We were in a small unheated room with rough white walls, no windows, and a single bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling. A plank of wood on trestles served as a table and narrower boards were unsteadily balanced on blocks to serve as benches. It was a literacy class for North African migrant workers in Aix-en-Provence in Southern France organized by a group of French leftist students. Although I never joined their political organization, they accepted me as volunteer in that class. We hunched around the table together, each working with one Tunisian man, trying to teach them to read in French from a children's book.

It was 1970 and I was a college student at the time, spending my third year in France. My major was comparative literature and I had no idea what I would do when I graduated. While I was in France, I was required only to enroll at the university and to write a long paper on a topic of my choosing. I decided to write about immigrant workers in France. Possibly this subject was of interest to me because my own parents had come to the United States from two different countries and I had traveled to England and France to study. I had never felt any national identity myself, and I developed an interest in issues of migration and identity.

I learned a lot about the position of immigrant workers in Europe that year from my readings, from my volunteer tutoring, from volunteer work I did with immigrant children with a Catholic organization, and by meeting a number of immigrant workers and students in Aix. I was shocked at the conditions in which immigrants in France lived and worked and at the lives most of them led separated from their families. I have continued to be interested in the sense of belonging or not belonging: moving from one nation to another or moving from one class position to another.

That year helped me decide my vocation in life. After I graduated, I went on to get a degree in teaching and found out how much there was to learn about teaching reading! I realized how much better I could have done in France if I had had some training. I did some more volunteer work with adults in Cambridge and my decision to stay in adult education was confirmed. However, it took me three years of working in public schools before I had enough money saved to take the leap to insecure part-time employment. My first ABE teaching job paid only $3.50 an hour.

I stay in ABE because of my love of teaching, my interest in issues of identity, of equity, and of power and powerlessness, and also because it is a way to work with such a rich variety of people-practitioners and students. Everyone has a story to share. Classes are a mingling of people from so many backgrounds, and they help us see the possibilities for intercultural understanding. Working in ABE is the contribution I feel I can make to building respect and opportunities for all kinds of people.

Mina Reddy is the Director of SABES, the System for Adult Basic Education Support. She can be reached at: mreddy@worlded.org