By Miranda La Rose
When she left school some 30 years ago, Esther Isaacs-Roberts of Karaudarnau Village in South Rupununi had no certificates. What she did possess was a love for reading, and a passion to learn and to pass on her knowledge. Now 45 years old, she is a trained, graduate teacher.
Isaacs-Roberts began her working life as volunteer library assistant, then spent several years as an acting teacher. Once she became a trained primary teacher she went on to secure an education management certificate through a one-year programme facilitated by the National Centre for Educational Resource Development (NCERD), a bachelor’s degree in education, specialising in literacy from the University of Guyana (UG) and is now pursuing a master’s degree in education management and supervision at UG.
“I grew up in a village with no technology. During my leisure time at Karaudarnau Primary School I read a lot of books. That was how I built my language skills in English. My parents were both Wapichan speakers and English is their second language,” Isaacs-Roberts told Stabroek Weekend.
“I went to university with the aim of helping my colleagues and students. I also wanted the coastland experience and to merge it with the hinterland experience for a better education for our Indigenous People. I speak the Wapichan language fluently. When I teach in the classroom, even with teachers, if they don’t understand in English, I explain it to them in Wapichan and when I see their faces light up I know they understand. I use the bilingual approach in the classroom. There is a vision I see beyond that monthly salary,” she said.
Shortly after she wrote the Secondary Schools Entrance Examinations (SSEE) at Karaudarnau Primary, Isaacs-Roberts’ family moved to Lethem which is about four to five hours of driving by road from Karaudarnau.
She attended St Ignatius Secondary School until grade nine when her parents returned to Karaudarnau because they had missed their way of life which included farming, hunting, fishing and community gatherings.
The only girl among four siblings, she said, “They took me back with them because they were afraid I would get pregnant etc. The headmaster of St Ignatius Secondary did not want to transfer me to the community high class of Karadarnau Primary and I never got the chance to write the CXC [Caribbean Examinations Council] examinations.”
When she was 15 years and still at school, she was one of three people recommended to be voluntary library assistants for Karaudarnau Village Library that was established in the late 1990s with the help of Guyana Book Foundation. She worked in the afternoons after school for the quarterly stipend of $9,500 initially.
She had written the Secondary Schools Proficiency Examinations but never got her results.
The year she started working at the library, she was in a bull-and-cart accident and fractured her ankle, which saw her spending some time in Lethem Hospital. After recovering she went back to work at the library as an assistant librarian. “That was how I actually left school at 15 going into 16. Eventually, the stipend was increased to $15,000 a quarter,” she recalled.
The other two assistants who started out with her dropped out and Isaacs-Roberts was left in charge of the community library from May 2005 to 2012 when she left to start training to become a teacher.
Even before she took charge of the library in 2005, the then headmaster of Karaudarnau Primary John Sutherland had encouraged her to teach. She was hesitant at first.
“I said I was not qualified. He said I was his student and he knew my capabilities,” she recounted. When the then regional education officer visited the school she gave him her application. She was appointed an acting teacher on the 1st April, 1998 of Karaudarnau Primary and assigned to the Grade 5 class.
“My mentor was the headmaster’s son Raoul Sutherland who was teaching Grade Six. He taught me how to write lesson plans, how to prepare scheme of work and gave me classroom tips. Because of my interest, I learnt very quickly. I taught in Grade Five for almost ten years,” she said.
In 2002, she joined the three-year Guyana Basic Education Teachers Training (GBETT) programme in preparation to become an in-service teacher trainee at the Cyril Potter College of Education (CPCE) teachers training programme in South Rupununi.
“With a few others from the district, we did the GBETT upgrading programme because we did not have any CXC subjects. It was three years of GBETT and four years of CPCE in-service training. I took seven years to become a trained teacher; from 2002 to 2009 when I graduated,” she said.
The CPCE Training Centre was at Aishalton and she had to travel every month for a week for tutorials.
“I travelled on bicycle. By chance someone would drop me off on a motorbike. On some occasions we came together, bought fuel for my daddy’s old Land Rover and got a driver who we compensated, to drive us, as far as the vehicle could go. During the rainy season it was very difficult. Back then we had no nice road. We went through trails and the creeks were not bridged so we had to wade through waters at times. That didn’t stop us from completing our training. Our accommodation and meals were paid for by CPCE, Ministry of Education. Our transportation was reimbursed. We did this for seven years. Thank God, I did not give up and I did no resits,” she said.
After graduating from CPCE, the then headmaster, the late Kit Spencer assigned her to Grade Six where she taught from 2009 to 2019. When she started teaching Grade Six, she said, her students did not perform exceptionally well but they were all placed in secondary schools.
“None of my pupils got a scholarship that year. The second year, I knew what it was like to be a Grade Six teacher. I gave the children extra lessons in Mathematics before classes in the mornings; in the afternoons after school we did either English, Science or Social Studies with no extra lessons fee. That second year two of my students secured scholarships to President’s College and one missed a scholarship by one point. From then I was motivated to do better. I gave extra lessons because I wanted to see children excelling because I had confidence in their abilities. I felt satisfied I did my service with a good heart and not for the money. I did that for nine to 10 years in Grade Six,” she said.
While she was teaching the Grade Six class, then Chief Education Officer Olato Sam encouraged Isaacs-Roberts to apply for a scholarship to attend UG to upgrade her skills in the field of education. She took his advice and in 2019, the same year she was married, she was admitted to UG to pursue a bachelor’s in education specialising in literacy on a government scholarship.
Curriculum writing
The September she started classes at UG, she was recommended to be part of a team of curriculum writers whose aim was to balance the contents of the primary curricula to meet the needs of children of the hinterland with those of the coastland through NCERD.
