IN 2001, more than 300 Jamaican teachers were recruited by the New York City Board of Education to teach Caribbean and other minority students in some of New York’s poorest schools.

Four years later, their stories tell of personal achievements and service that is making long term impact on their new schools and community.

Judith Hall, 41, left her job as Spanish teacher at Anchovy High School, St James to teach Spanish to 10th and 11th graders at Bronx Technical High in New York, a school categorised as a ‘SURR’ – School Under Registration Review – meaning it is in danger of being closed down, usually because of under-performance.

She and other teachers get an additional US$3,400 a year bonus as incentive to remain at the school.

Shortly after her posting at Bronx Technical, Hall was named head of the Spanish Department. Schooled at Shortwood Teachers College and the University of the West Indies, Hall’s incentive for leaving Jamaica was a desire, she said, for a change in her lifestyle.

That lifestyle change, as it turns out, is having an impact on more than herself.

In the last three years, Hall has seen each batch of her students achieving 100 per cent passes in the Regents – a high school leaving exam similar to the CXC exams. “There are half a dozen Jamaican teachers here and what our being here has done for the Jamaican kids is, it has given them a new sense of self,” she said.

Hall also speaks for the teaching staff of 30.

As head of their teachers’ union she works as an arbitrator in disciplinary matters, representing them in grievance procedures, and ensuring that there is transparency and full disclosure in the actions and decisions of the principal and other senior staff.

Roy Reid’s account is equally inspiring. The 41-year-old once lived in Zion Hill Lane in Central Village where guns barked frequently between police and gunmen.

He managed, he said, to avoid a life of crime, but Reid insists that he owes his accomplishments to those who did tote guns.

When he arrived in the United States, Reid was assigned to a middle school, but he preferred high schools.

After changing jobs four times, he settled down at Arthur Somers Intermediate School in Brooklyn and after less than a year, became head of their Mathematics Department.

Arthur Somers was just getting out of SURR status at the time, he said. The school has a majority 90 per cent black population and most of the students’ families are on welfare and live in government subsidised or ‘Section 8’ housing.

Shortly after he started, Reid discovered several used laptops, projectors and other computer equipment left abandoned in the school library. Apparently, no one knew how to use them and some needed repairs. He took advantage of the opportunity and ‘borrowed’ them, doing the repairs himself, to use with his 7th and 8th graders.

Each lesson became a Powerpoint presentation, where he used animation to help explain basic Mathematical concepts.

He motivated students by including their photographs in his presentation. Such methods were new and exciting to his pupils, sparking heightened interest and a willingness to get homework and classwork done.

Since then, their math scores have been “steadily improving.”

“The principal was excited and asked me to show the other teachers how to use it (Powerpoint),” he said.

Shortly after, Reid was drafted into a new position as staff developer and department head, teaching teachers instead of students.

The 2001 NYC board’s recruitment drive, which caused a drain on Jamaica’s teaching stock, occurred on the heels of a government decision to cut a similar number of teachers from the island’s public payroll.

But the massive recruitment efforts by British and US agencies, which continued over into 2002, sparked panic among public officials, who were worried that the continued brain drain would hurt Jamaica’s education system.

The upshot was that the government through the education ministry, began to put pressure on the relevant British and US authorities to cut back its recruitment efforts in the country.

New York, however, welcomed the Jamaican teachers with open arms. Most of them, on arrival, were housed in hotels and some stayed with family members while they became oriented to their new schools and neighbourhoods.

The NYC board of education found that Jamaican teachers had far more credits in their training than their US counterparts and therefore felt obliged to pay them better wages.

They gave them salaries of just under US$40,000 per year ($2.5m) which was nearly four times what some of them used to earn.

The teachers saw many similarities between their Jamaican schools and the elementary, middle and high schools they were assigned to – the children were from low income families; their school buildings were old and in need of repairs; and there was an urgency to up the desperately low performance in students whose parents were hardly at home and seldom showed up at open school events.

The differences in language, cultural perspectives and disciplinary procedures made the adjustment process a challenge. A few could not handle it and returned to Jamaica.

Some did not receive satisfactory ratings by their schools and eventually their contracts were terminated. But most of them, determined to succeed, and motivated by the salaries and opportunities for personal advancement, stuck it out.

It was especially difficult for Language Arts teacher and former librarian at Titchfield High School in Portland, Sheila Cousins-James. The mother of three who teaches seventh to ninth graders at a junior high school in Manhattan, had an emotional breakdown within the first week.

“Initially, I had problems adjusting,” James said.

“When we came there was a lot of ‘dos and don’ts’. You can’t touch the kids. You can’t talk to them a certain way. We weren’t sure how to deal with them. At one point I cried. I didn’t think I could make it.”

No matter how hard she tried, she simply couldn’t get the children to pay attention. They turned their backs and ignored her. The situation overwhelmed her, she broke down crying before walking out.

Eventually the principal helped her calm down and spoke to the class. When she returned they seemed worried that she would leave.

“Oh, you made the teacher cry,” Cousins-James reported the students as saying.

“She is going to leave. No teacher wants to stay with us!”

Surprisingly that episode did what James in her own efforts could not. Things suddenly changed for the better.

“Now it’s really different,” she said. “I’m more confident. I command a presence. I know how to keep them quiet. For me it is being consistent.”

In her efforts at motivation, James observed a striking difference between these children and Jamaican students.

“Here, they have a nonchalant attitude. Most of them are not even thinking of aspiring to college and I look back at kids in Jamaica and some want to be doctors and lawyers,” she said.

“For most of them, it’s the welfare cheque and they think that’s it. They are not motivated…. “I use my story to tell them I didn’t have much; that I was barefooted going to school; I walked four miles everyday, hungry often; and I saw my mother struggling and I didn’t want that to happen to me.”

Hall has observed the same.

“I’ve never met children so needy as the ones here, in terms of deficiency in their family life,” she said.

“These are latch key kids – parents leave early and are not at home until they are asleep. There are all kinds of emotional issues.”

None of the three teachers interviewed by the Sunday Observer had plans to stay in the US indefinitely.

In fact, they are making plans to return home, but like Jamaican immigrants before them, they worry about the news reports which seem to suggest that crime has risen further out of control.

For the time being they feel rewarded. Their immigration problems last year – when their J-1 visa expired and they delayed in applying for the H1-B which would allow them to work – have been resolved and the issue is behind them.

Now, not only do they have the working visas of between two and three years duration, but lawyers from the NYC board last month filed for their green cards and for work permits for their spouses and children.

At the same time, their salaries are climbing.

Now they earn between US$55,000 and US$63,000 per year. Some of the recruits are completing masters degrees and sending their children through college and university in the United States, some without taking loans.

Cousins-James said in the four years, she had paid off her students loan in Jamaica, a commercial bank loan, most of her government bond, and bought a quarter acre of land in Portland.

“There’s’ a sense of achievement,” she said. “In just that four years, I was able to do so many things. I achieved what I couldn’t in a lifetime in Jamaica.”

Hall just weeks ago completed payment on her house in Montego Bay and will complete her masters degree this November.

“Teachers are really taking off in a way they would not have been able to (in Jamaica),” she said. “Some are doing post-graduate degrees, some are being asked to be leadership coaches.”

She dreams about coming back to Jamaica to teach at a college or university, while Cousins-James plans to study forensics to be able to work with the security forces in Jamaica.

“Going back is not contingent on me amassing wealth here,” says Hall. “For me, I’m here to embrace all the educational opportunities I can.”

editorial@jamaicaobserver.com