This project was helpful in exploring the complexities, possibilities, and limitations of hearing or reading any learner’s story in my role as a literacy practitioner. The trick is to create a bridge between my world and the learner’s world, a safe meeting place out there in the open middle of the bridge, with neither of us completely transparent about our learning needs and goals. Both of us, in that moment and however many other moments and meetings we have, come with learning needs and goals.  I see that more clearly now.

The times we spent building a space we could tease out our own experiences, helped me to articulate in various ways, what happens to me on that bridge. When I relate with a learner, I am always challenged by my own principles to be humble, respectful, present, attentive and to some degree non-judgemental when I hear or read learners' stories. I think what always happens though is one part of me, as a paid worker bound by professional ethics, keeps my mind open to things like sentence structure, punctuation, grammar, etc., looking for the gaps in skills and knowledge either of us needs, relating everything to the 'learning plan' or stated goals, and another part my - my heart - is open in a detached sort of way in order to maintain some distance between us in our roles as worker and learner, to things like the similarities and differences between our personal experiences and discerning if and how that is/can be relevant in the 'here and now' of the space we're standing in - out there in the middle of the bridge.