The following autobiography of my teaching career will explain the nature and purpose and types of teaching roles that I functioned in between 1993 and 2017. My teaching background is as diverse and transformative, personally, as an educator as the outlook that I have come to embrace in teaching and learning. Each phase contributed an indelible lesson to my overall teaching philosophy.
During the first phase of my career between 1993 and 1996, I served as a teacher of French and Spanish at St. Joseph’s Convent, San Fernando, a denominational prestige school, for girls. During this phase of my career,I drew on my own experience as a learner and experimented with diverse modalities for learning, especially drama, rap music in French,and calypsos in Spanish, as would appeal to learners between the ages of 11- 15. At that time, I had not studied Linguistics but, instinctively, I understood that teaching Foreign Languages as a compulsory part of the curriculum, would require some creativity and extrinsic motivation. Moreover, teaching foreign languages to learners who receive mixed linguistic input of Creole and Standard English in the multilingual English setting of Trinidad and Tobago, required capitalising on culture and multiculturalism, as a medium of enhancing learning.
Next, at Niherst School of Languages between 1996 and 1997, I became acquainted with English for Specific Purposes, notably for diplomats, air traffic controllers, professional and general academic contexts. I learned the design principle of backward design, that is, working with the idea of a learning outcome embodied in the type of end-learner I visualized, in terms of skill sets and behaviours. My clients were Venezuelan and French Caribbean students.Later, at Maple Leaf International School, I encountered similar linguistic diversity and I found that my postgraduate training in TESOL enabled task analysis for the specific purposes, as an intermediate level Language Arts, French and History teacher, as well as high school Spanish teacher.My exposure to the Ontario Curriculum, assessors from that jurisdiction, and Curriculum Nights, gave me broad insight into the connection between the classroom and the wider reach of inclusive education, and the international and social impact of my teaching and learning practices. Moreover, mixed abilities and special needs resided in the same space, where educational psychologists and (IEPS) were also commonplace. I left this institution on the grounds of marriage, but my real infatuation was with education and the desire to apply my Masters in International Teaching, acquired while in service at Maple Leaf, to the tertiary level.
I got my opportunity as an Assistant Lecturer at the University of the West Indies for one year in a supportive role to lecturers in Communication Studies and Linguistics, which came with some course administration for introductory courses, for 200 students and teaching EFL for academic purposes, in 2000 to 2001. At this point, I was beginning to be armed to function in diverse language and education-related settings. The politics of academia as requiring a terminal degree led me to begin my PHD in 2001. The intervening experience of teaching French from Forms One to Six, the equivalent of Grade 7 to Grade 12, from 2001 to 2002,at Bishop Anstey High School prepared me for stratified learning levels and outcomes that I would encounter later, teaching at three different tertiary institutions of learning between 2007 and 2013. These were the Trinidad and Tobago Hospitality Institute, UWI School of Business and Applied Studies and University of the Southern Caribbean.My average class size was forty students and learner backgrounds varied very much like my Maple Leaf Experience, because the democratisation of tertiary education had hit Trinidad like a storm. This was since The UNESCO (2000) Dakar Protocol of Education for All in 2000.
Between 2003 and 2007, however, I experienced the secondary education wave of Education for All, as a curriculum and teaching and learning specialist, which took me in the direction of educational administration and project management. In this capacity, I was the reporting officer in the project unit on behalf of the Inter-American Bank, in collaboration with the Curriculum Unit of the Ministry of Education.Many part-time extensions later, I completed my PHD subsequent to being re-hired in 2013, at the University of the West Indies.
Even while at the university, I continue my infatuation with socially relevant education through research and social interventions in education. My latest project is to undertake the teaching of English to 150 refugees, in Trinidad and Tobago, a fraction of the 400, which are currently seeking asylum here. Through this initiative, I am working towards a community engagement model which will give the teacher trainees in the TESOL Programme, that I coordinate, the opportunity to teach and work alongside, social workers, psychologists, animators and literacy specialist in fulfilling the diverse needs of this precarious group. Here end my story of diversity and transformation in education for the time being.