 They have served and served well. They have helped shape character and personality. Yet allowed creativity and individuality. They gave their lives to the education system. This is Reminiscent and this is their story. It's burial gill. That's what I was called at school. Since we are doing the naming thing, I am normally called Flores. So that is the name you can have me on as Flores Marie Muriel Gill. You know that I was a student. I was a student teacher. I got a scholarship to go to the convent. That was an intending teacher's scholarship. So I was there for three years at the end of which I wrote the school certificate examination and pass. And I got into teaching just like that. At the end of the time, I had to go back to the school where I came from. When I got the scholarship, I went to Anglican Primary School and there I became a teacher. It wasn't so hard. I had to do one more exam to become a certificated teacher. At the end of that year, that's the year 1952, I was a certified teacher. My mentors really were, I would say, Sister Colombo was the head teacher of the convent. Mr. H.D. Boxing was the chief education officer and Mr. Lester Vaughan, who was the principal of Anglican Primary School. They acted as my mentor because they encouraged me to teach. I wasn't fascinated with teaching just as I went. So they had to try to get me to see that it wasn't enough scores. I could put my trust in it and hope for the best. Those were the men, those were the two men and the woman. So after I had spent three years at Anglican Primary School, I got an opportunity to go to a distant teacher's college. Now that's the same thing I'm telling you about the mentor, because I didn't apply to go to a distant. I knew there was because people had applied there, but it didn't occur to me that I could apply. So there was one day I got a letter to tell me that I had been selected. And the letter came from the ministry, meaning from Mr. Boxing. And Mr. Vaughan agreed with the letter that I am going to a distant college. And that's how I got to a distant college in Barbados. Spent two years and came back down as a qualified teacher. From there on, it was Canon Laurie that told me to go down to the Ministry of Education because they need me there and he's allowing me to go. So I went down on Canon Laurie's suggestion, advice, and I go down there. And I became a supervising teacher. So if you want, I really began the teaching thing at the top, not in the middle, not at the bottom. Because you cannot be, I left school, I became a certified teacher. I became a qualified teacher and then I'm a supervising teacher. Mrs. Gill was my tutor at Teachers College. And Mrs. Gill taught me that whatever you're doing, you must do it well. I retired in 1990. But after that I worked for two more years, 19 to 19 December 1992. That would have given me 40 years in the teaching service. I left as a Deputy Chief Education Officer. As a young teacher just coming into the service, we had to look up to teach persons like Mrs. Gill. She was at the time, I think, the Deputy Chief and she was very particular about education and the education of the children in particular. The role of the supervising teacher really was to teach the students, teachers who were on, to teach them. There was a curriculum for them to teach them that curriculum as well as to go from district to district to teach them there in their schools where they were. So I would go to Dennery and teach the teachers there and also see them at their schools. Go from Dennery, go to Viewfort and do the same thing. And you move from Viewfort, you went to Souffre to do the same thing. And so from there you're going from district to district to teach the young teachers to make them pass the course, to make them pass the exam because it was a long exam for them. They're going from PT1 to PA2 and then to be certified. Oh, that's the main thing. The question you see because we couldn't go until Saturday. Every Saturday we went to another district and so we were going on the bus. That's one thing. We were going on the sea from Souffre to here. It meant that you didn't always have the bus service. You had to go by sea to Souffre and come back. That wasn't easy. It wasn't easy for the teachers or for us because there were a number of supervising teachers and each supervising teacher was teaching some particular subject or subjects for the teachers to learn and to qualify. I cannot say any particular one thing but I always felt good when the teachers responded and took part in whatever they were doing and I would always say, they'd say, Mr. Happy. I say, yes, I'm happy. You see, the teachers had to be good at what they did and any time they did well I was happy. She set standards so young persons like me really had to step up and maybe who I am today as a teacher is in part because of Mrs. Gillon. When the teachers just didn't have a clue as to what to do and they eventually did well, that got me excited. Like a teacher didn't know anything about teaching and came on and in the end he was teaching for me or more at the same Anglican school and he was teaching literature and things like that and that got me excited. When you wrote an assignment for Mrs. Gillon unless it was perfect or almost perfect she would not accept it and so I learned that and I learned that whatever I have to do I think I would want to do it well and I want to say thanks to Mrs. Gillon for teaching me that aspect of whatever you have to do you need to do it well. It's a different system from what I went on, completely different. You see, we don't have all of these little PTs, Pt1s and 2s until you get to PA2s. We don't have that now. Teachers are normally going to college and from there they go on into the schools. So that portion is wiped off completely. As a qualified teacher, the teachers get qualified and some of them will tell me, Miss, that's not a good qualification because we learned but we didn't learn how to teach. So that was a particular challenge for a lot of teachers up to now. It's a challenge for them not only to learn from the texts but to get into the schools, to teach the children and to feel comfortable with what they are doing. From the time I left until now, they are still struggling at the same point. How do you change a system with people doing different things at different levels and to find success with