An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

For Re­nee Gor­don, ed­u­ca­tion be­gan at home, long be­fore she ever imag­ined her­self be­com­ing an ed­u­ca­tor.

At the cen­tre of that ear­ly in­flu­ence was her late grand­moth­er, Mar­got Bap­tiste, who op­er­at­ed Mup­pet Ba­bies Nurs­ery School from her home on Laven­tille Road, Chi­napoo Vil­lage, Mor­vant, for more than 40 years.

Gor­don grew up watch­ing her grand­moth­er nur­ture gen­er­a­tions of young chil­dren. Yet, iron­i­cal­ly, teach­ing was not a pro­fes­sion she ini­tial­ly want­ed for her­self.

“I did not choose teach­ing; teach­ing chose me,” she re­called with a laugh.

That choice took shape in 2009 when Gor­don be­gan work­ing along­side Bap­tiste. Two years lat­er, as her grand­moth­er be­came ill, Gor­don took over the school. Bap­tiste died in 2012, but the lessons she passed on re­mained deeply root­ed in Gor­don’s ap­proach to ed­u­ca­tion.

Bap­tiste was re­mem­bered as com­pas­sion­ate, ded­i­cat­ed, and car­ing, with a gen­uine love for her pro­fes­sion. Her phi­los­o­phy, “Sol­id Foun­da­tion, Strong So­ci­ety,” con­tin­ues to in­flu­ence Gor­don.

In 2016, Gor­don es­tab­lished Ren’s Bright Be­gin­ners Preschool and Day­care Ltd, which marked its 10th an­niver­sary on Ju­ly 2. Rather than recre­ate her grand­moth­er’s school, she built on the foun­da­tion Bap­tiste had giv­en her, blend­ing tra­di­tion­al ear­ly-child­hood teach­ing tech­niques with mod­ern ap­proach­es.

Her own pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment fol­lowed, in­clud­ing qual­i­fi­ca­tions in Ear­ly Child­hood Care and Ed­u­ca­tion and a Bach­e­lor of Ed­u­ca­tion.

The past decade, how­ev­er, has test­ed both Gor­don and the preschool sec­tor.

Com­pe­ti­tion has grown, fam­i­lies have more choic­es, and the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic dis­rupt­ed op­er­a­tions of schools across the coun­try. Ren’s Bright Be­gin­ners was among those forced to re­assess its fu­ture.

In 2021, Gor­don part­nered with CTS Col­lege of Busi­ness and Com­put­er Sci­ence to help man­age and op­er­ate its Preschool Acad­e­my. Ren’s Bright Be­gin­ners even­tu­al­ly re­opened in 2024, but re­turn­ing to the mar­ket meant re­build­ing its pres­ence and re­con­nect­ing with fam­i­lies.

The ex­pe­ri­ence al­so changed how Gor­don views the needs of young learn­ers. Chil­dren are ar­riv­ing with dif­fer­ent lev­els of in­de­pen­dence, foun­da­tion­al skills and tech­no­log­i­cal ex­po­sure, re­quir­ing ed­u­ca­tors to re­think how they teach.

“Ed­u­ca­tion has to evolve, and we have to adapt,” she said.

Be­yond the class­room, Gor­don has ex­pand­ed her work through na­tion­al ini­tia­tives, in­clud­ing the Na­tion­al Preschool Spelling Bee, now in its sixth year, and the Na­tion­al Parang O’ Car­ol Com­pe­ti­tion, launched in 2025.

She has al­so ven­tured in­to ed­u­ca­tion­al pub­lish­ing, de­vel­op­ing work­books based on gaps she ob­served among stu­dents.

Her ed­u­ca­tion­al reach even­tu­al­ly ex­pand­ed to old­er learn­ers through As­pire Learn­ing Acad­e­my and the As­pire to Achieve pro­gramme, which has pro­vid­ed tu­ition-free aca­d­e­m­ic sup­port to chil­dren in the Mor­vant-Laven­tille com­mu­ni­ty.

For Gor­don, the most sat­is­fy­ing part of the jour­ney is see­ing for­mer preschool stu­dents re­turn as old­er learn­ers, with some now pur­su­ing uni­ver­si­ty stud­ies.

As Ren’s Bright Be­gin­ners en­ters its sec­ond decade, Gor­don is look­ing be­yond the mile­stone. The goal is to keep build­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for chil­dren, sup­port fam­i­lies, and ex­tend the reach of ed­u­ca­tion.

Sev­en­teen years af­ter she first en­tered the pro­fes­sion, the jour­ney that be­gan with her grand­moth­er has come full cir­cle.