Deb­bie Ja­cob

When I first be­gan teach­ing CXC Eng­lish lan­guage at the Youth Train­ing Cen­tre (YTC), I thought that I could be a cold and dis­tant teacher. I did not want to think about my stu­dents' cir­cum­stances or how they had land­ed in YTC. I did not want to think about their lives be­hind or­nate, bur­glar-proof bars. In the dark of night when my stu­dents mourn­ful­ly called, "Bye, Miss," as I was leav­ing Sat­ur­day night class­es, I ac­knowl­edged them, but afraid to turn in­to a pil­lar of salt-like Lot's wife-I nev­er looked back. I could not bear to see sad faces.

For me, every­thing changed the day that for­mer YTC su­per­vi­sor, Mr Stew­art, said to me, "There is noth­ing re­al­ly wrong with any of these lads. All they need is love." From that mo­ment on I felt it was all right to care about my stu­dents. It had nev­er been easy for them or me to reach out to any­one in life, and so we had to build our re­la­tion­ship. Olton had made the best first im­pres­sion with his para­graph about want­i­ng to be a tur­tle so that he could see many gen­er­a­tions of young peo­ple grow up and not have to die by the time he was 20 or 30. It was his de­ter­mi­na­tion and per­se­ver­ance that won me over.

He had a plan for his life: play rug­by and get his ed­u­ca­tion. He would al­ways say, "I have to learn Eng­lish and Caribbean his­to­ry so that I can help my chil­dren." Al­ways the op­ti­mistic, ro­man­tic, Olton, who made the na­tion­al un­der-19 rug­by team, im­pressed every­one in class by be­ing a car­ing, soft-spo­ken, hum­ble young man. He proved that there is strength in soft­ness. Olton will be a suc­cess­ful, pro­fes­sion­al ath­lete some day be­cause no one has more heart than him. Ash­ton turned out to be my rock. Or­gan­ised and al­ways smil­ing, Ash­ton has an un­can­ny abil­i­ty to an­tic­i­pate my every need while I'm teach­ing. Every­thing feels right when Ash­ton is around.

Po­lite, di­rect but re­spect­ful, it was dif­fi­cult to tell what Ash­ton thought of me un­til he slipped me a note on Moth­er's Day. "I know this is your day, Miss," he wrote, "and on be­half of all the lads, I want to thank you for think­ing of us and com­ing to teach us on Moth­er's Day." Ash­ton would make the per­fect per­son­al as­sis­tant. He just has to walk in­to a room and every­thing runs smooth­ly. Every­one de­pends on Ash­ton. Al­ways open and hon­est, Sher­win took on the role of tough­en­ing me up. "I want you to stop tak­ing the blame for things you can't con­trol," he wrote to me af­ter an out­ing to see the mu­si­cal West Side Sto­ry at NA­PA. I felt hor­ri­ble when the YTC bus was four hours late.

Sit­ting there with the clean­ers sweep­ing around us, Sher­win and Jah­mai kept me go­ing with sto­ries of our Eng­lish class and all they had learned. They wrote es­says that con­vinced me the out­ing wasn't the fi­as­co that I thought it had been. The next class Jah­mai gave me an es­say he wrote about the show and the long wait af­ter­wards. He thanked me for not aban­don­ing them and leav­ing them to sit with no one but the YTC guards af­ter the show. "Well I guess the moral of this sto­ry is, you can get through any sit­u­a­tion and not live to re­gret it once you are sur­round­ed by peo­ple will­ing to share the pain with you so the bur­den would not seem too un­bear­able," wrote Jah­mai. "Thanks, Miss, for a great sto­ry of my own." I knew then that our re­la­tion­ship had reached a whole new lev­el. That bond would nev­er be bro­ken.

Jah­mai is one of the bright­est, most as­tute stu­dents I have ever taught, but it is his jour­ney from an an­gry young man to a car­ing, sen­si­tive, ex­pres­sive in­di­vid­ual that will be his last­ing lega­cy. Al­ways the love­able rebel of Eng­lish class, Marc im­pressed me with his con­fi­dence and ma­tu­ri­ty as a writer. Most writ­ers who are far less gift­ed than Marc are cocky, close-mind­ed and guard­ed. Not Marc. Good cre­ative writ­ing is a scary jour­ney deep in­side of your­self, and Marc faces that chal­lenge fear­less­ly. He is des­tined to be­come one of the best writ­ers to come out of the Caribbean. He oozes per­son­al­i­ty and charis­ma.

Kheelon is a born leader on and off the foot­ball field and he thrives on chal­lenges. Al­though he had not been in school since Form 1, he was de­ter­mined to be in my Eng­lish class. I learned to re­ly on Kheelon's hu­mour, sup­port and or­gan­i­sa­tion­al skills. Fear­less in the face of aca­d­e­m­ic chal­lenges, Kheelon tack­led any weak­ness­es in Eng­lish coura­geous­ly. He grew tremen­dous­ly as an Eng­lish stu­dent. Kendell was al­ways the most dis­tant and guard­ed stu­dent in my class. At times I would say, "Lose some of those rough edges, Kendell." By the end of our jour­ney Kendell was one of the most out­spo­ken, re­laxed and in­tel­lec­tu­al­ly stim­u­lat­ing stu­dents in class.

When I wrote in one col­umn how he need­ed to move around in or­der to learn, Kendell said to me, "I feel so proud and hap­py that a teacher fi­nal­ly un­der­stands me. Teach­ers al­ways thought I was be­ing dis­re­spect­ful be­cause I couldn't sit still." To­geth­er our CXC Eng­lish lan­guage class be­came more than prepa­ra­tion for a test. It be­came a jour­ney to dis­cov­er our­selves. I am for­ev­er grate­ful that these ex­tra­or­di­nary young men al­lowed me to share their sto­ries with you.

• In two weeks: The shock­ing and sur­pris­ing re­sults of the CXC Eng­lish ex­am.