Rewards of teaching SIXTY-ONE-YEAR-OLD Horace Richards, principal of the Ocho Rios High School, has been teaching since he was 18 and as he prepares to leave the system at the end of this year, he says he has no regrets. Mr. Richards went into the profession at a time when there were many male teachers, which made it so much more challenging. For three years he taught as a pre-trained teacher while he 'tested the waters' and 38 years later, he is still there. "Those days as a pre-trained teacher were so much different. You had to make up a lesson plan and this was vetted by the principal so you had to know what you were doing," he recalled. After leaving Mico Teachers College he taught at the Petersfield All-Age School in Westmoreland before moving on to Content All-Age and later to May Pen Senior School. After he married his wife, also a teacher, Richards went back to Westmoreland where he took up his first headmaster post at Enfield All-Age. After several other stints , including being an education tutor for Youth Service, he got a big break when he was offered a scholarship to Scotland to study educational administration in Edinburg. After his return to Jamaica he was made the vice principal at Guys Hill and then later principal at Port Maria Secondary School. In 1992 he took up the post of principal of Ocho Rios High and has been there ever since. "Those years have been very rewarding, especially when you see the students you have helped to achieve their goals in life. You can't help but get a feeling of pride when you see them," he said. As for those students who may have thought that he was too much of a disciplinarian, Richards said it gives him pleasure to see that he helped push them towards accomplishing something. "They may have thought I was too hard but now they come to appreciate what I had done," he said. Richards said he always wanted to be either a teacher or a preacher and that he got the opportunity to do both. While he also holds a number of positions on the executive post of the Jamaica Teachers Association, he says he misses the classroom.
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