“I said I knew nothing about curriculum writing,” she said. But she needed little encouragement and was part of the team that was trained to write the enhanced curricula for mathematics for grades four, five and six in 2019 from October to December.
“I juggled curriculum writing, assignments and presentations somehow. In theory, I was doing literacy at UG and I was doing mathematics in practice. Curriculum writing gave me a good mathematics background and more in the English language by way of literacy,” she said.
The mathematics curriculum was piloted in several schools across the country. Isaacs-Roberts was selected to be a curriculum primary monitor in Awarewaunau, Rupunau and Katoonarib primary schools for grades one, two, three and four.
“I visited those schools once a term to coach, observed how they taught and implemented the curricula, gave them feedback, showed them areas they were good at and areas to improve,” she said.
“All this I did in my first year at university. I took my books and notes with me to study and complete assignments. I had to stay at hotels with wifi connections. Then I would fly down and write my semester exams on campus. When it was online, I had to do the exams wherever I was.”
Before implementation, Isaacs-Roberts and others were trained as master trainers to train teachers in the regions how to implement the enhanced curricula. “We trained, monitored and coached teachers. I did this from 2019 to 2022 after the project was successfully piloted,” she said.
During Covid-19 other personnel worked to consolidate the primary curriculum.
“I wasn’t a part of that. However, I was again selected to train teachers in clusters on how to use the consolidated curriculum in primary schools in Region Nine. The consolidated curriculum was not piloted in schools. So I was again sent to several schools in Deep South Rupununi to train teachers how to use the consolidated mathematics curriculum. I also trained Mabaruma teachers. I did all this during my studies at UG. People asked me how I juggled studies and working on the enhanced and consolidated curricula. It was a matter of finding a balance,” she recalled.
While doing her stint at NCERD, Isaacs-Roberts also recorded teaching mathematics classes in a studio setting for Grade Three to be used on the local television Learning Channel.
When the Covid-19 pandemic struck, it was a challenge for Isaacs-Roberts who only knew the basics with computers because of her experience with the library. Also, for several years before going to university she served as secretary and treasurer for the peanut cottage industry in Karaudarnau Village when it was up and running.
“That was where I got my basic auditing and accounting skills,” she said. She is also the chairman of the finance committee of the Karaudarnau’s Low Carbon Development Strategy committee.
On secondment
Even though she was at UG and involved with curriculum writing and training, Isaacs-Roberts was seconded to Beterverwagting Quamina Primary School for those three years. NCERD sought releases for her to carry out her duties on the schools’ curricula.
“Teaching Rupununi and coastland children were totally different experiences. Because I was a Grade Six and a literacy teacher they asked me to take a Grade Four class in which children were not doing good in literacy. The children liked to curse, fight and holler at one another. I didn’t know how to deal with them. I had to make sure they knew I was in charge of the class and that I wanted them to learn,” she explained.
Bonding with the children was not easy, she said, and it took about three months to gain their thrust. She could not administer corporal punishment and complaining to the head teacher would have resulted in them getting just that. “On one occasion I sat in the class with my chin resting on my hands contemplating what I should do,” she recounted.
She then told the class if they do not want to do their class work she was going to leave them, complain to the head teacher about their behaviour and go to teach another class. As the children were making noise, she packed up her belongings and as she was about to leave, one of the troublesome pupils shouted out to his colleagues to ‘Shut up!’ She said he told the class Ms Esther did not like them anymore and she would leave them if they did not behave themselves.
“The whole class was quiet. You could have heard a pin drop. I walked out of the classroom and went to a vacant classroom next door where I listened to their conversation in which they were expressing regret for the behaviour. After about 15 minutes I returned to the classroom. They were all serious. I told them this was my last chance with them and if they did not behave, I would ask the head teacher to put me in another class. I told them I was trying to get them to learn, that I was not going to hug them anymore, I was not shaking hands or doing any fist bumps with them anymore if they continued with their bad behaviour. Not everyone was bad in the class. It was just some who controlled the others,” she noted.
They promised to behave.
“From that day without complaining to the head teacher, without them being caned, without any shouting on my part, that talk I had with them, worked. We bonded from that day on. Whenever I had to go in the fields, the children didn’t want me to go. Whenever I returned from my field trips, as soon as they saw me turn the corner a group of them would run down to meet me and take my things to the classroom while I went to register. When I had to leave them and the school, it was bitter sweet.”
In the second and third year she assisted in the Grade Six class.
Literacy monitoring
Before going to UG, Isaacs-Roberts monitored and mentored teachers on how to teach literacy in Region Nine. After graduation, she continued monitoring literacy in the region and coaching teachers how to teach literacy studies and how to use the school’s literacy hour.
On return to Karaudarnau Primary, the head teacher gave her a Grade Three class because the school needed a strong teacher for that level.
In May 2023, she was asked to be the head of Aishalton’s CPCE Centre that had been dormant for some time.
“I took up the challenge without asking what were the benefits. I tell people when a task is given to me I don’t even ask about money. I just say I will try,” she stated.
Because there was no building to start training in Aishalton and no accommodation for her she continued working in Karaudarnau Primary while trying to meet the needs of the centre, online. In May this year, she moved to Aishalton where she has an office in the Aishalton Learning Resource Centre. However, since her appointment she has been using her own resources to conduct the centre’s programme, as well as students on the Guyana Online Academy of Learning programme, in spite of several requests she has made to the authorities for equipment and stationery.
In spite of promises of computers, printers and a year’s supply of stationery, she said, all she has received to date is janitorial stuff.
