Career teacher stuck to education...
Reid Rehabilitation Centre, the Georgetown Public Hospital and Project Dawn. The last of which has assisted in identifying some of the issues her son faced and what needed to be done to help to address these.
Over the years, Jonathon attended normal school, his only problem was not being able to write as quickly as the other children but when he wrote the Grade Six assessment he was awarded a spot at the Plaisance Secondary School and was honoured by Region Four for being the top student from the list of special needs children who wrote the examination in the region.
Recalling Jonathon’s birth, Woolford- Saunders said she had arrived at the hospital at around 9 pm and her son was not born until around 7 am the next day. The entire night she was in pain and is unclear today why she was not given a C- section, but when her oxygen deprived son was finally born he was blue, and the nurses and doctor were confused.
He was immediately placed in an incubator and the first-time mother said it was traumatic listening to the continuous cries of her son when there was nothing she could have done to help him. She was eventually discharged without her son which she said, “was a very sad transition” but at that time she thought it was, “better for me emotional wise to leave the hospital since I was there not sleeping and hearing my son cry all the time”.
But she returned to the hospital shortly after and she remained there until her son was discharged.
During that time, Woolford- Saunders said, she had to build herself emotionally to cope with having her son and worrying about him dying. “So I had to build me first before I could have dealt with him and the whole situation.
“Recuperating during that period, I blamed the late doctor who attended to me at that time. My family had thought about taking legal action, but you know in Guyana the justice system is slow I was not prepared to go through that… ,” she said.
He was known to be one of the best gynaecologists at the time in the country and Woolford- Saunders said while she blamed him she also blamed herself for not doing much research on the birthing process.
“At one time I had a blackout during the labour process. I collapsed on the bed. I don’t know what really happened and how long it was for but there was no doctor there at the time, just the midwife,” she recalled.
After she took Jonathon home, the mother said, she was forced to visit doctors’ office very often as a number of tests and other procedures were done as she attempted to find out what was wrong with him and also to ensure he was okay.
Five years after he was born, Woolford- Saunders and her husband were still navigating the system to get him needed help when what she described as a “relapse” occurred after she was hit by the stray bullet.
This incident took some of the wind out of their sails and it was sometime before they were able to be back on track with helping their son professionally.
Always wanted to teach
Her entering the teaching profession came as no surprise to WoolfordSaunders’ family. As a child, she always wanted to be a teacher and she has never one day regretted taking that career path.
She recalled that it was a well-known teacher in the village, Sir John Bernard, who dropped in her application and weeks later she was hired as a teacher at the St Paul Primary School. She remembered that she was told to turn out to work on October 1, but instead she and a friend, who has since switched careers, went to work on September 27.
“We were well dressed with stockings and shoes and our church clothes and the neighbours were like, ‘You all working already’,” she said, bursting into laughter.
She remained for four years at St Paul before going to LBI Primary School for another four years.
She spent 11 years at Plaisance Secondary which is where she believes she got her breakthrough as a teacher, as she acted immediately as a senior mistress a position she was later appointed to after she applied for same. She has been at St Winifred’s for the past two years but now she spends most of her time doing administrative work instead of actually teaching.
And being at schools whose students are at times written off by society, Woolford- Saunders said, she finds it a joy when the students excel and often she finds them more determined because of the challenges they face.
“And when you see them employed, regardless of what kind of job they are doing the main thing is that they are employed…,” she said adding that credit must be given to the teachers.
Over the years she has found joy teaching remedial classes as sometimes students are not ready for secondary and it is rewarding to bring them to a certain point.
“I usually would say we need everybody in life. We cannot do without the masons, carpenters and you find that those skilled people they would work for even more money than the office people...,” she said adding that the competency certificates now being introduced in school help to equip students with skills.
Over the years, the profession has been rewarding as she was a mentor at Plaisance, coordinator in the Region Four science fair, part of the Guyana Teachers’ Union and the
vice-chair for the women’s arm.
Woolford- Saunders attended the Cyril Potter College of Education and since then, she said, she has never taken a break from studying. She laughingly said that she has never been a distinction student, but she has never been one to fail. She
secured a certificate in education from the University of Guyana followed by a degree then the Education Management Certificate offered by the National Centre for Educational Resource Development and she also now holds a post-graduate certificate in education.