that? And one of the things that troubled me sometimes, you know, I was a member of the teachers' union. I was actually the president of the teachers' union at some time. So I played a lot in the education system. So then they know my reaction to whatever the teachers are saying. They want more money, they want that, they want that. But my question to them is when you say you want that, you will get it. But what will you give in exchange for that? So you cannot just qualify and get in the school and do what you like. You've got to be there to teach the people's children. That's the expression. They like that expression. So I'm using it because the teachers are not the ones answering the question. I tell them to go and teach the people's children. I taught children at Marshall Combined School. That had to do with my going there to act as head teacher while they didn't find one yet. So I was there and I played with them. One of the things that a lot of people remember is that I stood up there, especially Marshall people, and immediately I started, they saw a change. There was the problem of absenteeism. Thus she organized a skipping program which took place during the lunch period. What that did was make the children enthusiastic about skipping and coming to school. And therefore by 1pm all the children would have been at school. In addition to that, she visited their homes so that she could speak to the parents about the importance of their child's education and that assisted in breaking the absenteeism habit at the school at the time. I was talking to a lady and she told me, Miss, you know we have to get the police to go with us to a home if we want to talk to the parents. I said about Antonio, you saw that I went myself. I never went with anybody, just myself. I went to the home to find out why the lady was not sending the children to school. And usually these women would be so upset because I came and they would say, we also had to come here, we had to go to the school to bring the women to their children. And so I am glad that I was able to do that, to be with children, to work with them. I had a garden in the yard there. They planted things that was for teaching them. They planted and they reaped and everything like that. And Mindo came and put a pitch for me in the yard so that the children didn't have to go at Mindo. They pitched right there in the yard. There were two men on the staff, so I caused them to be doing that. Mr. Burton was there and Mr. Gabriel. Now both of them have died, but the two of them to help the children to learn agriculture. One day there was an incident there that I was happy about. The fellow never came back. I don't think he came back to St. Lucia, but he was a young boy and when he saw me, he wasn't happy. He said a little girl has come to teach them. And he kept always that little girl thing. And one day I took them to Ganta's Bay. Yeah, I took them to Ganta's and there they saw boats and ships and everything. And he didn't know that that was there. He was fascinated by these things. And so when he left school, he went back to the same place and got a job on a ship. And he has left St. Lucia. I've never seen him since that time. So I did teach children. I believe that it isn't too difficult to teach children. Once you understand whom you are teaching and the troubles and the trials, some of them have troubles and trials. I remember teaching one class at Anglican Primary School and that class I had to take it upstairs in the church bell free so that I could teach the children because they came from the different classes in the school. And some of them could not write, some could not read, some could not spell, some could not... different things that they could not do. And I had a whole class of them and I had to teach them. But they didn't give me trouble up there. There was no supervisor over us. I took them up there in the bell free and we laughed and talked and we did everything and we came down on Friday evenings. But they didn't give trouble. There was a particular friend. He thought that he had learned a lot because I met him on the bus and he told me, teacher, you know what? Now I can read philosophy. And I think that was a good shot. He told me I can read philosophy and a man stood up there last week, just last week, last week, Tuesday and all he stood up there to tell me philosophy is a good thing. I have read a lot of it and I'm comfortable people should really learn philosophy. You know? So I'm glad that they are coming to that point to tell me about philosophy that they are dealing with now even though they didn't do it at school and even though Lawson was in the low class. In terms of instruction for her teachers, she devoted time to teach her teachers so that they could sit the teacher's exam and move on to become qualified teachers. During her tenure, there was a 100% pass rate of teachers of the Marsha Combine School. There were other teachers on the staff with me. Mrs. Brafit was a teacher of the Staff at Anglican Primary School. Yeah. She was on the staff there. I cannot remember if she was a supervising teacher. I don't remember that, so I would not say that. But with all of these, a lot of teachers, there was Mrs. Camille Henry. You know there was a Camille Henry Memorial School? She used to teach home economics and she had a way of getting me to do things that I didn't want to do. She would tell me, come and do it because you can. I know you can, but just that you don't want to. And she always would invite me and give me a sense of direction as to what to do and what she wanted accomplished. Mr. Vaughn used to teach us to be punctual, to be attentive to what we are doing. So I believe under his direction and instruction, I learned to make sure that you are at school at the time you should be at school, that you do the discipline that will keep the children quiet. You don't have to beat them a lot. You don't have to beat the children. I can remember that in that martial situation I must have beaten two children. As a little child I remember having said something to my class teacher which she wasn't happy about because from that age, at the age of 10, I was very outspoken and I expressed my feelings and to many people when children express themselves, the adult would see them as being rude and so on. And so she reported me to Mrs. Gill, the principal and Mrs. Gill