"A couple of days later I went into the classroom and spent a whole morning with her trying to help her find a topic to write about. We did an extensive mapping exercise and afterward I handed her all the material and asked her if she felt focused and comfortable enough to write a story. She nodded and went off and ended up writing this amazing piece called, 'Me, My Kids and School'. She was frustrated though because she couldn't quite finish it. I told her to put it away for awhile, that it would finish itself."

A week later (less than 10 days in the classroom) she finished the story. The last line read, 'I'm so glad I have come back to school and it's wonderful here because there is help whenever I need it:

"She went through some difficult adjustments and all that 'dust settling' in a matter of 10 days. Ten 5-hour days works out to about 25 weeks in a once a week in-home tutoring situation. When students are in the classroom it's more like 'literacy immersion'. The dust settling and the learning happens much more quickly and when students start to see success, they're more likely to stick with it."

The Saturday morning cartoons on TV were over and Barbara came bounding up the wooden steps to tell Lorna it was time for her to get ready to go to work. Larna, retired from the literacy coordinator's position, is now the Ft. Vermilion librarian, opening the little building on the Peace River four afternoons a week.

After Lorna left I propped myself up with some pillows on the bed and settled in to do some writing. Barbara's big tabby cat kept my lap warm and I thought how, without any fanfare, Lorna had managed to create a safe haven for me in her log home in Ft. Vermilion.

After a while I joined her down at the library. She was sorting through some boxes of pamphlets she had found. I picked up one entitled, "Books for Gifted Children". Lorna scoffed at the tide. "Aren't all children gifted?" she asked as she threw the whole bunch in the garbage.

Later in the afternoon we sat quietly in the living room chatting about literacy and politics and life in general. I noticed that Lorna uses the word 'student' instead of the word 'learner' when she refers to the adults in literacy programs.

"I really prefer to call the students in literacy- 'students'," Lorna explained, "just as you would students in university. When you stop calling your adult literacy student a student you're saying that he's different from someone at a university or high school or college level and he's not. There is a difference between the role of students and teachers and administrators but in literacy we are all learners."

I told Lorna how often I had heard literacy workers refer to themselves as adult and/or life-long learners.

"I like the whole concept of life-long learning," Loma agreed. "A catch phrase that has been a favourite of mine all my life is 'every man is my teacher in that I learn from him.' I really believe that you can't live in the North if you aren't prepared to learn from others."

"Who has taught you the most in your literacy work?" I asked.

"Oh, the students, of course. They're wonderful teachers," Lorna smiled. Then she added, "To have any credibility to train tutors you have to have been a tutor yourself. I took that seriously even when it was very difficult to find the time. I didn't have any university credits but I received some very good training through the Laubach people. After that I learned almost everything I know from the students I've tutored."

"Nothing takes the place of actually watching a student as they start to move towards literacy. It gives you the absolute certainty that something you can do is making a positive difference in someone else's life and to me that's all of it. I don't want to earn credits for life after this one; I just want to feel good as I move through this life - that maybe I'm making some small difference in the world while I'm here."