TASHANE Haynes-Brown is beaming after receiving the Master’s award for excellent academic performance from the University of the West Indies School of Education.

Haynes-Brown had the highest overall GPA in the Master’s programme for 2012. Her focus was teacher education and teacher development, a task she completed while pregnant, serving as a full-time foreign language teacher at Calabar High School, and being a wife and also mother of two other children.

Haynes-Brown said pursuing her Master’s was one of the most draining and challenging periods of her life, but she would have it no other way.

“It was hard work because I had my family. There were late nights and I had to wait until the children were sleeping,” said the wife of Barrington and mother to Analese, five, Tahliya, four and David, now 11 months.

She received her award on Teachers’ Day at the 2013 School of Education Graduate Research Seminar & Awards Ceremony at the Mona Visitors’ Lodge.

“My days would start at midnight when everyone was sleeping. That went to five o’clock some mornings. Then, from then, I would get the kids ready for school, drop them off, go to work, leave work, head to UWI, then finish UWI around 7:00 or 8:00 o’clock,” Haynes-Brown aid.

She said it was mainly her family support system, which consisted of her husband, mother Norma and father Lloyd, that got her through the programme.

“My husband would do all the chores. My mom would say, ‘don’t worry about the children for this weekend because I know you have assignments to do’,” the educator told Career & Education.

Copping the top award with a straight A profile was something she said she never expected.

“I thought I was just probably scraping through or something, but when they said ‘You are the only one with that profile,’ I felt real good,” she said.

Haynes-Brown said she was extremely passionate about education and it is for this reason that she chose to become a teacher — now nine years at Calabar.

“I love teaching the boys and I believe our men are our future. They are supposed to be our leaders. Whatever I can do to make it possible for our men to enrol in university, I am willing to do that,” she said.