1. Summer Ostlund ELL Coordinator, Whatcom Literacy Council interviewed 3 May 2012 at WLC

2. „Can you tell us about your background?“ Summer is a Western alum who majored in environmental policy through Huxley She interned at REsources and later worked there through an Americorp position (which later became a regular job) Summer got a TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) certificate through a summer program at WWU and this, combined with her interest in other cultures, led to her getting a master's degree in TESOL and become the English Language Learning (ELL) coordinator at the Whatcom Literacy Council

3. „Can you tell us about what you achieve through your job and the processes/theories that help along the way?“ Summer works at WLC, which is a nonprofit offering comprehensive services to help empower adults to „change their lives through literacy“, in other words basically teaching people to read, write, and converse in English. Summer is the ELL coordinator so she works specifically with those who speak a native language other than language, mainly immigrants that come to the Bellingham community from different places like Vietnam or Eastern Europe.

4. „Can you tell us about what you achieve through your job and the processes/theories that help along the way?“ (cont)...Part of Summer's job is to conduct intial, 90-minute meetings with new learners to develop a personal connection before setting them up with their own literacy tutor. She also trains the new tutors, who are all working on a volunteer basis.

5. „What is your favorite and least favorite part of your job?“ Summer enjoys meeting and chatting with different people, so getting to actually talk to new learners and tutors is most enjoyable for her. She also likes that every day is different at WLC, and that the organization is always adapting. One negative thing she mentioned is the sense of never being totally done with her work, i.e. the feeling of „there's always more to do“ hanging overhead. One thing Summer does to deal with this is remind herself of past success stories and repeat her personal mantra „I do what I can, and I help people.“

6. „What advice might you give to young Human Services professionals?“ Summer encourages people to get involved in an area/program of interest to them, and to consider jobs in that area because often it's relatively easy to „get your foot in the door“ when it comes to nonprofits. She also emphasized that it's important for young HS professionals to „have that reality check with yourself“ about the challenges you may face in your career... For example the struggle to set personal/professional boundaries, the unlikeliness that you will make very much money, and the increased pressure put on our profession due to the increased need/decreased funding that's happened recently.

7. Thank you, Summer! Find out more about WLC and how you can get involved by becoming a volunteer tutor by going to... www.whatcomliteracy.org