We’re all from the same ‘race’

Following the terrorist attacks in the US on September 11, 2001, the lone Trinidadian teacher at a US school, Ancilla Harding, had the tough job of preserving the peace relations between her students on her hands.

Ancilla is a Communication Arts and ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher of the International Academy at Montauk Junior High School, Borough Park, Brooklyn, New York. Her two classes combined, number over 60 eighth-graders – 14 and 15-year-old students. They comprise Russian bilingual students who are taught Communication Arts and students from Africa, Poland, Scandinavia, China, Spain, Russia, Pakistan and Bangladesh who make up the ESL class. What differences could possibly arise among the teens that would require Ancilla as mediator? Race issues! It’s not a teacher’s every day experience but it was Ancilla’s reality, after 9/11 when her international students, particularly the Russians and Pakistanis, became, automatic enemies. “The Russian students were telling them (Pakistanis) that all Muslims are terrorists and that they should die. This was based on what their parents were telling them and all the hype they were hearing. They were asking me if I could have separate buses for them to go on field trips and I said ‘no, we are all from the same race, the human race.’ I told them that I have lived with people of all races including Muslims in my country and I have never met a terrorist, ‘and for me to encourage you with this misguided information is senseless. I have lived with them.’ “I felt I had to protect my children and I told the other students that if they were being chastised I would defend them also. They started to think.”

When Ancilla checked her e-mail a few weeks ago, she was pleasantly surprised. One of her Russian students wrote: “Miss Harding…we’re doing a summer programme and we’re hanging out with the Muslims.” Ancilla was influential in overturning their prejudices and no doubt, she was pleased. “I knew in my heart my mission was accomplished,” she said. Of course, somewhere in the body of the e-mail were tales of how ‘Miss Harding’ was missed and, expressed interests of the student’s desire to come to Trinidad. That’s the common trend of the e-mails she receives from her students abroad. After teaching them much about Trinidad and Tobago, they want to visit. “What they know I know. They always ask to come. They know where it’s situated, the culture. When I return from visiting Trinidad I give them postcards of Maracas Bay, the National Birds and ask them to write about it (postcard) in their personal journal. I can relate with them because of my multi-cultural background, and I learn from them too. Like I learned from the Pakistanis that there are two Eids, a small one and a big one.”

Ancilla is currently vacationing in Trinidad and, it’s the custom every July/August to stop by at the Humming Bird Day Camp in Diamond Vale, Diego Martin to lecture to campers. A former resident of Diego Martin herself, Abel Street to be precise, Ancilla was never missing from Janice Quamina and Enid Alleyne’s day camp. For several years, in her youth she spent her holidays there – the place that inadvertently groomed her for her present job. She explained: “At the camp they didn’t give me any appointments until I made some adjustment in my attitude.” That came after staying on for a few years and doing what she termed some “menial” tasks. “Mrs Alleyne laid my foundation brick by brick. Mrs Quamina’s big word was ‘enthusiasm.’ It was great training for me so that now I am on the ball because of my training. It prepared me to become a functioning and focused teacher,” she told People. “So much so that the parent of a Russian student came to me and said ‘I liked you before I even met you,’” perhaps because of her ‘no nonsense-type’ teaching. Ancilla said that her 20-year practice of Nichiren Daishonin’s Buddhism has also been the core of her continuous success.

The former student of Diego Martin Government Secondary and Queen’s Royal College, (where she pursued English Literature and West Indian History at A’level) migrated to the US to further her education. At the end of her first year at Kingsborough Community College she made the Dean’s list and received a teacher’s scholarship to attend State University of New York (SUNY) at Stony Brook. “There I completed my BA and two Masters programmes in English and TESOL, to teach English to students of other languages. While at SUNY I received a graduate fellowship that enabled me to complete my Masters. The fellowship is still open to do my PhD.” Her first shot at teaching, her dream job, was at PS 399 elementary school in District 17, Brooklyn with third graders under her care. She moved up to teaching fifth-graders and was given “the bottom” (low average) classes. “At the end of my year, the principal, Mrs Mabel Robertson who is now retired said she had never seen any bottom class rise to the occasion. My students ended up scoring higher than the students in the gifted classes… The students I have taught have always had great successes.” However, never setting her roots too firmly or too long in any place, since “I get bored very quickly, I moved on to teaching 8th-graders… Now I’m working on getting my principal’s licence since my desire is to open my own school when I return to Trinidad. Maybe in four years or so.” Ancilla views her teaching, three years at Montauk to date, as “broadening my experience so that by the time I return home I would be the most effective in my field.” She has been the “big sister” of her former neighbourhood, helping children of her community from her youth up and her goal hasn’t changed. Her mission is making “my children” become global citizens and opening up a school “for everyone, the rich, the poor, the physically challenged and the mentally challenged.”