By Jenefer Curtis

Robin Garcia has seen a lot in her short life. Born in Tacoma, Washington, she was taken by her grandmother back to Vancouver where she was raised on the Musqueam reserve. A short while later, at age 13, she was passed to her aunt when her grandmother died. By 17 she was pregnant. She also survived abuse at the hands of the father of her children and her own family. “I never said anything,” she later told a Vancouver newspaper. Later, with another partner, she had five more children. Today she lives in Vancouver’s Strathcona neighbourhood doing her best to raise all her children.

Through all of this, in her late teens and twenties, Robin attended school – Southlands Elementary School and Point Gray and Windermere secondary schools, all in the Vancouver area. “At the back of my mind back then, I knew getting educated was something important to do.”

For a long time her life was consumed with attending to her children whose various ages covered a 12-year span. But Robin recalls that there was always a pull, however faint, towards learning. And she felt the pull in her experience with her two youngest children who have learning disabilities: “Dealing with them was always reminding me how important it was to learn and keep reading,” she recalls in her quiet voice.

Thanks to her attention to schooling, she learned in 2006, to her pleasant surprise, that she had received in those intervening years the sufficient number of credits for her Grade 12 diploma. The Adult Education Centre, run by the Vancouver School Board, told her the good news. The Centre encouraged her to attend some adult upgrading classes, and Robin started thinking about courses at Vancouver’s Langara College.

The Centre works often with Vancouver’s Canucks Family Education Centre (CFEC). Through that connection, Robin received moral support and services such as childcare. CFEC’s Executive Director, Jean Rasmussen, speaks with Robin often, to assist and encourage her. She is very impressed with Robin’s tenacity. “As a single mother, this woman has huge challenges in her life and yet she has the courage and determination to stay committed to learning and be a positive example to her children.”

By 2008, Robin was attending Langara, taking three courses: two in Aboriginal Studies and one in Women’s Studies. She loves her classes, especially meeting new people and listening to the professor. “Learning is a lot of listening, but it works.” She reports that reading in her household is now “really fun.” She reads to the kids - both their books and hers. “We just get going and we keep going….more books and words and stories.” Her kids even help her, some of her older children. “They are always egging me on – so much unlike my own family years ago,” she says.

“I never thought I would be in college” she says, genuinely surprised at herself. “You wouldn’t have thought so either, if you had seen me 10 years ago.”

“The courses are helping me understand my life and what I have been through,” she says. Robin wants to get a diploma in Social Work and counsel other women. “I understand what women undergo. I want them to know they are not alone.”

Robin is one of a number of students profiled in ABC CANADA’s 2008 Adult Literacy Calendar.