With a spate of in­ci­dents dom­i­nat­ing the news in­volv­ing chil­dren in acts of school vi­o­lence, fights, at­tacks on teach­ers, van­dal­ism and promis­cu­ity in the black­board jun­gle, ac­tress, di­rec­tor, pro­duc­er, teacher, moth­er and ac­tivist Pene­lope Spencer is ap­peal­ing to the pub­lic and in­flu­en­tial peo­ple who young peo­ple look up to in so­ci­ety to give of their time and adopt a class.

She said they may not reap the re­sults right away, but they will set in mo­tion the process of pro­duc­ing the next mod­el cit­i­zens, mak­ing a pos­i­tive con­tri­bu­tion in their cho­sen field and for the bet­ter­ment of the coun­try. Spencer said with the prop­er time, men­tor­ship and guid­ance the next en­tre­pre­neur, Pe­ter Min­shall or so­ca su­per­star may emerge.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia Spencer said "I was re­al­ly up­set and wor­ried about the crime sit­u­a­tion that is go­ing on in T&T. I've been toss­ing and turn­ing ask­ing my­self what can I do.

"I can't march any more around the Red House or do any kind of march­ing be­cause that doesn't work; no one lis­tens.

"I thought to my­self what do all these mur­der­ers, abusers and neg­a­tive per­sons have in com­mon? They all went to school at some point in their lives.

"I thought tack­ling and get­ting in the school sys­tem would be an ide­al way to start to work with chil­dren. A lot of chil­dren don't get the op­por­tu­ni­ty to speak in school and at home."

She said if they could get peo­ple like her­self to go out to the schools to talk to chil­dren about dif­fer­ent top­ics, read sto­ries, teach them about good moral val­ues, this would take away some of the pres­sure and stress from the teach­ers for a short while.

Spencer said she start­ed work­ing with one class at Point Cumana Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School, Stan­dard One. When she first vis­it­ed, she re­alised many of the chil­dren were at-risk and some need­ed spe­cial at­ten­tion, so she de­cid­ed to as­sist wher­ev­er she could.

She said Jan­u­ary 31 was the first day with her class of 16 chil­dren, but on that day on­ly 13 came out. Their teacher, Ky­na Pe­dro-Gue­vara, was ex­cep­tion­al and a great help, she said.

Spencer said she laid down her rules about dis­ci­pline, man­ners and re­spect; if they can­not abide then con­se­quences will be put in place and they un­der­stood.

She said she told a sto­ry and asked ques­tions af­ter, she hugged and loved them up, she tried to fo­cus on the trou­ble mak­ers with­out mak­ing it look too ob­vi­ous and they seemed to en­joy the ses­sion.

Spencer is so good at what she does, the school want­ed her to tell sto­ries to oth­er class­es.

Spencer said if every­one helped the young chil­dren, they could help change their minds, let them know there were oth­er av­enues.

She said there were chil­dren in so­ci­ety who were not get­ting the prop­er guid­ance or un­der­stood moral val­ues, choic­es, and con­se­quences.

Spencer said no­body was tak­ing time to teach them, to un­der­stand free­dom and val­ue it, many chil­dren didn't un­der­stand friend­ship and love, how a boy was sup­posed to treat a girl, how girls were sup­posed to speak to boys.

She said many of them nev­er heard Ae­sop's Fa­bles, or giv­en pos­i­tive re­in­force­ments and mod­ern sto­ries. Chil­dren need to be giv­en a hear­ing to tell their sto­ries and giv­en a chance to ex­press them­selves, she said.

Spencer en­cour­aged vol­un­teers to tell a sto­ry about friend­ship, bring a fruit the next time and teach them about shar­ing.

She said they can al­so bring some­one to teach them how to play foot­ball. More men need to come in­to some of the chil­dren's lives, she said, as they didn't have enough male fig­ures or fa­ther fig­ures around to un­der­stand that bond­ing.

Spencer sug­gest­ed that they can take chil­dren to plays and know-your-coun­try tours.

She is hop­ing that next year the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties like the Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty, Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, and Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment can help pro­vide psy­chi­atric coun­selling and help, since some chil­dren may have been abused and need to re­gain trust. She said some chil­dren faced var­i­ous chal­lenges from be­ing dyslex­ic, to hunger and can't con­cen­trate.

Spencer said her class at Point Cumana Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School had a love­ly field with play­ground equip­ment, but it was right next to a large drain with no bar­ri­er that posed a safe­ty risk to the chil­dren. She ap­pealed to those in au­thor­i­ty to have it fixed.

She said she would love to see par­ents and guardians get re­port cards and grad­ed on at­ten­dance at PTA meet­ings, par­tic­i­pa­tion in school ac­tiv­i­ties, and over­all at­ten­tion to their child and per­haps they would be more re­spon­si­ble par­ents.

She said it would be won­der­ful if lo­cal celebri­ties can adopt a class in schools that were not "priv­i­leged" such as Pin­to Road, Ari­ma, Mal­oney, and San Fran­cique.

Spencer en­cour­aged them to come out and sup­port a wor­thy cause—some may not be able to teach, but can be mo­ti­va­tors, play games with the chil­dren.

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