Cheryl was meeting that afternoon with her Advisory Committee and had the agenda and all the material she needed for the meeting in a pile on the corner of her desk. "If you knew who was on my Advisory Committee," she said, "you'd understand a lot about this community and about the kind of support I have. There's a school board member, a learner, two tutors who are currently working with learners, the past coordinator of the program and another tutor who is the Chairman of the Further Education Council. Whenever I ask for help, they always do whatever they can."

Our hour passed quickly. Before I left, I double-checked with Cheryl that she was feeling well-connected to the network of literacy support outside of her own community. She assured me that she was fine; the other coordinators in her area had been really helpful and she was looking forward to meeting more people at the upcoming Literacy Conference in Edmonton. We would see each other again there.

Our last stop was Westlock. The flight from Barrhead to Westlock was 20 minutes or so and it seemed like we were barely in the air before we began our descent. This time we were met by CAROLYN STOCKDALE.

I had met Carolyn, an intelligent and articulate woman in her early 30's about a year earlier at an LCA meeting in Edmonton. We didn't have much of a chance to talk then so I was very much looking forward to the opportunity to talk one-to-one with her now. The office of the Each One Teach One Program, of which Carolyn is the coordinator, is in a new elementary school being built in Westlock. We walked through some of the areas still under construction to a sunny corner of the building where Carolyn shares office space with the Further Education Coordinator. She turned her office over to Pat and two tutors while we made some space for ourselves in the Further Ed. office.

"What would you like to talk about?" Carolyn asked me directly.

"Everything and anything!" I said, "But let's start with how you got started in this field."

Carolyn sat quietly for a minute. "I grew up on a farm and didn't want to ever live in a small place again," she began. "So when we moved to Westlock from Edmonton I thought, 'This is a make or break situation for me.' For the first 6 months, I was wondering which way I was going to go and then I decided I was going to make it. At about that time, I put my name in to be a volunteer tutor. Nine months later I was matched with a student."

"The student was quite difficult. Ted Snow, the Further Education Coordinator, was impressed with my creative approaches to working with the student and after 4 weeks of tutoring, offered me the job of literacy coordinator!"

"I was really flummoxed by Ted's offer. To me, the scariest part of the job was the idea of going off to conferences and being away from home. And the fact that I wasn't a teacher. I have two degrees, a general B.A. and a Bachelor of Religious Education so I am educated but neither of my degrees have anything to do with this field. And I'm awful at grammar myself so I thought, 'How am I supposed to help tutors?' Finally, I decided to take the job."

With Cheryl's account of being new to the job still on my mind, I asked Carolyn to tell me what starting out had been like for her. "After about 4 months of feeling swamped and thinking, 'I was insane to take this job', I came to the surface again and realized I was going to be alright. And then at about 6 months, I burned out."