Camille’s Story: The Power of Being Different

Abstract

My story begins with two names: Ms. Brown and Ms. Techla Austin. Both of these ladies were my teachers in primary and secondary school. They demonstrated how the subject of math can be interesting while making the profession of teaching look effortless. Ms. Brown was my standard four teacher at Sacred Heart Girls Roman Catholic, one of the top primary schools in my home country of Trinidad and Tobago. When she explained how a problem should be solved, it just seemed to make absolute sense and as such, math was a subject I didn’t really have to think hard about. This feeling of me being one with math-related topics and the like continued in secondary school at St. Joseph’s Convent with Ms. Austin. In this school, I also fell in love with the performing arts – I learned ballet, modern, jazz, tap, folk, and Indian dancing. Ms. Patricia Roe made me love dance and showed me how you can instruct someone without touching them – another teaching skill that is very hard to acquire. She also gave me my first job teaching as a substitute instructor for tap and after that I went on to teach ballet, modern and jazz to various levels of students. The combination of dancing and doing math just seemed to make me feel fulfilled – like I had a place in this world. Later I would see how these became the foundation of my interest in Education Technology.