Growing up in a third world country like St. Lucia, there were many challenges and fragments in the educational system. One of which was that there were no national policies on early childhood development Many kids, including myself had extraordinarily little cultural capital at our disposal. Despite all these extreme challenges, I was still able to excel from elementary school through college and make myself and my parents proud.
As I mentioned before I was not fortunate enough to attend quality preschool in my country and therefore could not receive all the literacy and numeracy skills needed to form a foundation for my education. My mom dropped out of high school and was able to pass on the little knowledge that she knew but that too was extremely limited. My first official educational experience was kindergarten and as an eager learner I did not let anything stop me. I started reading early on and before long excelled in every subject, even if at times it was hard to focus because of the noise that carried though, as all classrooms were in one building with just blackboards and desk to separate each classroom. I loved to learn, and it showed. Although my parents were not able to afford internet or give me all the books needed and the library being 15 miles away, I had always managed to engage in whatever reading or writing materials that were at my disposal. When I couldn’t find a good book to read, I would spend hours practicing math problems. I always had that thirst for knowledge and having little to no resources did not deter me.
Now that I live in the United States and having school aged kids myself, I cannot help but realized the vast differences in available resources that my kids have now that I did not have back then. And I have often thought about how different my education would be, had all these resources been available to me.
Although I did not have the best start with education and truly little resources at my disposal, I was still able to excel throughout my educational journey in St. Lucia.
