By Amina Blackwood Meeks, Contributor
WHAT DOES it take to create greatness?
Sometimes, not much.
I recently had the opportunity to interact with two sets of young people, grappling with tremendous odds in order to achieve greatness, to build Jamaica.
Correctly put, I recently encountered two different sets of teachers working with and against all odds to inspire our children to become the events and people who are the subjects of textbooks. Their primary resources were love, kindness and patient encouragement.
LENNON HIGH CREATIVITY
Lennon High School sits on a hillside in mountainous Mocho in the parish of Clarendon. One block of classrooms is located on the top of one hill. Another classroom block sits at the foot of the hill. The area between the two is beautifully terraced and landscaped.
I gather that when the school was first built there was something of an auditorium. The needs of the community for classroom space has outgrown the original plans and now the auditorium has been converted into classrooms.
So where do the children gather as a group when required? It just so happens that the corridor of the building on the hillside is at the same level of the balcony of the building below the hillside. In steps ingenuity. Connect the two buildings with a tarpaulin for special occasions so that the area between them becomes the auditorium.
One set of senior students, staff and invited guests will sit on the corridor, which also serves as the performing area. The other set of senior students will sit on the
balcony.
Where do the junior students sit? They don't. They stand on the steps along the rails that lead from the ground up to the block of classrooms on the hillside.
For how long? Two and a half hours on the day I joined them for their 34th anniversary celebrations. Mr. Williams, the teacher who also doubled as emcee, sang and danced them into attentiveness without once having to threaten them with dire consequences. At the close of the event, the principal reminded them of how to exit the compound and how to walk on the road.
I left the school some 20 minutes or so after the event. Laden with goodies, might I add, in the good old Jamaican way stuff from the land, lots of it. The single file of students was still going through the gate, in high spirits.
Down the road, students were walking two abreast, as per instructions, no whips in sight. I drove by with such ease it could have been a guard of honour.
How did they accomplish this? I noticed that throughout the ceremony the children cheered every time the name "Lennon" was mentioned, the archdeacon Lennon, a great Jamaican for whom the school was named.
After qualifying himself in whatever discipline was mentioned as a challenge Mr. Lennon had spent time in Nigeria constructing houses, churches and schools. On his return to Jamaica he had donated the land for the school and made his transition before he could do the actual building.
There is no computer lab at Lennon. They could use one. The administrative staff would certainly welcome a machine which made their job easier as they endeavour to create greatness.
The academic staff work with with the resources of their heart, the example of Lennon and the support of the hardworking parents who also double as overburdened
taxpayers.
PENWOOD HIGH -
ON HOLY GROUND
Back in Kingston, I spent a Friday morning with Principal Austin Burrell and the staff and students at Penwood High School for their investiture service for the
student council.
The road on which the school is situated should not be called that. Better potholes have been blocked all across Jamaica by people demanding "justice".
I tried to get into the head of Mr. Heron, the guidance counsellor who met me on arrival and also functioned as emcee for the morning. What propels a brilliant handsome young man to accept a posting to Penwood and then choose to stay there?
What inspired him and Miss Orr, another young teacher and co emcee, to sing and dance the students to attention when it appeared that they might get restless?
Part of an ongoing relationship which lead the students to respond loudly and lustily "All the time" when Miss Orr called "God is good" instead of "please be quiet".
Call: "God is good ..."
Response: "All the time"
Call: "All the time..."
Response: "God is good".
And then she segued into, "Okay, next on the programme will be the presentation of badges to grade 7 monitors."
I thought I heard wrong when she said Grade Seven Laing but I didn't mistake Grade 7 Wint or McKinley or Rhoden or Holt.
The Grade Sevens are all named for the Olympians and cricketers who gave Olympic Gardens its name.
Part of the strategy for inspiring greatness in these students is the daily reminder that their school is located on holy grounds, a great foundation on which they must build. I believe they understood and meant all the implications when Mr. Heron later lead them into a singing of I believe I can fly, instead of saying "May I have your attention, please."
They might fly sooner, faster and farther if they could be provided with some basic resource and infracture. Would a nice road alter the atmosphere, the mood in which the Penwood students arrive at school each day?
Would the administrative staff have more time to love the students at Lennon into accomplishing if they didn't spend so much time fighting with a computer that has far outlived its useful life? Would the teachers be better equipped to prepare handouts, set exams/tests without having to write them on the blackboard?
PARTNERSHIP
What would Jamaica gain if businesses would partner schools in the communities in which they operate to help children achieve greatness by helping to provide some of the physical resources which somebody has just forgot to write into the curriculum?
For a start, it would gain businesses that help to create the caliber of labour force on which production thrives and business survives.
Tuesday October 14, 2003 is a good day to begin to help someone achieve greatness.
It is the day designated by the Build Jamaica Foundation as "Build Jamaica Day." It has been endorsed by the Jamaica Teachers Association.
Maybe on that day Lennon High School will receive at least one computer and maybe some hands and hearts would just unite to fix the environment within which Penwood School is located.
Our children might just learn that we pay more than lip-service to honour the cultural and sports heroes whom we set up as their inspiration. They might believe that if we truly love people who came from among them we also could genuinely love them and that might teach them to love themselves and honour the ingenuity of the adults who are entrusted with their care and upbringing for the most productive hours of the day for five to seven years of their lives.
Ultimately, we give ourselves reason to shout with them "God is good all the time all the time, God is good." All that and only that to Build Jamaica.
