Growing up in a third world country like St. Lucia, there were many challenges and fragments in the educational system. One of which was, 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 in my household, my parents not completing high school and the struggles we faced with the English language, I was still able to excel from elementary school through high school 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 when it was hard to focus sometimes, because of the noise that carried through, as all classrooms were in one building with just blackboards and desk to separate each classroom. My school had no computers, extremely limited school supplies but what we had were dedicated teachers who made a huge impact on my education. I also had extraordinarily little school supplies at home as my parents were not able to provide me with all the books needed for school, we had no internet access and to make matters worse the nearest library was fifteen miles away from home. Dispute all of this, I had always managed to engage in whatever limited reading or writing materials that were at available to me and 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 6th grade, when a friend and I were chosen to represent our school in an inter-regional school math competition, and we won! This competition is like the spelling bee competition 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 very same year I went on to attain the highest score after writing the common entrance exam; this was an exam to determine which high school you can attend. I was the only student 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 also 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 which was 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. And before you knew it, it was September and I was boarding the very first bus out of my small village, wearing proudly, my white and blue uniform along with my brand-new pair of Nike sneakers 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. My worries indeed came to light on that very first week of school; my fellow classmates made me feel like I did not belong because of how I spoke. My parents primarily spoke French Patois and that was our main home language. In Saint Lucia, most of the elders spoke French Patois except if they had some form of schooling, then they may know a little bit of English. My parents both dropped out school at an early age and as a result their English was extremely limited and therefore, we spoke mainly French patois at home. The English I knew was mostly what I had learnt at school. I remember accompanying my mom on multiple shopping trips to the city as she needed me to translate to the store attendants so they could better understand her. On the contrary, most of the kids at my 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 French Patois if any. 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 parents of course knew that staying at St. Joseph’s Convent Secondary school gave me the best shot at passing my CXC exams and insisted that I stayed there. CXC stands for Caribbean Examination Council and is a huge exam that Caribbean students write at the end of high school. I am glad I stayed because halfway through my first year, I really started enjoying my school; the ridicule had stopped, and I had formed many friendships, but it did impact my love or lack thereof 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 still able to obtain an “A” in English, along with seven other CXC 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 of my own, I cannot help but realize the vast differences in available resources that my kids have now that I did not have back then. My kids are attending high quality schools, they have internet access, a wider range of books and other reading materials, a lot more learning resources in their classrooms and libraries in their neighborhood. And I have often thought about how different my educational experience would be, had all these resources been available to me back in my country. 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 proudly share so much of this journey with my kids today.
