I asked Arlene why she volunteered in the first place. She smiled and explained, "Well, I am a teacher. After substituting in the school system for awhile I started to look for something else but I didn't really know what else I wanted to do. My world at that point didn't include people from other countries so it appealed to me to work with ESL students and I was also interested to see if I could work with adults.

"I knew that I would need at least a Master's Degree to work in a college setting with adult students so this was an opportunity for me to explore a new area. I didn't know if it would lead to anything but I found very quickly that I just loved the friendships that developed with the students and the staff here. My students still come back, everyone of them, just to say hello now and again."

Another paid tutor with The Reading Network is a wonderfully gentle and patient woman from the Philippines. AIDA GREIG received her training as a teacher in the Philippines but took her first teaching job in Canada. It wasn't anything like she had expected.

"I thought I was coming to heaven when I came to Canada. All the pictures and travel brochures I had seen were so beautiful. And when I got to Vancouver I thought for sure I was in heaven. Then I went to Fort St. John."

"I was hired by the Fort St. John School Division to teach in a two-room schoolhouse in Montney, a tiny farming community 30 km north of Fort St. John. The school was on the top of a hill. A half-mile down the road was a little store and post office, and there was a community hall but that was all. I had 38 students in Grades 1 to 4. I lived alone in a teacherage and was very lonesome there. The only light at night was far away in the distance and the coyotes howled and really scared me at first."

"The only running water available was in the school so I had to carry buckets of water from the school to fill an old barrel on the front porch of the teacherage. This was in 1968. That winter it went down to -60 degrees Celsius and by the beginning of October, I had to chip away at the ice in the barrel just to be able to get enough water to wash my face. The bathtub was one of those old fashioned metal ones that I had to fill myself with water from the stove and the toilet was a little pot in a room as big as a cupboard. Oh, I hated having to dump that pot outside!"

"The heater for the teacherage was a big unit in the middle of the floor, but it didn't keep the old house warm. I would wake up in the morning and my comforter would be frozen to the wall. I never got any sleep because I was so cold. I really started to be afraid for my life."

Aida had been told by the school board in Fort Sr. John that there would be a house for her in Montney with all the amenities. She eventually demanded to see the superintendent ("I literally forced my way into his office!") to let him know that if her living conditions did not improve she would have to resign. "I told him, 'I want to be a successful teacher, I wane to do the best for the children but I will not stay here and freeze to death!' He had never seen the teacherage so when he finally came to see where I lived, he was appalled. But still nothing happened. Finally I threatened to take the school board to court if they did not uphold their end of the bargain. Two weeks later construction started for a new teacherage."

Aida stayed in Monrney for 2 years. She married a Canadian man who is also a teacher and settled in Fort St. John where she taught school for 15 years. She and her husband and two children moved to Grande Prairie 5 years ago. Aida volunteered with The Reading . Network almost right away, and was hired shortly afterward as a paid tutor to work one-to-one with 18 different special needs students. When I asked Aida if she ever gets discouraged she shook her head and said, "Oh no, because I really love to teach. Other than being a mother to my two children, it's all I really know how to do."