Ver­non Ram­lo­gan and Alexan­der Bain are role mod­els with­in the AL­TA fam­i­ly. They both share a snip­pet of their AL­TA ex­pe­ri­ence, as we send the call out for more men to con­sid­er vol­un­teer­ing as AL­TA tu­tor.

Ver­non Ram­lo­gan

When I went in for the in­ter­view over ten years ago, I told my­self I’d give five years to the pro­gramme. More than a decade lat­er, here I am. I have worked with all the AL­TA lev­els, in­clud­ing the AL­TA vir­tu­al class­es, which I cur­rent­ly teach via Zoom.

Of course, the vir­tu­al fo­rum has its chal­lenges. Some stu­dents have dif­fi­cul­ty log­ging on, oth­ers have spo­radic par­tic­i­pa­tion dur­ing the les­son, and as a tu­tor, there is less one-on-one ac­cess to spe­cif­ic stu­dents who need more at­ten­tion.

There are ad­van­tages though. As one stu­dent re­lat­ed, “You don’t have to bathe and put on make­up to come to class and you don’t have to pay pas­sage—just a de­vice and Wi-Fi and you can join a class.”

For me, it doesn’t re­al­ly mat­ter where I’m as­signed; I will do the job. As an AL­TA vol­un­teer tu­tor, you must con­cen­trate on what you are there for, which is to im­prove the lives of oth­ers through lit­er­a­cy.

This vol­un­tary work re­quires a lot of pa­tience and ded­i­ca­tion. Many vol­un­teers do not re­alise that the lev­el of sup­port to be giv­en to our stu­dents at times ex­tends be­yond our train­ing. Stu­dents some­times come to you with prob­lems that are not re­lat­ed to read­ing and writ­ing. Hu­man­i­ty and com­pas­sion are in­te­gral, whilst keep­ing your fo­cus on teach­ing the skills for read­ing and writ­ing.

In the en­vi­ron­ment I come from, I have had to deal with ran­go-tan­go men. Very ear­ly, I of­ten es­tab­lish, es­pe­cial­ly with the men who come to my class, that they can­not move in a lack­adaisi­cal way when it comes to learn­ing and im­prov­ing one­self. You are not com­ing to my class do­ing any stu­pid­ness.

Be­ing punc­tu­al, par­tic­i­pat­ing in a les­son, not in­ter­rupt­ing the class when you reach late to Zoom, are virtues I in­sist on. This has had a pos­i­tive im­pact since I start­ed be­ing an AL­TA tu­tor over ten years ago.

One year while teach­ing an AL­TA com­mu­ni­ty class in Cou­va, I ob­served one stu­dent who would come to class dressed up top of the line—ear­rings, hair-do and clothes all done up. Come to find out she was a mod­el and through the class, she got to re­alise that peo­ple were tak­ing ad­van­tage of her in con­tracts. She grad­u­at­ed. This shows that all kinds of peo­ple face lit­er­a­cy chal­lenges, not just the ones you ex­pect.

An­oth­er mo­ment I re­mem­ber is from our end-of-term get-to­geth­er. One stu­dent shared why she comes to class. There was a time when her nephews and nieces would come over and she would hide in her bed­room for long pe­ri­ods be­cause she did not want to be asked, ‘Aun­ty, read this sto­ry­book for me’ or ‘Aun­ty, help me with my home­work.’ She says now she is proud of be­ing in the AL­TA class, so she doesn’t have to hide any­more.

Alexan­der Bain

Dur­ing my work­ing years be­fore AL­TA, I re­alised a lot of men who com­mit­ted crimes had lit­er­a­cy chal­lenges. This in­spired me to want to im­prove lit­er­a­cy in Trinidad and To­ba­go and AL­TA was the con­duit for that.

Up­on re­tire­ment, I thought about the needs of so­ci­ety and where I could fit in. I found AL­TA and re­alised there was no oth­er out­let of the kind. One out­stand­ing mo­ment I can re­call is when a stu­dent said to me how good he felt be­ing able to fill out a form with­out as­sis­tance or feel­ing ashamed.

I be­lieve ed­u­ca­tion is one of the main ve­hi­cles in bring­ing em­pow­er­ment and a sense of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to peo­ple. In a News­day ar­ti­cle by Deb­bie Ja­cob, she says that when young men are not taught the lit­er­a­cy and com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills need­ed to nav­i­gate life’s cir­cum­stances, the “cul­ture of vi­o­lence” be­comes their on­ly lan­guage. Her ac­tu­al quote is “Vi­o­lence is the lan­guage of those who can­not ex­press them­selves.”

She, of course, has worked in lit­er­a­cy in the prison sys­tem.

I was for­tu­nate to have an ed­u­ca­tion and so I do what I can to help oth­ers.