It was really important to me that this book be written. The fact that it has been written proves that others thought it was important too.
In the fall of 1986 I was hired as the coordinator of the new Camrose Adult Read and Write Program. There were about 25 other community based volunteer tutor literacy programs in Alberta with a similar mandate - to offer literacy programming to adults who wished to improve their literacy (writing, reading, speaking and numeracy) skills. I was contracted to work 20 hours a week for $9.00 an hour. I had a $12,000 budget from the Department of Advanced Education and a few pieces of donated furniture with which to get started. It was my responsibility to find and set up an office space, recruit and train volunteers to tutor adult literacy students, assess and match students with tutors, keep records and raise awareness about the program and the issues of illiteracy within the community.
The field of adult literacy was new to me (so new in fact that 6 months before I was hired I turned down an opportunity to sit on the Camrose Literacy Advisory Committee because I thought the invitation was for a church "liturgy" committee). My second week on the job I received a phone call from a woman in a nearby community who, relieved to finally talk to someone about the fact that she couldn't read, said, "I'm 67 years old and I've never read a book and I've never written a letter and I don't want to die before I learn how." I remember hanging up the phone and cradling my head in my hands thinking dismally, 'What do I really know about teaching someone else how to read?' I didn't have a teaching background and I had been out of the workforce for 6 years raising my two boys but I was deeply interested in literacy and very quickly became absorbed in my work. What I didn't know academically I tried to make up for in enthusiasm and hope. And I had a lot of help.
Friends, family and volunteers from the community cleaned and painted my office and donated plants, furniture and books. My advisory committee met with me regularly and delighted in each forward step we took in establishing the Program. The local papers ran stories about illiteracy and people were ready to volunteer their time to tutor well before students began to register with the Program. Our goal was to have 10 students working with 10 tutors by the end of the first year. We tripled those expectations.
The Camrose community was open-armed in their support to me and to the Program. But in many ways, I was still on my own. Nothing I experienced or learned about literacy was "by the book". I did a talk about literacy for a women's church group in a small community outside of Camrose shortly after I was hired and still getting my feet wet, told the group (following government guidelines) that anyone with less than a Grade 9 education was "functionally illiterate". I was quickly brought to task by the group because of the 8 women present at the meeting only one had attended school past Grade 9 and not one felt that she was "illiterate". It was on that night that I began to understand and respect how personal yet complicated the idea of literacy is.
The strongest and most valuable support I received for the work I was trying to do was from other literacy workers in the province who were dealing with similar joys and frustrations as they faced the challenges of their own literacy work. The literacy coordinators in Leduc and Red Deer (the two closest communities to Camrose which also had literacy programs) took me under their wings. They were always ready to answer my questions, provided me with good ideas and made me laugh. Knowing that I wasn't alone made the rough times more bearable and the good times even better.