A passion for learning

When Suzette Williams learned that her disruptive son was being too much of a handful for his primary school teachers a few years ago, the vendor resolved that if he was not willing to do his schoolwork in the classroom, he would have to do it on the street beside her.

Williams said she was determined that her son would not fall by the wayside.

“Inna corona (the COVID-19 pandemic), what mi get fi understand is dem couldn’t manage him, so mi keep him firm,” Williams told The Gleaner last week.

“Sometimes mi affi keep him away from the classroom and keep him myself. ... A mi teach him fi bout two years fi PEP (the Primary Exit Profile examinations),” added Williams, whose mother was a teacher.

She said that with her son placed at Kingston College at the end of primary school, other parents sought to place their children under her wings and she is now frequently seen teaching students on the sidewalk along Sutton Street in downtown Kingston while selling her wares.

“Him (her son) a part a why most people ask me to help with their children because dem see what mi do with my son and he passed for Kingston College,” she said.

But even though her son is now in high school and on a summer break, he is still under her gaze daily, familiarising himself with topics to be covered in the upcoming academic year.

“He did football [earlier in the morning] and he’s doing Spanish now ... ,” Williams told The Gleaner last Wednesday.

“When my son a go three grade, mi give him four grade book in a di summer holiday, so mi keep him ahead,” she recalled, noting that she has maintained that strategy at ‘Roadside University College’ even with the children of other vendors who she now helps, especially during summer holidays when sales are oftentimes slow.

USING SUMMER BREAKS

“Mi a do this fi a very long time, maybe 20 years, because my daughter used to go Ardenne [High School] and almost all of them go to traditional schools weh always ‘round mi – my friends’ children dem – and since I’m here on the roadside now, other people drop in,” Williams told The Gleaner.

She revealed that before she started selling her wares on Sutton Street, she was a vendor outside of Mico Practising Primary and Junior High School and The Mico University College’s gate, so when school was on summer breaks, she stayed at home with her daughter and other children who needed help.

“At the time [I started], I only had one daughter, so I used to keep other children and for the summer [back then]. We would go to the Tom Redcam (Kingston & St Andrew Parish) Library and get them into the summer classes up there, and we would study,” Williams said.

“Mi nuh really charge nobody. Dem come and mi talk to dem parents. Most of dem parents give mi something (money),” she said.

Williams pinpointed one specific student last Wednesday, Latonya Rennie, a now-grade five student who was underperforming at the nearby St Aloysius Primary School until her mother Tiffany Stahaffp told her to sit with Williams at her stall in the afternoons and study daily.

Stahaffp joked that Williams’ activities have been dubbed ‘Roadside University’ by a teacher who is aware of her efforts.

She mentioned that, without Williams, she doubts her daughter would have been as well prepared for the Primary Exit Profile (PEP) exams she took last year.

“Mi see whole heap an improvement. Mi start see she get 80s and 90s and she a do much better. Now, she move on to grade five, she a gwaan very good. She get academic excellence award,” Stahaffp told The Gleaner.

“But really and truly, it’s a wonderful class. All these years my daughter a go St Aloysius Primary and she never yet collect nothing (award), and you see from she a go out there so, we see results. My daughter a do good in her class,” she said.

Williams said if she could have another career, it would be in education – and more specifically, teaching.

COMMITMENT TO GUIDING YOUTH

As the eldest of her eight siblings, she said her mother relied on her to instill educational values in the younger ones. That commitment to guiding others has stayed with her to this day.

“Mi did bright when me a go school, y’know, but me never get a fair chance,” she said.

Williams lived in Barbican, St Andrew, in her youth before the family relocated to Lawrence Tavern, also in St Andrew, where her mother still resides.

She attended Mona High School and back then, she dreamed of becoming an accountant, which is why she mostly teaches mathematics to her students.

“Almost every day we do maths because mi love maths,” she said.

After leaving high school, Williams became a cosmetologist, but selling wares downtown to her is more feasible.

“Cosmetology, sometimes I had to wait on customers, but with selling, I make the money faster, and mi like deh a road,” Williams told The Gleaner.

She wants other vendors to consider taking their children with them in the days, especially during summer and Christmas holidays, not to have them selling, but to practise and start familiarising themselves with topics for the term ahead.

ainsworth.morris@gleanerjm.com