Neither Jezzanna Buchanan Vivet nor Levoy Paul ever imagined they would be educating inmates. And now that they are doing so, they wouldn’t give it up for the world.

Through human rights group Stand Up for Jamaica (SUFJ), Buchanan Vivet has been teaching English Language for three years and Paul, mathematics for just six months.

“There are students who could be my mother and my father that I teach, and I have some students who are my age, so it’s very versatile and I have to be able to manage that relationship between the various age groups. Usually, I’m a very vocal person. I like to interact with them and I like when they talk to me, especially because when it comes on to English, it’s not so much only writing but it’s being able to speak as well,” Buchanan Vivet told the Jamaica Observer in an interview.

“So, I do incorporate that a lot, but there are students who are more visual. There are students who prefer touching things so I do incorporate those things into the lesson. And I am looking to learn more from them than they can possibly learn from me. I love it.”

Paul, who has also been a mathematics and human and social biology teacher at Hydel High School since 2017, told the Sunday Observer that educating inmates has been a vast, yet manageable shift.

“We started in the middle of the pandemic… in a spike. My first class was with girls at South Camp. It was online and the students were quite receptive. The class went really smoothly. It was really interesting and I could see from the start that they were very enthused and they were looking forward to it. It was just a great time. They are really cool students,” he said.

“The transition has been seamless. The way I teach is just general. I try to be as clear as possible with everything. One of the greatest things is that with math, people are just always attentive because they want to grasp as much as possible. We grow up in a society where people always say they don’t like maths and I haven’t had an issue with that really. Everybody is receptive.”

And soon after, he met his students face-to-face at South Camp Juvenile Correctional and Remand Centre for Girls, St Catherine Adult Correctional Centre, and Tower Street Adult Correctional Centre, when in-person learning was facilitated in prisons.

“It’s been interesting. It’s still a learning experience because I only started meeting with them face-to-face recently. I don’t think I have the handle on that aspect as yet, especially with how things are in this time. In just a moment, you could hear that we can’t go in because they closed the classes.”

Buchanan Vivet, Paul and SUFJ as a whole recently benefited from an over $900,000 grant from Sandal’s Foundation to facilitate the organisation’s inmate Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) programme.

Executive director at Sandals Foundation Heidi Clarke outlined to the Sunday Observer that the bulk of the funding is for the teachers for their invaluable efforts.

For four months, both teachers are being compensated with $65,000 each, which amounts to a total of $520,000. In addition, ink amounting to approximately $54,000, books, dictionaries, geometry sets amounting to $154,000 and additional school supplies valued at $172,000.

“These guys do amazing work. Amazing work,” Clarke said of both teachers. “That’s why we’re always proud to see how we can support and where we can support. I always tell Carla that if I could volunteer more and do more, it would be within the prisons. I love that whole idea,” Clarke said.

Further, Buchanan Vivet, who described her first session with the inmates as “overwhelming and emotional,” told the Sunday Observer that she is currently preparing 11 students at South Camp Juvenile Correctional and Remand Centre for Girls.

“Right now, for this session sponsored by Sandals, we currently have 14 remedial females from the South Camp facility and I have roughly 11 students for the CSEC examination. I teach the remedial students as well as the CSEC students.”

She added, however, that they are divided into two sets.

“For both sets, what I do going in, is that I do a diagnostic test. I like to see where each individual is and then I’d be able to position myself in preparing the lessons to see where we need to go and how much work we actually do need to put in within the time frame that we have. For my remedial girls, I like starting from the basics… numbers and letters. Right now, we’re actually looking at alphabetical order, and ensuring that they know how to form their letters and everything properly. Once we have that set, then we can go on to everything else.

“And when it comes on to my CSEC ladies, really, I start with the basics as well. As basic as basic can get. We start with punctuation and ensuring that they remember that a capital letter starts your sentence, and you start away from the margin when you start a paragraph. Those basic things just to refresh and then we get into it.”

Paul employs a similar strategy, but said he tries to place more emphasis on the students who will be sitting the CSEC mathematics examination.

“I know I have a limited amount of time to try and complete the syllabus, so I try to focus on past papers. In doing so, you have a couple of them who grasp it really quickly. And the same way, for some, you have to slow it down and do it step by step. By doing it that way, I can pinpoint the weaknesses of certain students,” he told the Sunday Observer.

Both Buchanan Vivet and Paul expressed a lack of regret after taking on their current roles.

“A lot of them (students) felt like although they are here in class, they are here in this institution. So it was emotional because I felt like the first thing I needed to do was motivate. The first thing I needed to do was give them a little hope or reminder that this is not the end… this is not where it stops. That was the very first thing that came to me. But then it got a little bit exciting because after they were a little bit hyped up, I got to share and they were more willing to share and be open with me. There are no complaints,” Buchanan Vivet recalled.

Paul added: “I had no idea this is somewhere I would be able to serve. I am not sure anybody thinks of this but it is very rewarding. This experience just show you how much people can be affected by the stereotype, because people would say ‘Yah teach a one prison.’ But when you meet with these people, they are people like everybody else.”

“Say, for example, something happens on one of the wards with COVID, one of the first things they would do is shut down the schools. After meeting with them, they would be like ‘Sir, we nuh get fi have class.’ And you can see that they are really enthused, and they really look forward to learning. It’s a really big deal. It is beautiful. I don’t regret it.”

Meanwhile, Carla Gullotta, executive director at SUFJ, told the Sunday Observer that she was overwhelmed by the donation from Sandals Foundation.

“I am completely overwhelmed. We truly appreciate this Sandals Foundation partnership because it’s not only about having a donor. It’s also about having the pleasure to share the same vision with an organisation, specifically with Heidi Clarke, which has shown her personal interest, her personal participation by coming to visit the prisons. Working with her and the foundation is very important because we share the same goals,” she said.