Our Trail­blaz­er se­ries cel­e­brates the stu­dents who in Al­ta’s first decade braved the stig­ma of low lit­er­a­cy to speak pub­licly of their Al­ta ex­pe­ri­ence.

Here’s the con­clu­sion of the 1990s in­ter­view with Yvonne Greenidge, whose pri­ma­ry school ed­u­ca­tion was dis­rupt­ed by the need to work along­side her moth­er and then came to an abrupt halt due to a se­ri­ous head in­jury, when she was struck by a car at age eight.

I want to read my Bible and I now have a verse I read for my­self. When I see the big word, I could pick out one or two parts from it and try to make up the word.

My hus­band say how a big old woman like me go to class, and make me feel kind of em­bar­rassed.

He had me feel­ing kind of down and I al­most stop the class. But my teacher en­cour­age me and say, “Don’t wor­ry with him, do this for your­self.”

I don’t know if he can read, he can­not read the whole thing. But he putting out he does read and ma­m­aguy­ing me in some part you know. He most prob­a­bly could read a lit­tle more than me, but it doesn’t look like he could read plen­ty be­cause when I test him with my work he does kind of spell it, you know.

I like to con­tin­ue with the class as long as God give me health and strength be­cause when you go out, you could take the pa­per they hand­ing out and take shame out of you eye and say some­thing, so they won’t know di­rect­ly you can’t read.

I would like to build up my­self. The read­ing can ben­e­fit to you in, out and for your­self.

I ap­pre­ci­ate this class a lot and I does pray for the teach­ers to have more faith and strength, and en­cour­age them to keep com­ing.

Yvonne is proud to say she has been with Al­ta longer than any oth­er stu­dent, which is true!

She al­so says that Al­ta CEO Paula Lu­cie-Smith, who taught Yvonne in her ear­ly years at Al­ta, start­ed the Read­ing Cir­cle for her which is al­so true. The ac­ci­dent has had long last­ing ef­fects on Yvonne’s mem­o­ry mak­ing vi­su­al recog­ni­tion of words un­re­li­able, so al­though per­se­ver­ance got her as far as lev­el two, she need­ed on­go­ing sup­port and prac­tice to main­tain her skills.

In 2004, Yvonne’s needs be­came the in­spi­ra­tion for Al­ta Read­ing Cir­cles, where guides sup­port in­di­vid­u­als and small groups to prac­tise the skills learnt in the class­room as they read high-in­ter­est, low-read­ing-lev­el books. An­oth­er trail blazed!

For sev­er­al years, Yvonne at­tend­ed both class and Read­ing Cir­cle, then tran­si­tioned to at­tend­ing the two PoS Read­ing Cir­cles, so was at Al­ta three times a week un­til her mid-sev­en­ties. She scaled down to two ses­sions and then as 80 ap­proached, she de­cid­ed she was ready to of­fi­cial­ly re­tire. In part, this was prompt­ed by weak­en­ing eye­sight due to di­a­betes.

Paula Lu­cie-Smith has this to say about Yvonne. “Through­out the 30 years I have known Yvonne, I have been im­pressed by both the ef­fort she puts in­to what­ev­er she takes on and her open­ness to new ex­pe­ri­ences. Hav­ing nev­er left the coun­try or ever had a pass­port be­fore, Yvonne will­ing­ly ac­com­pa­nied me to a stu­dent/tu­tor lit­er­a­cy con­fer­ence in St Lu­cia in 1994.

But what is most strik­ing about Yvonne is her big heart and her en­dur­ing in­ter­est in the well­be­ing of oth­ers. Once she dis­cov­ered Al­ta, she want­ed to share this with oth­ers and she spread the word of Al­ta up and down her hill, not just in of­fi­cial me­dia ap­pear­ances for Al­ta.

She be­came a one-woman wel­com­ing com­mit­tee for new stu­dents join­ing her class at Al­ta and chief or­gan­is­er of the end-of-term class par­ty, where she would lead the thanks to tu­tors and ex­press her joy in Al­ta, not just in words but with her sig­na­ture dance of praise and thanks. She would al­ways say, “Al­ta is fam­i­ly,” and she both lived this and helped to shape this.

Yvonne is a moth­er in the Bap­tist church and she be­came a moth­er to all at Al­ta, stu­dents and tu­tors. Nei­ther her gen­er­ous spir­it nor joy in liv­ing has been damp­ened in the slight­est by pover­ty and the hard knocks of life. The end-of-term class par­ty is a fix­ture through­out Al­ta, and her spir­it of giv­ing has in­fused Al­ta.

Yvonne now lives con­tent­ed­ly in Al­ta re­tire­ment at the grand age of 80, still very much con­nect­ed to her Al­ta fam­i­ly and she will ever be an Al­ta ad­vo­cate.