Features

38 fulfilling years in the classroom

By DAVID DUNKLEY, Staff Reporter

Audley Stobbs - Ian Allen

CANEFIELDS INSTEAD OF classrooms was at the forefront of Audley Stobbs' plans when he was deciding on a career, but not being able to get into agriculture school, he ended up at a teachers' college.

Today, after 38 years in the profession, the veteran teacher is not disappointed with the road he has travelled and believes it was worth the journey.

"To see your students become successful is one of the greatest rewards," says Stobbs, who has been teaching at the Albert Town High School for more than 20 years. "Whenever I go anywhere and there is somebody who tells me I have contributed to their success I feel pleased."

Stobbs, who is the head of the school's Social Studies Department, but is on pre-retirement leave, says no financial gains could compensate for the efforts he has put into teaching.

Mr Stobbs was born and grew up in Spring Gardens, a district near Albert Town, Trelawny, and attended the Spring Gardens Elementary School. After school he worked with the Trelawny Estate Sugar Estate for a year before working as a conductor with the Confidence Bus Service in Montego Bay, St. James.

Stobbs decided to get into teaching because he did not get a response from agriculture school on time. He explained that in his days there were four careers one could choose from - teaching, agriculture, nursing or the postal services.

First choice

His first choice was agriculture and he applied to the Jamaica School of Agriculture. But just in case he was turned down, he also applied to Mico Teachers' College. He did entrance tests for both institutions.

He said sometime later he got words from Mico that he was accepted and, not hearing from the JSA, he enrolled at the teachers' college. But a few weeks after he began attending Mico, he was contacted by the JSA and told he was accepted. It was too late. "I had bought everything I needed for the teachers college, books, clothing, everything," he said.

Stobbs is a man who believes that once you are doing something, even if it is not what you wanted, you should give it your best shot and this he did. This was probably why he is a former parish president for the Jamaica Teachers' Association (JTA) and also a member of the JTA's executive.

He was also into politics spending 12 1/2 years as councillor for the Albert Town division and was also an accredited Gleaner correspondent for Trelawny.

Indiscipline in schools

Mr Stobbs believes there are many reasons why indiscipline has become so commonplace in schools. The first, he said, is because teachers are given no rights and are not given any support whatsoever, be it by the Ministry (of Education), parents and to some extent principals. "From corporal punishment was abandoned everything was left on the teachers to devise ways and means to rule and control," he said.

Secondly, he said, there is an upsurge of teenage parents who do not know how to carry up a child in the proper way. He said there were also the different means of mass communications which teach children violence in all forms. "Very few children have today the proper working attitude, you have to be begging them to do their work," he said.

He added that if discipline in schools is to go back to what it was, then the entire society, from parliamentarians to parents, must take a different approach to discipline and be better role models for the children.

Despite his successes in teaching, Mr. Stobbs is adamant that if he could live his life over, teaching would be the last thing on his agenda. "There are so many opportunities now and with the present generation, I wouldn't re-enter the profession. There is too much violence, too much indiscipline and a great lack of interest from the students," he said.