called me and she asked me to get my parents. I went home and brought my grandmother. I lived with my grandmother then and at the end of the conversation she said, you know, I'm going to give him a scolding and you know the intonation there at the end of that sentence, you know, frightened me. She did in fact give me the scolding and of course soon after that we seem to have forgotten, you know, about the incident. And I remember too that I didn't beat because there were problems that prevented me from beating them and up to now they are friends with me. You see because what they did was that they went up, the fellow went up to the bishop's house to complain for what the teacher had done and he came back. I said, 11 o'clock he's walking in through the school. I'm saying, but he's crazy, he's not right. So I went to him to ask him where is he coming from? What's his trouble? He said he went to the bishop to complain for Mrs. Cooper who was there and so I said, what did the bishop tell you? He said, Mrs. Cooper must not do these things. I said, so who you are going to say so to? He thought it was Mrs. Cooper. So I told him to go right back up to the bishop and tell him that I am at the school, in school. So if he wants, he has a problem, he must speak to me. Mrs. Gill was a person responsible for whatever happened at Camdo and so the development of the reading materials, all of the reading materials in schools were produced at Camdo. You see, I did the Camdo books so I was spending a time in the ministry and spending the rest of the time at Camdo. I don't know if you understand that, that I would go up to Camdo in the morning, in the morning and I would work a lot there and I was showing my granddaughter, the lady who worked with me, at Camdo Beatrice McDonald. She's in the ministry of finance. She used to type up the material and I got the teachers to come from different head teachers, qualified teachers, teachers for the class and everything and for us to talk about the children, what they could learn, what they couldn't learn and how we might try them out and so, until we wrote the books. I was one of those teachers that worked on the Camdo material with Mrs. Gaila. The material was edited by Mrs. Gaila. She was also very careful that we did not take any published material so all the material in Camdo had to be stories or stories that were written by the teachers who were at the workshop at the time. Now the books they wrote and read are the readers and workbooks but the curriculum itself, only the teachers dealt with the curriculum. That was a different thing from the children's books so we had the curriculum, one thing and then the writing for the children and this thing. Now I don't think they used these books anymore because one day here they were on the radio saying that it was such a pity that there were no books, no information in any book about Sensen about whoever and everything. I said no, no, but I'm going to correct that so I called them and I said listen to me. I have a standard for book that has everything about John Compton, about Derrick Walcott, about Redrick Walcott, about Sensen. They were used outside St. Lucia in St. Kitt's Nevis in Dominica. In all of these places they used the Camdoubouks. They were using the Camdoubouks, the teachers were not concerned so they went out there and put a stroke through it. I don't think they put a stroke through it deliberately but I believe in the changing of governments. Didikas Jules brought a lady to do Camdoubouk and she didn't know about curriculum and materials and she kept on throwing the materials that were there and then one day a lady stopped her, Miss Veronica Simon at the university centre. She stopped her, she told her but we have written the books so how can you throw them and so on and she went to the ministry and made a noise and so Didikas sent to look to see why she was making the noise and started to search and then found out that the lady was not qualified in what she was saying she was qualified. So I did a lot of literature. I believe those who changed the books were not conscious of the fact that you must write about your people and give them that notion that everything they did was good. So in that sense if I had to go back there I would say but you all should not have taken these people from the books should not. Why? Because these are people we always need to know about. The children need to know about them. We the grown-ups need to know about them. Those who are coming need to know about them so you cannot take them from the books. But you know there are different ideas and different ideas contained and mine was not a good idea. When I came home I came and I started to clean my house to put things in place to change from here to there and to do things like that. I never felt bored. I've never been bored. Sometimes people say well you see I retire so I have nothing to do but I retire and I always find things to do. Not in education in particular but generally to keep doing things to keep reading, to keep searching to keep doing one of these things. Mrs. Gill was the Deputy Chief Education Officer at the time when I was a young teacher at the Avi Maria Primary you notice I said the Avi Maria Primary you could not say the Ali. Mrs. Gill would not tolerate that. One of the things and some of them called me here just to tell me one of the things is that the people speak very badly. See young public and people who are thinking that they know English and they call me there to tell me Miss you didn't hear that bullet. So what I think they ought to remember is that I used to teach against those bullets to teach people to speak correctly and clean. Mrs. Gill I remember her was somebody strong on pronunciation inunciation articulation I could hear her saying that if the ends coming up prominently in the end you're not at the end like we say now. The teachers oh I don't know what message to leave for them because they're teachers of a different category a different age group a different kind of teacher so if I were to meet them I would have first to apologize for standing in front of them and I say well you see I used to be a teacher and I come to try to teach this I hope you're open to be receptive to what I'm going to teach. It was just wonderful working with Mrs. Gill and it's a woman that I really and truly love because she shipped my career.