"Do you see yourself as a literacy professional?"

"I think that being good at whatever you do makes you a professional," Barb responded, "but I guess I'm not even sure what the word 'professional' really means. Maybe we should look it up in the dictionary."

Barb went into her office and came back thumbing through the pages of the Houghton Mifflin Canadian Dictionary. When she found what she was looking for she read out loud "Professional: a person following a profession; one who earns his livelihood as an athlete (I guess that's not us!); one who has an assured competence in a particular field or occupation."

I asked Barb if she feels that she is "a person following a profession". "First I have to ask myself if literacy work is a profession. I'm not sure it is seen as a profession by others but I think as the issue of literacy becomes bigger and more in the forefront it will become more of a profession. I certainly don't see myself putting in time here for pin money. The literacy coordinator position holds respect in the community; it definitely has a presence."

"What I really think the literacy field needs though is to be more standardized. If we were all doing a similar job in a similar way, it would feel more professional."

"We need to standardize coordinating functions so that if I left the Camrose Adult Read and Write Program I could go to the Wetaskiwin Pal Program and run that without having to reinvent the wheel. We need to have standardized forms for records and reporting. Every year we get the same government form from Community Programs Branch of Advanced Education to fill out but the 70-odd coordinators who receive that form have 100 different ways of recording the information that is needed to fill out that form."

"And there are no written down guidelines about how the grant money we receive (which we get after we fill out the government form) is to be spent. I have some real questions about accountability. The money is to be spent on the literacy program. Period. But one program spends 90% of the grant on salary and the next one pays the coordinator $8.00 an hour. I'm not even sure that our basic philosophies are the same."

Concerned about these questions, Barb has been meeting with other coordinators in the Edmonton area who have begun to put a proposal together to promote the idea of literacy coordinator certification. "Certification would be good because it would give people the opportunity to further their skills. Most of the people who come to this job don't have a lot of teaching experience. They learn a lot on the job but if there was a certification program or a standardized program that they could have access to, they could become more knowledgeable when and if they chose to."

"If I was certified right now and decided to leave the Camrose Adult Read and Write Program I could say that I'm a certified literacy coordinator, just as I am certified as a life skills coach. I'm certified in that area and that can't be taken away. I've reached that level so that if I apply for a job in Calgary I can say I'm certified to be a literacy coordinator, not, 'Well, I've got 3 or 4 years of experience as the coordinator of a literacy project.' For resumes and credibility it's a good idea."

"But I still have some concerns about the idea of certification because it puts literacy work into an academic plane. Some of the coordinators (who are really good coordinators) aren't academics. And it's a time problem. For me to take any course is really difficult because of kids and family. It's 'above and beyond' again; it's that many more hours that I would have to spend away from my home and my work here. And I would also feel really pressured to do it. If a certification program does come about, I would feel that I would have to do it and it's really not something that I have time to do."