help. When anything went wrong (or even went right) the first person I called was VELEN MEUN.

Velen was first a tutor then the coordinator of the Leduc Adult Literacy Program. Leduc is 75 km northwest of Camrose, which meant Velen was my nearest "literacy neighbour". For 2 years we shared in the joys and frustrations of the job. When Velen left her literacy position to return to school, we continued to keep in touch.

On one of the occasions when we got together, I asked Velen about her experience as a literacy coordinator. She was full of respect and admiration for the students and the different people she had met through the Leduc program. "It was the courage and strength the students demonstrated in their desire to learn to read," Velen said thinking back, "that helped give me the courage and strength to make some major changes in my own life. They were a big part of my decision to go back to school."

The decision to return to school had been a tough one for Velen. There were big changes and big risks involved. "It was really intimidating for me," she said honestly. "I had been out of school for 20 years and I didn't know if I could do it. I hadn't liked school much when I was a kid; it wasn't a happy time or a happy place for me. After I got my high school diploma I basically made a promise to myself that I'd never put myself in a situation like that again."

"And I was really afraid of failure. I was still caught up in thinking that failure was a personal thing, not part of an ongoing learning process. Now I know that failure often leads to the openings of windows and doors that never would have been opened before, to opportunities that never would have been there if things had gone smoothly."

I remembered Velen telling me once how she felt the same disbelief at the pleasure she experienced when she started to relax and enjoy her learning that the students in her literacy program had talked about. "It was wonderful that I could bring all my knowledge as a person in the world to my learning situation. Using what I already knew - my world reactions, my life history, my own experiences - really helped to make sense out of what I was learning. I was surprised and excited by that. The fact that my marks were good was even more surprising!"

"The students used to say things like, 'I'm learning, but I can't quite believe it' or 'This is supposed to be hard. It was always so hard for me in school, how come I can understand it now?' Realizing that you can learn is really quite magical."

In our first year as coordinators, Velen and I had often talked about our feelings of inadequacy, of being overwhelmed by the responsibilities of the job. "I was always very aware of how unskilled and untrained I was for the position I was in. I was fine as a tutor but when I was hired to train volunteer tutors to be able to teach adults how to read, I was out of my comfort zone; I felt like a fraud. What did I really know about teaching reading? I actually felt great relief when I resigned from my position because I didn't have to deal anymore with the expectations of being what I wasn't properly trained to be."