A bank robbery redirected Dianne Henry’s career path from the banking sector to teaching and 22 years later she is grateful to her mother for taking the bull by the horns in ensuring that she re-entered the classroom.
Henry had already applied to a bank when a robbery occurred at the Guyana National Cooperative Bank (GNCB) at Anna Regina. The robbers killed policeman Richard Faikal and temporarily held a bank teller hostage.
“I did not choose to become teacher,” Henry said, laughing before she told the story.
In an interview with Stabroek Weekend, the English A, B and Communication Studies teacher said that following the robbery her mother decided that she was not taking up a job in the banking sector.
“She was like, ‘you must be crazy’ and she applied for a teaching job and immediately signed me up to attend the teacher’s college,” she said.
Initially she was upset, Henry said, as she wanted to work at the bank, “because I just had this idea that I will wear short skirts.” She laughed as she revealed her initial motivation to work in the banking sector.
“I am very happy that my mother actually took the initiative [because] I really like teaching,” she said.
Hundreds of children have now passed through her hands and she is sure that she has impacted their lives because, according to her, she not only loves the job, but she always pays keen attention to individual children.
She now works at the country’s premier school, Queen’s College (QC), but her teaching career began at Anna Regina Secondary, her Alma Mater, and she was later seconded to Cummings Lodge before moving to QC ten years ago. Now she teaches English A and B (Language and Literature) to all of the forms and Communication Studies to Upper Six.
Retracing her career path, Henry said at college she majored in English and minored in Mathematics and she recalled that in secondary school she was in the science stream though she did not do as well in the science subjects as she wanted. But she was always good at English.
Good mentors
While Henry will not boast of being the best teacher, she said she strives to do her best and she has been good at what she does because of the many mentors she has had over the years.
At Anna Regina, Ms Judy Lall was an English teacher who mentored the then 17-year-old Henry when she commenced her teaching career. She guided her on the marking of the register, how to get children involved in extra and co-curricular activities and to not just be a teacher who just taught, but to get involved in her students’ lives. Lall and a few other teachers at the school, including her husband, mentored Henry about making a difference wherever she went.
“Those are some of the people who actually moulded me. There were tons of people at Anna Regina who were good role models as teachers and many of them might not have had degrees, but they had the ethics and values of good teachers. They were the ones who motivated me to try to be one of the best teachers,” Henry said.
Her mother and three aunts, who were also teachers, played their roles.
“They were all dedicated to the job and wanted to make a difference. My mother was always looking after people’s children and I think I have the same ethics,” she continued.
“If you are going to be a teacher, you always have to look out for other people’s children,” she further said.
Later, Henry was seconded to Cummings Lodge as she read for a degree in English with a minor in Communications at the University of Guyana. She said that while there were also some good teachers at that school, unfortunately, she concentrated on ensuring that she did well in her studies and as such the school did not get best of her.
“But I did try to make a difference everywhere I stopped, and today some children still remember me, so I believe I did make an impact.”
On completion of her studies, she returned to Anna Regina and then with more time on her hands, Henry said, she used it to be involved in more activities with her students. Reading is important to her and she recalled initiating a savings system with the children. At the end of the term they would travel to the Book Foundation and buy books; they even had a little library in the classroom. She also used some of the money to have a social activity for the students at the end of each term.
She encouraged the children to enter essay competitions and later when she moved on to QC, she introduced the children to this as well. She recalled that while she was happy to move to QC, she was also sad to leave Anna Regina because of all the people she knew at the school, many of whom were like her mother and had mentored her. She also had lots of friends.
“It was like you’re leaving your family and going into the unknown,” she said of her departure.
She ensured that she read the newspaper and whenever she saw an invitation for entry into essay competitions, Henry said, she encouraged the children to enter.
“I think one of the major things, you want to create rounded children, let them have a balance,” she said.
Once again, as was the case with Anna Regina, Henry found many mentors and one of them was well known teacher Gem Rohlehr, whom she described as a traditionalist who had a set value system.
“…Many times, most of the things she said were helpful, but sometimes it was how she said it. She was one of the persons who mentored me to teach Communication Studies and it has been a very interesting experience,” she said.
She found that Rohlehr knew the system well and she gave guidance. Even though sometimes it came out very harsh and critical, “she meant well,” Henry said.
“She has a vested interest in education, and you can tell.”
Then there was Miss Hollingsworth, the then acting principal, who in her own way encouraged Henry along with other teachers who always allowed her to help when she offered and never “rejected my help and say you can’t do this. One of the good things about the education system in all the schools I worked with was whenever I wanted to get the school or the children involved in various extra co-curricular activities, they were pretty encouraging. They facilitated me and basically motivated me.”
