Unit 1 – 1st Draft

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 and another one was that many kids including me had truly little cultural capital at our disposal. Despite the lack of preschool, limited financial resources available in my household and my parents not completing high school, 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 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 through, 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 nearest library being 15 miles away, I had always managed to engage in whatever limited reading or writing materials that were at my disposal. When I could not find a good book to read, I would spend hours practicing math problems and as a result math become my favorite subject in school. My fondness memory and one of my proudest moments was in 6^th grade in elementary school, when a friend and myself were chosen to represent our school in an inter-regional math competition and we won. This competition is like the spelling bee competition here in the US but instead of spelling words you solve math problems. My entire school was overjoyed as it was the first time in an awfully long time that my school had won any competition. It was indeed a proud moment for La Resource Combined School.  In was at the end of this same year I attained the highest score after writing the common entrance exam; this was an exam to determine which high school you can attend, and I was the only one from my school to attend the most prestigious high school in the country. This achievement did not only make myself and my parents proud but my entire community.

The news about my high brought lots of excitement in my household of course but for my parents it also brought about a lot of worry and anxiety. I knew that they were thinking about how they could afford to send me to this high school all the way in the city. How could they afford not just uniforms and books but now they had to also think of transportation cost to and from school? My parents both dropped out of high school at an early age, my dad worked as an automobile mechanic while my mom worked on a farm. The money that they brought home was barely enough to sustain our family of four. But With help from other family members my parents were able to afford me this great educational opportunity, they indeed made it happen. And before you knew it, it was September and I was boarding the very first bus out of my village, wearing my white and blue uniform along with my brand-new pair of Nikes from my Godmother and carrying my new Jan sport backpack. I left my village on my forty-minute journey overly excited but also extremely nervous about what this new endeavor would bring.

High school for me came with a lot of challenges. There I was, in a new city, new school, no familiar faces except one other friend, who was my elementary school principal’s daughter. I had not mentioned before but my parents primarily spoke French Patois and that was our main home language. In Saint Lucia, you would find that most older people spoke mainly French Patois except if they had some form of schooling, they may know a little bit of English. My parents knew little English and therefore we spoke mainly French patois at home, the English I knew was what I had learnt at school. Most of the kids at this high school were from the city so they spoke a little differently from how we spoke in the countryside because they spoke mostly English at home and were exposed to little if any at all, French Patois. I remember being one of those who were constantly being ridiculed at school when I read because I did not sound like my other “city” friends. This was very embarrassing and stressful for me and at one point I thought about having my parents transfer me to a high school closer to home. My mom also would have a hard time communicating with store attendants in the city when she went shopping and I remember at times I would have to accompany her on those shopping trips in order to translate so that the store attendants would better understand her. Halfway through my first year I was beginning to enjoy my school; the ridicule had stopped, and I had many friends, but it did impact my love or lack there of for English Composition.  I always found it extremely difficult to come up with creative ideas to write about and how to correctly formulate my sentences in proper standard English. Although the way I felt about English never really changed throughout high school, I was able to obtain an “A” in my CXC exams, along with seven other passes at the end of high school. I still struggle today when I am faced with putting a writing piece together even after all these years.

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. My kids now have internet access, wider range of books and other reading materials, a lot more learning resources in their classrooms, libraries in their neighborhood. 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 and I have been able to share so much of this journey with my kids today.