Nancy:

" You have to be able to listen to the client and understand, analyze, synthesize and generalize…to act as a bridge from the workplace to essential skills with broad content knowledge and understand how it looks in terms of essential skills programming."

Tracy:

" Whatever you bring with you in your bag is not as important as what you find when you get there and the answer is not in a book."

H. Preparing for the Next Millennium

I asked everyone where workplace educators needed to focus on to be prepared for the new millennium. While some emphasized the need to keep up with technology, labour trends and new approaches in the field, others focused on the need for advocacy. Still others saw the need to keep abreast of new developments in other disciplines.

For those who emphasized technology, it was seen as a way to have greater access to people and resources across the world. It is also seen as a tool for delivering a polished product. Those who emphasized advocacy skills saw the need to be vigilant in promoting a strong worker-centred approach; in supporting and building bridges to the public education system; advocating for funding for workplace projects; and in developing an infrastructure to build support for practitioner training.

Mary Ellen:

"In the future…I think we need lots of entry points for professional development. New people need the basics and more experienced people need to get ideas and practice from outside our field. For myself, I want to continue to be exposed to ideas, practice, theories from fields that converge but come at it from a different viewpoint."