Sama­ki Fe­li­cian

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

“Each of you should use what­ev­er gift you have re­ceived to serve oth­ers, as faith­ful stew­ards of God’s grace in its var­i­ous forms.”

This verse per­fect­ly cap­tures the life and mis­sion of An­dre Bur­ton.

At 33, Bur­ton has worn many hats — al­tar serv­er, sem­i­nar­i­an, teacher, me­dia pro­fes­sion­al, and now, tech in­no­va­tor. Yet through every chap­ter of his jour­ney, one theme has re­mained con­stant: ser­vice. To­day, as the founder of A’s On­line Tu­tor­ing Ser­vices and cre­ator of the ground­break­ing math plat­form Count Me In TT, he is trans­form­ing how Trinidad and To­ba­go ap­proach­es ed­u­ca­tion — one stu­dent, one equa­tion, one click at a time.

Bur­ton grew up in Care­nage in a close-knit ex­tend­ed fam­i­ly sur­round­ed by his grand­par­ents, moth­er, three sis­ters, and a cousin. His ear­li­est lessons in dis­ci­pline and com­pas­sion came not from a class­room, but from the al­tar.

At just six years old, he be­came an al­tar serv­er at St Pe­ter’s Ro­man Catholic Church, a role he held for near­ly a decade. Those for­ma­tive years in min­istry, he says, taught him the essence of self­less­ness and giv­ing.

“Those first ten years re­al­ly shaped me in­to the man I am to­day,” Bur­ton re­flect­ed. “Be­ing called to serve oth­ers, to give up my time and tal­ents for some­thing greater — that be­came the foun­da­tion of my life.”

His el­dest sis­ter, An­to­nia, was the first to en­cour­age him to serve in the church. To­geth­er, their fam­i­ly be­came deeply in­volved in parish life, nur­tur­ing the val­ues of faith, ser­vice, and ed­u­ca­tion that con­tin­ue to dri­ve him to­day.

Bur­ton’s love for teach­ing be­gan al­most by ac­ci­dent. As a stu­dent at St An­tho­ny’s Col­lege, he ex­celled in Math­e­mat­ics, in­spired by his pri­ma­ry school teacher, Mrs Roberts.

“I’d walk around class help­ing oth­ers who were strug­gling,” he re­called. “I didn’t see it as teach­ing at first — it was just be­ing of ser­vice.”

By Form Five, he was tu­tor­ing class­mates and rel­a­tives. His first of­fi­cial stu­dent came soon af­ter writ­ing CXC — a parish­ioner’s son in Stan­dard Two. That sim­ple act marked the be­gin­ning of a life­long pas­sion for ed­u­ca­tion.

A spir­i­tu­al jour­ney

Af­ter sec­ondary school, Bur­ton’s path took an un­ex­pect­ed turn. At 16, he at­tend­ed World Youth Day 2008 in Syd­ney, Aus­tralia — a trans­for­ma­tive ex­pe­ri­ence that led him to join the Con­gre­ga­tion of the Holy Spir­it (Holy Ghost Fa­thers).

He spent four and a half years in the sem­i­nary, study­ing for the priest­hood and deep­en­ing his un­der­stand­ing of ser­vice and lead­er­ship.

“Those years taught me hu­mil­i­ty, per­se­ver­ance, and com­pas­sion,” he said. “Even though I even­tu­al­ly felt called in an­oth­er di­rec­tion, that time pre­pared me for every­thing I do to­day.”

Leav­ing the sem­i­nary was a dif­fi­cult de­ci­sion, but one that opened the door to ed­u­ca­tion and in­no­va­tion.

In 2019, Bur­ton launched A’s On­line Tu­tor­ing Ser­vices, a Trinidad-based plat­form of­fer­ing one-on-one and small group lessons in SEA and CSEC Math­e­mat­ics.

What be­gan as a mod­est idea quick­ly grew in­to a trust­ed brand. Since its in­cep­tion, A’s On­line has helped more than 85 stu­dents — ages 9 to 50 — build con­fi­dence and com­pe­tence in math through per­son­alised in­struc­tion, da­ta track­ing, and dig­i­tal learn­ing tools.

He cred­its his ear­ly ex­pe­ri­ences with shap­ing his ed­u­ca­tion­al phi­los­o­phy: that every stu­dent de­serves a strong foun­da­tion.

“Our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem moves stu­dents for­ward with­out en­sur­ing they’ve mas­tered the ba­sics,” Bur­ton ex­plained. “That’s why so many strug­gle with SEA and CSEC math. If we don’t fix those gaps ear­ly, the prob­lem fol­lows them for life.”

In 2024, Bur­ton took his mis­sion a step fur­ther with Count Me In TT — an on­line math chal­lenge plat­form de­signed to make learn­ing mul­ti­pli­ca­tion fun, com­pet­i­tive, and con­fi­dence-build­ing.

Host­ed at www.count­meintt.com, the site fea­tures timed mul­ti­pli­ca­tion grids, leader­boards, and prizes across three cat­e­gories: Pri­ma­ry, Sec­ondary, and Open. It’s a dig­i­tal twist on the tra­di­tion­al times ta­bles, cre­at­ed to mo­ti­vate stu­dents through play and progress.

The idea be­gan as a sim­ple Ex­cel spread­sheet he used dur­ing tu­tor­ing ses­sions. His stu­dents loved the timed chal­lenge, and what start­ed as a small class­room ex­er­cise even­tu­al­ly evolved in­to a na­tion­al plat­form.

The de­vel­op­ment process, he ad­mits, was no easy task. Hav­ing stud­ied IT on­ly up to Form Two, Bur­ton re­lied on months of tri­al and er­ror — and a lit­tle help from Chat­G­PT — to code and launch the web­site him­self.

“It was four months of late nights,” he said. “But I kept think­ing, half our stu­dents fail math every year. We can’t build a na­tion that doesn’t un­der­stand num­bers. That’s how peo­ple get scammed, lose mon­ey, or miss op­por­tu­ni­ties.”

The big­ger vi­sion

Bur­ton sees Count Me In TT as just the be­gin­ning. His goal is to in­tro­duce the plat­form to schools na­tion­wide, host live com­pe­ti­tions, and even­tu­al­ly ex­pand in­to oth­er chal­leng­ing math top­ics such as al­ge­bra and num­ber the­o­ry.

“The re­ac­tions have been in­cred­i­ble,” he said. “Stu­dents are ask­ing to play more — they’re ex­cit­ed about math again. That’s some­thing I haven’t seen in years.”

Long-term, he hopes to build a suite of dig­i­tal tools that not on­ly teach but al­so in­spire.

“Ed­u­ca­tion should feel em­pow­er­ing,” Bur­ton said. “If we can make stu­dents love learn­ing again, we’ll be chang­ing the coun­try one child at a time.”

From the pews of St Pe­ter’s Church to the dig­i­tal class­rooms of Count Me In TT, An­dre Bur­ton’s jour­ney has been guid­ed by a sin­gle prin­ci­ple: ser­vice.

Whether through faith, teach­ing, or tech­nol­o­gy, his life’s work echoes the les­son he learned as a six-year-old al­tar boy — give of your­self, lift oth­ers, and make a dif­fer­ence.

And in a coun­try where half of its stu­dents fear math, Bur­ton is prov­ing that one man — and one idea — can count for so much more.