I felt too frightened and too embarrassed to go back to YTC to teach CXC English language. My students weren't the problem. If they had misbehaved or wasted a minute of my time, the decision to leave YTC would have been easy. But they were the perfect class. Still, something was wrong, and I couldn't quite put my finger on it. My own indecisiveness bothered me. I couldn't decide which students to give up. In time, that problem would take care of itself. Some students got shifted to work programmes. Some never turned in any homework so it didn't seem feasible to keep them. Some needed remedial work, and in all fairness I had to point them in the right direction if they weren't ready for CXC English language exams.
I found it disconcerting that I knew nothing about my students, but then I didn't want to know anything about them or their troubled past. I knew that everyone in YTC was in some kind of trouble; and many boys had committed crimes that were far worse than I could imagine. In time they would share snippets of the anger, violence and chaos that had defined their lives. Some of those stories would knock the wind out of me. I am ashamed to say I still thought about quitting in spite of the fact my colleagues had already given me a mountain of money to buy books. While fumbling for a reason to quit, I called Sgt Roger Alexander of Crime Watch fame. (I knew Alexander because he had got my stolen dog Jada back for me four years ago.)
"I don't know if I should go on teaching these boys," I said to Alexander. "Nah," Alexander said emphatically. "Keep going. It's a good thing. They're boys. They can change. Education is important." But something else was wrong. I finally realised what it was the Saturday night I opened up our blue textbook and announced, "We'll be doing this poem about blackberries." Excited and smiling, the boys plunged into Blackberry Picking by Seamus Heaney: "Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots. Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills/ We trekked and picked until the cans were full...Our hands were peppered/ With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's." I wanted to crawl into a hole. At the end of the poem, my students stared at me in utter dismay. Clearly this was not a poem about Blackberry cell phones as they had originally expected.
Then they peppered me with questions: "What's a blackberry? What's a thorn?" I did my best to make them see and taste and feel a blackberry. "Thorns," I said, "are picka." They decided that if Bluebeard was a pirate, then the children in the poem were taking the blackberries like thieves because pirates were thieves. This was the moment I finally understood what was bothering me: I was unhappy and uncomfortable teaching irrelevant material. Good news came in the realisation that I knew who was going to sit the CXC English language exam. I figured it out before I got the list from Ms McDonald.
1. Jahmai: Determined to make an impression and bury the image of the Trinidad "rude" boy with the gold teeth and brazen attitude, Jahmai now wanted to prove everyone wrong. He would fight the reputation he had built as a scrappy, belligerent young man with a short fuse.
2. Sherwyn: Street-smart, suave and business-like, Sherwyn, a promising footballer with a no-nonsense attitude, knew how to play the academic game. His just-show-me-how-to-do-it attitude served him well. He loved structure and he cranked out cookie-cutter essays.
3. Ashton: Smooth-talking Ashton, the go-to man in YTC, was a shining role model for YTC's mentoring programme. Charming Ashton knew how to motivate everyone. Now he wanted to write as well as he could speak.
4. Kendell: The roughest of the lot, distant, guarded and quiet, Kendell was a boy who had to move around to learn. Don't tie him down, don't push him emotionally, and he would deliver amazing work. In time, he would smile.
5. Kheelon: A natural athlete, Kheelon, another promising footballer, was a weak but fearless student. He spoke and wrote only in Creole. His writing had good structure. He struggled with grammar, but knocked out two-page essays.
6. Marc: Bubbly, determined and always singing, Marc was my most creative writer. My challenge was to get Marc to write mundane things like summaries.
7. Olton Charles: Although he was a weak student not yet ready for CXC English, my rugby player Olton had impressed me with that one paragraph he wrote about wanting to be a turtle so he could live to be a thousand years old, see many generations of young people grow up and not be dead by the time he was 20 or 30.
I had my class. Everything was settled. Now I needed a plan because I wasn't going to sell my soul-my teaching soul-to teach CXC English language in YTC.
• Next week: Throwing caution to the wind: the boys and I decide to take a huge gamble
THOUGHTS
• They were the perfect class. Still, something was wrong, and I couldn't quite put my finger on it.
• I knew that everyone in YTC was in some kind of trouble; and many boys had committed crimes that were far worse than I could imagine.
• In time they would share snippets of the anger, violence and chaos that had defined their lives. Some of those stories would knock the wind out of me.