WHITE HILL, St Elizabeth

Veda Malcolm’s burning desire to see children learn is what has kept her in the classroom for almost four decades.

“I love teaching and that is what has kept me for the 39 years that I am involved in teaching,” Malcolm said. “One of my greatest desires is to see a child entering grade one and at the end of the school year that child is able to read and write, and to produce something on his or her own,” she added.

The first of six children born to parents Vincent Wilson and Inez Cunningham on January 3, 1948, Malcolm attended the White Hill Primary School before she successfully sat the Third Year Examination.

She returned to the school in 1966 to serve as a pre-trained teacher.

Two years later, she enrolled at St Joseph’s Teachers’ College in Kingston where she graduated in 1970 with a Diploma in Teacher Education. On graduating, she interned at the then Santa Cruz Elementary School, now Santa Cruz Primary and Junior High.

At the end of her internship, Malcolm returned to White Hill Primary, where she is now a senior teacher of Grade One students. Soft-spoken, unassuming and a devout Christian, Malcolm has also acted as the institution’s principal on two separate occasions.

During one of her stints as acting principal, she established the ‘Friday Lunch’ programme, in an effort to boost attendance at the school on Fridays.

“During my first time as acting principal, I introduced the ‘Friday Lunch’ because I realised that parents were not sending their children to school on Fridays because we were not providing lunch on that day,” Malcolm said, adding that the parents had said they could not afford to provide their children with lunches on Fridays.

Prior to the implementation of the programme, the institution was providing hot meals to students at a minimal cost from Mondays to Thursdays. Since ‘Friday Lunch’ was implemented, Malcolm said attendance at the school on Fridays had significantly increased.

Very active in the 4H movement, the teacher has also assisted in the preparation of students for Spelling Bee and Bible Quiz competitions, as well as sporting events. She has also provided GSAT lessons free of cost to students who could not afford it.

Malcolm told the observer west that in an effort to get her grade one students interested in her classes, she uses a raft of teaching aids.

“We play CDs, give them stories. We take them outside for games. We get them to dabble in paints and to sing songs between lessons. things to get them interested in school. And it works,” she said.

But the veteran educator has expressed disappointment at the lack of involvement of parents in their children’s education.

“I would like to see the parents become more involved in the children’s education,” she said. “For example, I would like to see parents coming to the school and say ‘here is my little daughter, how is she getting on? What can you do, teacher, in order to help her do better?’ But most time we are not seeing that, and I don’t think that they (parents) have any interest in their children’s education.”

Added Malcolm: “If we could get more parents involved in their children’s education and more involved in education as a whole, I believe that things would be better,” she said.

For her invaluable contribution to the field of education, Malcolm in 2005 received special recognition from the St Elizabeth chapter of the Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA) at its annual long service awards ceremony.

Apart from her work at White Hill Primary, she is integrally involved in the development of the White Hill and Glengoffe communities in St Elizabeth.

A supervisor at the Glasgow Community Development Committee (CDC) and a superintendent at the White Hill Seventh-day Adventist Church, Malcolm has been instrumental in getting a number of community projects off the ground.

She, however, bemoans the reluctance of community members to grasp the many opportunities available to them.

“When I look around and see people not doing anything and not making use of the available opportunities, it pains my heart,” Malcolm said. “Persons are just not making good use of the training opportunities that HEART/NTA, for example, offers,” she added.

Malcolm is married to Ralph Malcolm and has a daughter and son. Her daughter teaches at Maggoty High School in St Elizabeth.