Features

The Creative edge

By FRANCINE BLACK, Staff Reporter

francine black - Teacher Millicent Gray

MILLICIENT GRAY HAS been teaching for more than 30 years and although she did not pursue her first love to become a journalist, she has been bringing creativity into the classroom and making her teaching experiences fun.

"I don't like a dead class. When I am teaching I like when my class is active and communicate. If I get a student who does not talk, by the end of my class he must be talking," she said.

Gray's teaching career started in the 1970s when she chose teaching after a failed attempt to become a journalist. "It was a second choice. I wanted to be a journalist. I tried at the time, but I could not stay in Kingston because it was too uncomfortable," she said.

Gray left and in 1968 she started to attend the Bethlehem Moravian College in St. Elizabeth where she studied secondary education specialising in English. In 1970 she graduated with a diploma. She later completed a certificate in education at the University of the West Indies (UWI), and in 1999 she completed her Bachelor's Degree, which she also pursued at UWI over a two-year period.

Enjoys current job

Gray has taught at several schools including Gregory Park and Port Royal All-age for a year. She also taught at the Whitefield All-age for four years before going to Muschett High in 1974, where she has been stationed since. She says although she never got to pursue her first love, she enjoys her current job. "I love to teach English. There are moments when the children do well and those are things I look forward to," she said.

Gray who has moved up the ranks to become vice-principal at Muschett High says she has had several rewarding experiences throughout the course of her career. "A boy called me and said I had done so much for him and I never knew I had so much impact on him," she said.

Outstanding service

Gray's hard work, dedication and years of service did not go unnoticed and the Parent Teachers Association (PTA) at Muschett has given her an award for outstanding service. She has also received the Teacher of the Year Award from the school, and last year she also received the coveted Jamaica Teachers' Association (JTA) Golden Torch Award for 35 years of service in the teaching profession.

She says her students would describe her as motherly because of the way she deals with them and the tone in which she speaks to them. She is also encouraging teachers not to give up on students no matter how bad they may appear to be. "Children are redeemable; it is just how we are going to approach them," she said.