Suzanne Shep­pard

Get­ting an ed­u­ca­tion was nev­er an easy thing for Aki­ni Gill. At every stage he met with ob­sta­cles, most­ly in the form of teach­ers who said he would nev­er suc­ceed and it was use­less for him to have any aca­d­e­m­ic as­pi­ra­tions.Ear­ly in his school life, some teach­ers thought Gill was re­tard­ed, be­cause they did not un­der­stand his dis­abil­i­ties. His moth­er, Ann St Clair, was told not to both­er to send him to school and to put him to work on George Street in­stead. Gill and his moth­er al­so strug­gled with pover­ty, so he nev­er had easy ac­cess to the sup­port sys­tems and pro­grammes he need­ed at school.

Gill's first neg­a­tive learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence was at the Es­cal­li­er An­gli­can Pri­ma­ry School, where teach­ers com­plained that he was too slow and could not un­der­stand the school work. He was seen at a child guid­ance clin­ic, where he was wrong­ly di­ag­nosed as hav­ing lan­guage re­tar­da­tion. At one point his moth­er was ad­vised to get him in­to Good­will In­dus­tries.He was trans­ferred to West­ern Boys' RC but con­tin­ued to strug­gle there with lit­tle sup­port or en­cour­age­ment.The turn­around be­gan in 1997 when Gill's moth­er, de­ter­mined that her son should not be de­nied a prop­er ed­u­ca­tion, asked for help from the Dyslex­ia As­so­ci­a­tion. He was ten years old. It was then that Aki­ni was prop­er­ly di­ag­nosed as hav­ing two con­di­tions which se­vere­ly ham­pered his abil­i­ty to learn: dys­prax­ia and dyslex­ia.

Gill be­gan to ben­e­fit from re­me­di­al work. He got help with ed­u­ca­tion­al plan­ning and was giv­en the nec­es­sary ac­com­mo­da­tions when he sat ex­ams. He was en­rolled at Es­he's Learn­ing Cen­tre, a school which caters for chil­dren with learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties, where he made re­mark­able progress and suc­cess­ful­ly sat an ex­am to get in­to Bel­mont Boys' Sec­ondary.It was from then on that Gill be­gan to demon­strate his re­mark­able in­tel­li­gence and mu­si­cal tal­ents. Af­ter sec­ondary school he went to the Cre­ative Arts Cen­tre at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, and grad­u­at­ed with a bach­e­lor's de­gree in mu­si­cal arts.Gill be­gan teach­ing mu­sic and pan at the Trin­i­ty All Gen­er­a­tions School (TAGS) based at the Holy Trin­i­ty Cathe­dral in Port-of-Spain, as well as at St Mar­garet's Boys' and Ch­agua­nas Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry. But that was not the end of his ed­u­ca­tion­al jour­ney–or the chal­lenges. He en­coun­tered ma­jor ob­sta­cles in 2011 when he tried to get a schol­ar­ship to New York Uni­ver­si­ty.

Af­ter be­ing ini­tial­ly ap­proved for a na­tion­al schol­ar­ship, Gill was sub­se­quent­ly told the de­ci­sion had been re­scind­ed be­cause the pro­gramme through which he ap­plied was open on­ly for stud­ies at lo­cal in­sti­tu­tions. He got an e-mail telling him an "ad­min­is­tra­tive er­ror" had been made by the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion in ap­prov­ing his ap­pli­ca­tion for a schol­ar­ship to study in New York. Once the er­ror was dis­cov­ered, he was told, a dif­fer­ent course had to be tak­en to pro­tect the in­tegri­ty of the min­istry's schol­ar­ship pro­grammes.Nev­er one to give up a fight, Gill ap­pealed to gov­ern­ment au­thor­i­ties to re­con­sid­er and his sto­ry was picked up by lo­cal news­pa­pers. His plight got na­tion­al at­ten­tion and even­tu­al­ly Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in­ter­vened and he got his schol­ar­ship.

At NYU, Gill stud­ied for a mas­ter of arts in mu­sic ed­u­ca­tion, with the tenor pan as his ma­jor in­stru­ment.Re­call­ing his ex­pe­ri­ence he said: "I got more en­cour­age­ment from NYU...and it helped me to grow. They took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to learn from me and I learned from them."His the­sis top­ic, Teach­ing Mu­sic to Chil­dren with Learn­ing Dis­abil­i­ties in T&T, was lat­er de­scribed as one of the best the­sis oral pre­sen­ta­tions ever done at NYU. Dr John V Gilbert, di­rec­tor of mu­sic ed­u­ca­tion at NYU's Stein­hardt School of Cul­ture, Ed­u­ca­tion and Hu­man De­vel­op­ment, wrote: "His de­fence of the the­sis was not­ed as out­stand­ing, hav­ing achieved high mer­it in the writ­ten doc­u­ment and in his ef­fec­tive oral pre­sen­ta­tion and de­fence." He said Gill had dis­tin­guished him­self at NYU as a dili­gent stu­dent and ac­com­plished mu­si­cian and per­former."His spe­cial train­ing back­ground and love for his coun­try will make him a ded­i­cat­ed pro­fes­sion­al who can have last­ing im­pact on his stu­dents and his col­leagues."

Back home, Gill has set his sights on a ca­reer as a spe­cial mu­sic ed­u­ca­tor, a po­si­tion that does not cur­rent­ly ex­ist in T&T's ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem."Chil­dren with learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties can learn. They can be ed­u­cat­ed like any typ­i­cal­ly de­vel­oped child us­ing adap­tive teach­ing meth­ods," he ex­plained. "How­ev­er, they will not learn at the same pace–it will take time."Gill said there is need for greater aware­ness of var­i­ous learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties and there must be ap­pro­pri­ate les­son plans and class­room fa­cil­i­ties, in­di­vid­u­alised ed­u­ca­tion pro­grammes and spe­cial in­struc­tion­al arrange­ments for chil­dren with such chal­lenges."Re­search shows it is ben­e­fi­cial to have spe­cial ed­u­ca­tion pro­grammes with spe­cial mu­sic ed­u­ca­tors and mu­sic ther­a­pists work­ing to­geth­er. Teach­ers need to be aware of these things," he said.Armed with im­pres­sive ed­u­ca­tion­al qual­i­fi­ca­tions, this young man, who was once writ­ten off as un­teach­able, now wants to be part of a pos­i­tive trans­for­ma­tion in T&T's school sys­tem, help­ing to in­tro­duce best prac­tices in a va­ri­ety of ed­u­ca­tion­al set­ting. His dream is that, like him, oth­er chil­dren should get a chance to reach their full po­ten­tial.