Deb­bie Ja­cob

We all have mo­ments when we shake our heads and think: What have I done? I re­mem­ber think­ing that soon af­ter I be­gan teach­ing 18 years ago. I had quit my job as a full-time jour­nal­ist, and I felt I had left an ex­cit­ing-if not glam­orous-job for a very lone­ly, mun­dane job. Yes, I had de­cid­ed that I need­ed a life with more pre­dictable hours for the sake of my chil­dren. I didn't want a house­keep­er rais­ing my chil­dren. I want­ed to raise them my­self. Still, I couldn't help but think that I was miss­ing out on life.

I soon learned that teach­ing had its own ex­cite­ment. The big dif­fer­ence was that any feel­ing of ful­fil­ment had to be in­ter­nal as ex­posed to the ex­ter­nal one that jour­nal­ism pro­vid­ed. In teach­ing, the sense of ac­com­plish­ment came at the end of a long day when I sipped a cup of pep­per­mint tea in my gallery. I thought about a stu­dent who no longer strug­gled in writ­ing be­cause of a les­son I had taught-a les­son, I might add, that came from my ex­pe­ri­ences as a jour­nal­ist.

The ex­cite­ment of jour­nal­ism came from hav­ing my hard work splashed on a page with bold head­lines. The ex­cite­ment of teach­ing came from see­ing stu­dents' smiles af­ter they fell in love with a book that we had used in class. Teach­ing taught me a shock­ing les­son in life: Learn­ing takes place in the most un­ex­pect­ed places. I re­alised that once again af­ter I be­gan teach­ing CXC Eng­lish lan­guage at the Youth Train­ing Cen­tre (YTC). I al­ways felt that I learned so much more from my stu­dents than I had taught them. I al­so learned so much about the peo­ple of T&T from that ex­pe­ri­ence.

Al­though we were qui­et­ly locked away in the YTC li­brary, I felt con­nect­ed to T&T in a way that I had nev­er ex­pe­ri­enced be­fore. I did not know my stu­dents' teach­ers on the out­side, but I knew those teach­ers had fash­ioned a strong aca­d­e­m­ic fab­ric that served as my stu­dents' foun­da­tion for learn­ing. I felt like a fine ta­pes­try weaved from del­i­cate gos­samer wings con­nect­ed me to my stu­dents' for­mer teach­ers. All I did was com­plete the work that those teach­ers had start­ed. In or­der to con­cen­trate, my stu­dents had to sort out their feel­ings like one sorts out tan­gled thread. All I had to do is pull the straight­ened threads to­geth­er.

There is nev­er enough recog­ni­tion for good teach­ers who silent­ly, self­less­ly shape the fu­ture through the stu­dents they teach. I know this more than ever af­ter my ex­pe­ri­ences at YTC. I have al­ways known the peo­ple of T&T to be kind, com­pas­sion­ate, even in the face of the hard­ship and vi­o­lence that threat­en us, but my time at YTC proved this strength of char­ac­ter be­yond my wildest dreams. So many peo­ple want­ed to see these young men suc­ceed, and they con­tributed thou­sands of dol­lars for me to buy text­books and nov­els for my stu­dents.

I be­gan to re­alise we were nev­er re­al­ly alone in that li­brary be­cause so many peo­ple cared about us. Teach­ers, stu­dents and par­ents helped me in unimag­in­able ways. When I be­gan writ­ing columns about my ex­pe­ri­ences in YTC, read­ers be­gan con­tribut­ing mon­ey for books. In the end, I start­ed a small "li­brary" of sports books for Quin­ton Bap­tiste, an ex­tra­or­di­nary of­fi­cer at YTC who coach­es sports.

He is in a great po­si­tion to en­cour­age YTC's ath­letes to read books like Tony Dungy's Un­com­mon. The gen­eros­i­ty and good wish­es of read­ers mo­ti­vat­ed me and my stu­dents and made me re­alise the lev­el of em­pa­thy that peo­ple in this na­tion pos­sess. Even though we have all been touched by crime, these peo­ple reached out to these boys and wished them the best in life.

All of us need to feel sup­port in life, and I had sol­id sup­port from Don­na Mc­Don­ald, the of­fi­cer who runs the CXC pro­gramme in YTC and Clint Sandy, the of­fi­cer in charge of my Sat­ur­day class from 4 to 7 pm. I am for­ev­er grate­ful to them. Every­where I turned there were un­ex­pect­ed lessons to learn. Deep in­to my work, I read a book called In a Heart­beat by Leigh Anne and Sean Tuo­hy, the cou­ple fea­tured in the movie The Blind Side.

The movie told the sto­ry of how they had tak­en in Michael Oher, a poor, African-Amer­i­can teenag­er and how they had shaped his ca­reer as a foot­baller. In a Heart­beat pre­sent­ed the Touhys' feel­ings about com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice. That book made me re­alise how com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice el­e­vates life to a whole new lev­el. Com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice pro­vides a tremen­dous sense of pow­er and a feel­ing of ac­com­plish­ment be­cause you are do­ing some­thing be­sides com­plain­ing about how bad so­ci­ety is.

You feel a sense of con­trol over your life like nev­er be­fore be­cause you are con­tribut­ing to­wards mak­ing T&T a bet­ter place, and that brings a sense of peace. And so, dear read­ers, my se­ries on my ex­pe­ri­ences at YTC comes to a close. I'm sure mem­o­ries of my time in YTC will trig­ger some fu­ture columns, but for now I feel I have said every­thing I have to say even though noth­ing I have said can ever con­vey all the in­valu­able lessons of that re­mark­able ex­pe­ri­ence.