Ar­lene Wal­lace-Romero

When you have a new­born, every­one tells you to “sleep when the ba­by sleeps.” But one mid-morn­ing, in­stead of nap­ping, I found my­self watch­ing Com­mu­ni­ty Date­line, host­ed by the late Allyson Hen­nessy. That was the first time I heard about AL­TA. The seg­ment ex­plained that AL­TA of­fered free train­ing for vol­un­teer tu­tors, in ex­change for one year of ser­vice. I thought it sound­ed like a fair trade.

I had nev­er con­sid­ered that teach­ing adults to read was some­thing you could be trained to do. I’ve al­ways loved read­ing and learn­ing, and up un­til that point, I thought peo­ple ei­ther liked read­ing or they didn’t. It had nev­er oc­curred to me that many adults had nev­er learned to read at all.

So, on the ad­ver­tised stu­dent reg­is­tra­tion days in the first week of Sep­tem­ber, I vis­it­ed the Ari­ma Li­brary and signed up to be a tu­tor. Lit­tle did I know that this was the first step in a jour­ney that would span decades and lead to my ap­point­ment as CEO of AL­TA near­ly 30 years lat­er.

About a month af­ter sign­ing up, I re­ceived a call from AL­TA founder Paula Lu­cie-Smith invit­ing me to at­tend the AGM at the then-de­funct Queen’s Park Ho­tel, where AL­TA was tem­porar­i­ly housed.

The Ari­ma AL­TA class had been over­sub­scribed at stu­dent reg­is­tra­tion, and the tu­tors need­ed help im­me­di­ate­ly. At the AGM, I met the tu­tor I’d be sup­port­ing. She gave me a brief­ing on what I’d need to do, in­clud­ing my first ex­po­sure to syl­la­ble di­vi­sion rules—a con­cept I had nev­er en­coun­tered be­fore.

I of­fi­cial­ly com­plet­ed the tu­tor train­ing in 1997. It was an eye-open­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. At times, I even cringed, re­al­is­ing how much I didn’t know. Learn­ing how to teach some­one to read and write felt like en­ter­ing an en­tire­ly new world. It was hum­bling—and ex­cit­ing.

To un­der­stand how un­usu­al this shift was for me, you need to know that I had stud­ied en­gi­neer­ing at UWI and worked as a brew­er at Carib Brew­ery.

My world re­volved around yeast bio­chem­istry and man­u­fac­tur­ing ef­fi­cien­cy—not class­rooms or les­son plans. My on­ly cre­den­tials use­ful to AL­TA were my CXC pass­es in Eng­lish and Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture. AL­TA had quite a chal­lenge on its hands to trans­form me and oth­er vol­un­teers like me in­to spe­cialised lit­er­a­cy tu­tors.

As I set­tled in­to my first year of tu­tor­ing, I dis­cov­ered that teach­ing was my vo­ca­tion—par­tic­u­lar­ly teach­ing adults. I was hav­ing fun work­ing with the stu­dents. We were equals in the process of learn­ing. This dis­cov­ery led me to stay in­volved with AL­TA, tak­ing the many op­por­tu­ni­ties it of­fered to build my tu­tor­ing skills.

Af­ter two years of teach­ing Lev­el 2, I moved on to Lev­el 3 and was in­vit­ed to be­come a co­or­di­na­tor. That re­quired at­tend­ing tu­tor train­ing again, this time as an ob­serv­er. Over the years, each new role—train­er, work­place pro­gramme ad­min­is­tra­tor, board mem­ber—came with cus­tomised AL­TA train­ing and on each oc­ca­sion, I would learn some­thing new.

While I wasn’t con­tin­u­ous­ly ac­tive with AL­TA due to chang­ing fam­i­ly and work pri­or­i­ties, AL­TA was nev­er far from my mind. As I ad­vanced in my ca­reer and stud­ies, I be­came more fo­cused on con­tribut­ing to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment. I of­ten found my­self draw­ing on my AL­TA ex­pe­ri­ence to suc­ceed in oth­er roles.

My AL­TA jour­ney is one of ti­tles and tran­si­tions—from vol­un­teer tu­tor through to co­or­di­na­tor, train­er, work­place ad­min­is­tra­tor, board mem­ber and now CEO. But more than that, it’s a sto­ry of per­son­al dis­cov­ery. It has been fun, chal­leng­ing, and deeply re­ward­ing. Help­ing adults gain the lit­er­a­cy skills they need to trans­form their lives is work that mat­ters.

And my jour­ney isn’t over.

As CEO, I re­main com­mit­ted to AL­TA’s vi­sion: bring­ing pos­i­tive so­cial change in the Caribbean through im­proved lit­er­a­cy.

Are you in­ter­est­ed in join­ing a class, be­com­ing a vol­un­teer tu­tor or spon­sor?

Call 624-2582 or email al­ta­pos.tt@gmail.com

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