May 9, 2013 - What a Day!

Exhausting, but so purposeful that lying down to sleep at the end of it all was the most satisfying rest I have had in a long time.  Devan and I started out at the women’s prison at Fort Augusta – running the course by ourselves for the first time.  Followed by teaching the teachers at the Haile Selassie High School (HSHS).  Devan will write separately about Fort Augusta, while I will focus on Haile Selassie.  For starters, here is a brief excerpt about the school from the National Education Department Inspection Report:

Haile Selassie High School is situated in the volatile inner city community of Payne Avenue in Kingston. It has capacity for 1,000 students; however enrolment stands at 863 with 588 boys. These students are mostly from very poor backgrounds where one or both parents are unemployed. They hail from inner-city communities such as Waltham Avenue, Sea View, Payne Avenue, Spanish Town Road and Water House.  Over the past years, school activities have been frequently disrupted by violence in the surrounding communities, which sometimes ends up in the school and amongst students.

Teachers at HSHS taking the Art of Breathing Course

Over the course of 4, 2-3 hour sessions, we taught the Art of Breathing course to about 30 teachers including the Principal, Vice Principal, Guidance Counselor and the Chief Disciplinarian!  At first, we could see that the teachers were very skeptical.  It was not clear to me for the first three days if we were reaching them.   Then on the very last day, after the course was over, we got feedback from a few of the teachers that just blew me away. 

One teacher named Jackie (the guidance counselor) confided in me that she could feel that the course helped her get some of her balance in life back.  As a guidance counselor, she was exposed to a ton of trauma through the experiences of the kids.  Most recently, she explained she had to ‘bury one of her students’ in January.  A promising young girl who was never late for school, named Sharifa, was raped and murdered and thrown on the side of the road.  It was an incident that shocked the community and all of Kingston.  Jackie shared that, since the incident, she was having a lot of trouble sleeping….many nights she just watched the clock tick away minutes.  Furthermore, she wasn’t able to cry and let out the stress she was feeling.  She told me she needed even more help.  My heart went out to her.  Knowing that the course gave her back even a little of the balance and peace she had lost over the previous months was gratifying….but I knew she would need much more help.

Another amazing young teacher, Marsha, told me she too was deeply upset by Sharifa’s death.  She decided, she wanted to start a program to teach boys to be men and girls to be ladies so that when she has her daughter some day she could send her to school knowing that she wouldn’t be mistreated.  Marsha said she wanted to help these boys and girls not become ‘prison-bait’ and ‘rape-bait’ …these are the terms she used.  She shared that the class helped her a lot in having a deeper understanding of herself, which she really needs to accomplish her goals of setting up programs for these kids to better themselves.  Marsha is so committed that she even attended the course though she was on a 1-month leave of absence.  I felt inspired and humbled by this woman’s passion and dedication.

We thought we'd show you some art murals at Haile Selassie that welcomed us.  These murals should tell you much about this school and the neighborhood.  

The senior administration were moved by the course and asked if we could start teaching the kids course (YES! - Youth Empowerment Seminar) the very next week.  This was the plan but we needed the faculty to take the course and make them believers which I think we achieved.  Without the faculty's support, the next few weeks at HSHS could go to complete waste.  With this, next week we start teaching the kids…can’t wait!