In the winter of 1972, I was an M.A. student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. I took a course in which a masters and a doctoral student would team up to do a research project. My partner, Robby Fried, wanted to do a research project at the Cambridge Community Learning Center (CLC). We went to a meeting there and met a pretty skeptical reception. One of the CLC staff asked, "What can you do for us?" I responded, "I can teach math." Sally Waldron, a CLC math teacher at the time, then asked when I could start. A few weeks later I was teaching math as a volunteer two nights a week, sharing students with Margie Jacobs, who taught the other four GED subjects. A few months after graduation, I got a part-time job teaching math two nights a week at the CLC, while my two other jobs were teaching day care in the morning, and making ice cream at Steve's Ice Cream.

A few months after that, Rita deLeo, the then-state director of adult basic education in Massachusetts, was given a grant to start an Adult Learning Center in Somerville. She approached Somerville teaching staff, trying to convince them to work in this new program. My girl friend, later my first wife, an elementary school librarian, overheard Rita and got me an interview. I was hired as one of the original full-time staff at SCALE, stayed there for 19 years, and never left adult basic education.

Kenny Tamarkin, who does not like the term "Computer Field Technologist," is the technology coordinator at Northeast SABES. After leaving SCALE, he worked as a GED teacher at the Lawrence Workers Assistance Center and at Malden Mills. He is the author of Number Power 6, now in its third printing from Contemporary Books. He can be reached at: ktamarkin@necc.mass.edu