Fay­ola k J Fras­er

With over 30 years of ded­i­ca­tion to teach­ing un­der her belt, Coreen Kir­ton has long un­der­stood the im­por­tance of lit­er­a­cy, and is a staunch ad­vo­cate for the achieve­ment of uni­ver­sal lit­er­a­cy in T&T. Dur­ing the years of her teach­ing ca­reer, she taught at La Puer­ta Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School for over 20 years and sub­se­quent­ly taught Eng­lish at the Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral Sec­ondary for five years.

Not­ing through­out her ca­reer that one of the ma­jor chal­lenges faced was the achieve­ment of lit­er­a­cy, es­pe­cial­ly for those with learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties, she searched for ways to rem­e­dy this is­sue. To­wards the end of her tenure at the La Puer­ta Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry, the con­cept of Jol­ly Phon­ics was in­tro­duced to sup­port the teach­ing of read­ing and writ­ing to chil­dren in schools. Kir­ton, the hold­er of a Bach­e­lor’s De­gree in Lit­er­a­tures in Eng­lish, was im­me­di­ate­ly drawn to this man­ner of teach­ing lit­er­a­cy as a way to im­prove its scope in T&T.

The Unit­ed Na­tions Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals (SDGs) out­line uni­ver­sal youth lit­er­a­cy as an im­por­tant tar­get, in­di­cat­ing that by 2030, all youth should have achieved lit­er­a­cy and nu­mer­a­cy.

Ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tions Ed­u­ca­tion­al, Sci­en­tif­ic and Cul­tur­al Or­ga­ni­za­tion (UN­ESCO), ac­quir­ing and im­prov­ing lit­er­a­cy skills through­out life is an in­trin­sic part of the right to ed­u­ca­tion and brings with it sig­nif­i­cant em­pow­er­ment and ben­e­fits. How­ev­er, glob­al­ly, 763 mil­lion adults still can­not read and write. In T&T, based on a 1995 UWI Lit­er­a­cy Sur­vey, over 20 per cent of peo­ple in this coun­try can­not cope with every­day read­ing and writ­ing. In this same sur­vey, the Adult Lit­er­a­cy Tu­tors As­so­ci­a­tion (AL­TA) stat­ed that 62,000 adults were not lit­er­ate and ap­prox­i­mate­ly 118,000 adults can’t read well enough to read la­bels and fill out forms. Kir­ton said these sta­tis­tics in­di­cate a “dire need for in­ter­ven­tion.”

Af­ter re­tir­ing from teach­ing, Kir­ton sought a way to con­tin­ue mak­ing mean­ing­ful con­tri­bu­tions to the ed­u­ca­tion­al land­scape in T&T, with a spe­cial fo­cus on the achieve­ment of uni­ver­sal lit­er­a­cy. Re­mem­ber­ing her brief in­tro­duc­tion to Jol­ly Phon­ics dur­ing her tenure at the school, she took the ap­pro­pri­ate steps to be­come cer­ti­fied and is now one of on­ly two train­ers cer­ti­fied with Jol­ly Learn­ing in the Unit­ed King­dom. Ac­cord­ing to Kir­ton, “Jol­ly Phon­ics is tru­ly one of the best tools an ed­u­ca­tor can use to see stu­dents be­come con­fi­dent and ea­ger read­ers and writ­ers.” The step-by-step method takes the fear out of read­ing and chil­dren love learn­ing the songs and ac­tions, mak­ing read­ing and writ­ing fun and ac­ces­si­ble for all. Trust­ed by teach­ers and loved by chil­dren, the pro­gramme meets the cri­te­ria re­quired to be an ef­fec­tive sys­tem­at­ic syn­thet­ic phon­ics pro­gramme and con­tin­ues to help thou­sands of teach­ers cre­ate con­fi­dent and flu­ent read­ers and writ­ers in over 100 coun­tries.

Kir­ton has ded­i­cat­ed this post-re­tire­ment sea­son of her life to train­ing ed­u­ca­tors to teach Jol­ly Phon­ics since 2013. Over the years, she has had var­i­ous crops of teach­ers and has mon­i­tored teach­ers in schools from Diego Mar­tin to Blan­chisseuse.

As an ex­pe­ri­enced train­er, she de­liv­ers vir­tu­al and in-per­son train­ing to large and small groups of teach­ers and she al­so teach­es in­di­vid­ual stu­dents. With her pas­sion for Jol­ly Phon­ics and lit­er­a­cy, she put her own twist on an old proverb, “Tell a child the words and he/she reads for a day. Teach a child the let­ter sounds and he/she reads for life. Learn­ing is a life-long process that starts with a sol­id foun­da­tion.”

In terms of adult lit­er­a­cy, Kir­ton al­so sees this as an area that should be fo­cused on and im­proved. She taught Eng­lish at the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s Adult Evening Class­es and not­ed the gap that ex­ists for adults who have lim­it­ed abil­i­ty to read and write. Many adults who ei­ther did not have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to go to school or were dis­card­ed as “slow learn­ers” and not taught ad­e­quate­ly at the pri­ma­ry or sec­ondary lev­el, en­ter these class­es to face the of­ten dif­fi­cult task of learn­ing at a lat­er stage in life.

Aside from her work as a Jol­ly Phon­ics teacher, Kir­ton is al­so in­volved in a pro­gramme called “Lit­er­a­cy for Life” spear­head­ed by the Catholic Re­li­gious Ed­u­ca­tion De­vel­op­ment In­sti­tute in part­ner­ship with The Fran­cis­can In­sti­tute and the Na­tion­al Li­brary and In­for­ma­tion Sys­tem Au­thor­i­ty, which de­vel­ops com­mu­ni­ty-based lit­er­a­cy learn­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties.

She said: “Lit­er­a­cy helps to em­pow­er you, to lib­er­ate you, ex­pand­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties and op­por­tu­ni­ties.” Kir­ton al­so notes that be­cause of the in­tro­duc­tion of op­por­tu­ni­ties that lit­er­a­cy pro­vides, it plays an im­por­tant part in pover­ty and there­fore crime re­duc­tion na­tion­al­ly. UN­ESCO in­di­cates that lit­er­a­cy al­so “dri­ves sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment, en­ables greater par­tic­i­pa­tion in the labour mar­ket, im­proves child and fam­i­ly health and nu­tri­tion, re­duces pover­ty and ex­pands life op­por­tu­ni­ties.”