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On March 10th, 2016, READ Saskatoon was proud to present Lisa Johnson with the Sylvia Vicq Tutor Award. She was nominated by her longtime learner, Sakina Bikuta. The following is an excerpt from Lisa's acceptance speech. 

I am very lucky to have known Sakina for almost six years, so I feel much more comfortable praising her hard work than I do congratulating myself. She's an amazing woman, who in many ways is a hero to me.  

Sakina Bikuta (left) and Lisa Johnson (right).  

Keeping all this in mind, I might actually go ahead and congratulate myself for one thing. Somebody wise once said: “A true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence,”. Quick anecdote: one time, Sakina and I took an SGI practice test online, to see how well Sakina had picked up the vocabulary from that SGI handbook. You’ll recognize it as the one that’s impossibly boring. I failed the test, and I have a valid driver’s licence. This is not to mention the tests we’ve taken for fun on Canadian trivia – I fail these every time…and I'm a Canadian citizen. 

Despite my flaws as a tutor, she continues to learn at a mind-boggling pace.

Thank you, READ Saskatoon, for bringing Sakina and I together.

It's a major thrill, (not to mention ego boost) to watch somebody use something that you taught them. I would recommend tutoring to anybody with the time to spare, because it's just a reward in itself. That's all I can really articulate about that. I also have two English degrees, so I would feel a very deep spiritual pang of regret if I didn't somehow get to think about and use the phrases "verb conjugation" and "subject verb agreement" at least once in a while. 

Thank you to all of the generous community sponsors, and to those who support READ Saskatoon however they can. Thank you to the folks at READ Saskatoon, for all of your hard work and dedication to this army of volunteers and learners.