Maria grew up in a culture that did not value education. Education was considered a waste of time. Work was what was valued and children were expected to contribute to the family. Maria was only in Grade 5 when her family returned to Mexico, and the cycle of moving back and forth between Canada and Mexico looking for farm work began. During these years Maria did not attend school at all and first came to our program in 2010 at the age of twenty-one. What little she had learned as a child was long gone. She had to begin with the very basics, a formidable task for an adult, but Maria was very determined and did not let it deter her. She came to class every day motivated to learn and accept new challenges. Over the years Maria’s writing skills improved dramatically and she graduated from learning to write a complete sentence to writing letters to the editor regarding the potential location of new library in Aylmer. Through sheer perseverance she mastered addition, subtraction, multiplication and division and then went on to conquer fractions, decimals, per cents, algebra, and geometry.