The present QC headmistress, Mrs Jackie Benn-Ralph, has also been an encourager of Henry as she recalled it was the headmistress who motivated her to take up teaching Communication Studies as at the time, she was hesitant about the move. Benn-Ralph suggested that she sit in Rohlehr’s classes, which she did, and this helped her tremendously.
Resources
As a teacher, Henry said, she does not wait for resource material to be found by others for her.
“If there are resources out there, I go find them. So, if there are textbooks to be bought, I use my own money and buy them. I don’t wait on the system. The problem is you always have to delve into your own money to buy it [because] if you wait on the system to give you these things you might never get them or a term might go before you get them,” the teacher said.
She is of the opinion that as a teacher one has to make a lot of financial sacrifices if one wants to be good at what one does.
Told that some teachers might be unable to do the same, Henry noted that she is also unable to do it at lot of times as she is renting an apartment in Georgetown and has to finance everything for herself.
“… I try to manage because if I don’t get the resources then I can’t be the good teacher that I want to be,” she pointed out.
“But I agree, some people can’t do it because of the different commitments that they have,” she added.
Her biggest motivation as a teacher is when her students excel, whether in academics or extra-curricular activities.
“I find joy that they do but for them to do it most times you have to invest in them,” she added, pointing out that when there are essay competitions, she often has to drop in the essays and when they need help she has to find the time in her classroom time as there is none provided outside of the class.
The Deputy Head of QC Ms Lenise Parker also has a lot of faith in Henry and has encouraged her. And there are the older teachers like Ms Chandrakale Bhoj, who is a very dedicated teacher and who is always willing to give a younger teacher like Henry advice and make recommendations.
As a teacher one has to invest in the students and ever so often, Henry said, you will find an exceptional child. One such student was Omari Joseph, who, she said, always took up the challenge of entering the essay competitions she suggested. She recalled that he wrote from form one and as such even when the notice was short, he still took up the challenge.
“He wrote every single competition that I brought, he never said no and trust me there were a lot,” she said laughing. “Because I always find them. I would give him deadlines even if it is the next day he would write because he had this passion for writing.”
One competition that they won and of which Henry is extremely proud was the Eric Williams Foundation essay competition in Trinidad. When she suggested it to the sixth form students, Joseph was the only one who agreed to do it. He won the competition and by then he was in Trinidad studying and also won himself a trip to St Lucia and a cash prize as well. The school also got the bragging rights for a year and had the plaque, with the names of all of the winning schools.
It was posted to QC by the foundation and it will remain there for another year, as this year another of Henry’s students, Diego Barnett, won the competition.
“Those are the things that motivate me to see my children do really well and excel even in the Caribbean,” she said.
The only downside in teaching for Henry is the lack of resources and dealing with challenging parents. She was quick to add, however, that she has not had many of those as once the parents realized that she had their children’s best interest at heart they had no issues.
“I can’t remember like really bad relations with parents…,” she said.
Dr Joyce Jonas
Henry credits Sunday Stabroek’ CSEC English columnist Dr Joyce Jonas as one of the persons who honed her love for English, even though she never taught her. She did it through the newspapers, radio, and the letters Henry wrote her as a schoolchild.
“I used to listen to her radio programmes, and I used to follow her pieces religiously as a child. That is how I became passionate about English. I found it interesting. I used to buy the newspaper and listen every night,” she said.
And then Henry started to write letters to Dr Jonas. “She would return my letters with all the corrections and then she would write a little note. That helped me as a child growing up, to be a better English student because I was able to see my errors and I got a Grade One in English A and B,” she said.
“My love for English all started with Dr Jonas because she was really patient, and she reached out to somebody she didn’t know. I was just this student writing from Essequibo,” she added.
Up to today, Henry uses Dr Jonas’s columns to assist with teaching her students as she finds them to be good resource material.
“I collect them vigilantly every Sunday because those resource materials have helped me to become a better teacher,” she said.
Henry said she would encourage parents that if they want their children to do any extra work in English to get the newspaper and use Dr Jonas’s CSEC page. Should this be done consistently for two years leading up to CSEC, Henry said, the child would cover the syllabus.
“I have piles of those pages in sections, one for the short stories, one for poems and novels and another for plays and I store them in different folders,” she shared.
“They are pretty helpful for any teacher who wants to be an English teacher,” she suggested.
Henry is grateful for the assistance she received from the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Anna Regina, particularly from Clement Clarke and his family. She recalled that the church assisted all the children in their education and the Clarkes played a vital role. The Pathfinder Club of the church also helped her to become a disciplined individual and to be kind. She recalled, too, that as a child she taught her friends and was known for telling them stories from books she read.
As she looks to the future, Henry said she would have it no other way than to help mould the nation’s children.
