It seemed appropriate, as part of this report, to put a human face on the concept of providing support to tutors and students. These are a few of many examples of how our extra efforts in the support area have made a difference to the quality of the learning experience for both volunteers and students. We know that other literacy co-ordinators will have many similar stories to tell. We hope that this written record of our stories will validate the experiences of literacy workers across the province as they work— often in underpaid and undervalued circumstances—to provide a high quality program for their students and tutors.

Pseudonyms have been used in all of the case studies to protect the identities of the people involved.

John Drops Out

John had been a student in our program for two years and had experienced many ups and downs. He had a good job in the trades, but he felt he got little support in his efforts to upgrade his literacy skills either from work or from home. He was frustrated at his inability to get a promotion when others with less technical ability were being promoted. He came to his tutoring regularly but rarely found time to do any work between sessions. He often questioned whether he was just wasting his tutor's time.

A number of small incidents brought John to the point where he felt he was making no progress, that he never would make progress and that he may as well just quit. And he did quit.

Staff members each talked to him in turn and pointed out areas where he had improved, but to no avail. A couple of weeks after he'd quit, we encouraged him to come in for a re-assessment in order to measure progress more accurately. This was a bit of a gamble on our part since we had no guarantee that his scores on an informal reading inventory would in fact have improved. But we felt strongly that John needed some concrete proof of his progress if he was not to succumb to failure once again.