Leonardo Blair, Enterprise Reporter
Coldrex Gordon holding the Chairman's Cup at Charlie Smith High. - PHOTO BY LEONARDO BLAIR
Today The Gleaner concludes its five-part series of articles looking at the heavy price paid by inner-city students trying to learn in schools located in the heart of war-torn South St. Andrew. The series, which began on Sunday October 9, follows Enterprise Reporter Leonardo Blair as he relives the nightmares and the success stories as told by students, teachers and administrators at the Trench Town and Charlie Smith High Schools. While the series ends today, the lives of these three children continues against many odds.
MAYBE IT was the air from Hagley Gap, St. Thomas that bequeathed Coldrex Gordon with an unflinching drive to succeed before he left to join his mother in Kingston at 13.
Maybe it was the prayer of his strong Christian grandmother who begged God to bless him despite living in the jungle of one of Kingston's toughest neighbourhoods. Maybe.
Whatever it was, it worked. Despite the odds he faced as a student at Charlie Smith High, Coldrex blazed a record which few students have managed to muster at the school set in the heart of a war-ravaged community. In 2003 he graduated from Charlie Smith with the chairman's award for academic excellence. He passed seven CXC subjects and five of them with distinction. A wonder at Charlie Smith.
FIRST-YEAR UWI STUDENT
Coldrex then went on to Ardenne High School where he joined the school's sixth form and qualified himself in Advanced Level subjects while a member of the school's track team. Now a first year student at the University of the West Indies, reading for the Bachelor of Science degree in accounting, Coldrex is living a dream. From the distant Hagley Gap, he first had dreams of attending Charlie Smith because of their titanic football team.
Coming to Charlie Smith as an eighth grade student was a big change for Coldrex. But not big enough to influence good habits he had learned from a strong Christian background and Hagley Gap's rustic charm.
"It was pretty awkward at first. I never had any friends and that's one of the reasons I focused on my schoolwork," he says.
Coldrex simply focused, and his focus brought him fame. In his class, he quickly became the icon of possibility with superior grades. Many of his classmates were satisfied with grades of 20 and 30 per cent, but Coldrex knew how to dream, he knew how to set goals and he knew how to discipline himself to achieve those goals. Many of his classmates soon started coming to him for help.
INVOLVED IN SPORTS
By the time Coldrex reached the ninth grade, he had many friends and those friends helped him to understand the school community so much that he got involved in sports.
"I was here at school late and I could walk from school to Maxfield where I lived," says Coldrex. He was one of just the handful of students who took advantage of a homework centre which used to be operated by the Kingston Restoration Company (KRC) in the community. It's no longer there, maybe the volunteers got scared.
It seemed Coldrex had found his rhythm. He had created a new beat in his newly adopted community and his skills were making room for him. But it was not always safe for Coldrex.
"I remember one morning, I was coming to school, I was robbed of my watch when I was in the eighth grade. It affected me a lot," he says.
But caring teachers like vice-principal Valerie Hibbert helped him a lot too.
"He is very humble and he selected his friends very well," says Ms. Hibbert. "He would go without lunch just to complete his assignments, he would even come to school without lunch."
Coldrex is now giving back to his old school, as a teaching assistant, while pursuing full-time studies at UWI. He also wants to have the homework centre restarted in the community as, since the programme ended, Charlie Smith's CXC performances have plummeted.
"I think the Ministry of Education needs to invest more in these schools. The basic things you see in other schools, you don't see here and I saw those differences when I went to Ardenne," he says.
