UWI Principals:
Professor Hazel Simmons-McDonald
Principal of the Open Campus
by Alake Pilgrim
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Valuing Our Own
“Frozen joy” made of coconut milk—pink, blue or green ices on a stick, bought for a penny….This was my carefree childhood in St. Lucia in an old, two-storey house with French lace that I thought I was too little to ever fully discover; playing cricket with my cousins in the backyard and competing with my older brother and sister for the best part of my mother’s ice cream, the hard part near the middle of the churn.
One of my early memories of this house is the many arguments between my uncle and father about the French Creole. My uncle was always writing articles in the newspapers, presenting arguments for the use of creole in education, suggesting that instead of looking down on it, we should appreciate it just as we appreciated all of the festivals; because they were ours. He used to make a big case for our culture and folklore; saying that we were not appreciating the things that were indigenous to us, but instead were looking outward.
Interestingly enough, I first heard about UWI through a young student who had come to St. Lucia to do PhD research on the very same subject of the creole. He was staying at the home of my English teacher, Mrs. Patricia Charles, and I thought, “How fascinating! Here is someone doing in a formal way what my uncle had been proposing. Growing up I loved literature and languages and did very well in them, but all the while I thought I wanted to be a doctor because one Christmas my father had given me a little kit with a stethoscope, band aids and a book called Dr. Dan. But they didn't teach the sciences at St Joseph’s Convent, so I did other subjects.
One day my friend asked me if I wasn't’t going to apply to UWI. Even though I thought that my father couldn't afford it, we got the brochures from the Resident Tutor and I applied to do a Special in English at the Mona Campus in 1967. I had a ball at UWI. There were about four older people in our class, including Dennis Scott, who were very serious, while the rest of us were skittish and having a great deal of fun. The classes were interesting and we learned a lot from having the older students because they engaged the lecturers in discussion. But UWI was much more than classes. I belonged to the drama group and was on the Hall Committee at Mary Seacole. Those were also the years of Rocksteady, then Reggae. So on the weekends after we thought we’d worked hard enough, a whole bunch of us would walk across to the Union and there would be these wonderful bands. People would empty out onto that dance floor and rock to sounds like Roy Shirley singing Golden Street and Rock Steady. If you can imagine a dance floor where everybody is doing the same steps and singing then you can imagine what it was like!
Touching Lives
Through Language
In those days you came through a very rigorous programme of English Literature and some descriptive Linguistics. When I did the Dip. Ed. right after my first degree, I was taught by Cecil Gray who was very impactful on the issues related to language education in the Caribbean. After completing my degree I just knew that I wanted to study further and return home to do something about the language situation. I realized that many bright students were falling through the cracks because they hadn't learned the English that was required for them to advance in the educational system. There had to be a better way of using the creole they already knew, to develop their overall language and literacy skills.
I read for Masters degrees in International Development Education and Linguistics at Stanford University, then went home to St. Lucia and taught A’Level English at the Teacher’s College. At different times over those three years, I acted as Resident Tutor. Subsequently, I returned to Stanford and worked as a research assistant in the Child Phrenology programme which dealt with child language acquisition and provided the financial support for the completion of my PhD. I lived and taught in California for many years but returned to the Caribbean regularly to serve as Chief Examiner for CXC. During one of those visits, a friend told me about a position in Applied Linguistics at the Cave Hill Campus.
At UWI, the transition to administration was chosen for me rather than the other way around, because I enjoyed teaching and research. Two years after I began teaching at Cave Hill, Prof. Hilary Beckles, then Dean of the Faculty of Humanities & Education, appointed me to the newly created position of Deputy Dean of Outreach. I have been part of the administration from 1992 to now, as a Head of Department, Deputy Dean, Dean and now as Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the Open Campus. Although I had continued to teach throughout, I must now set this aside because of the demands of my new position. However, I still continue to supervise my graduate students which keeps me grounded and connected to what I like to do best.
Over the years, my own research has focused on language acquisition in creole contexts. In St. Lucia, I have been trying to find solutions to the high rate of functional illiteracy. One of my more recent projects involved students between the ages of 11 and 15 who had not learned to read and write although they had been in school for at least seven years. I spent time teaching them to read in creole and in English, using local folk tales and focusing on phonological development in both languages. We would have sessions where we did comprehension and discussed the news in creole. Then the next part of the class would be in English. By the end of the study they were speaking and writing in both languages. One of the boys who had been kept back repeatedly and was now about to leave school at age 12, did the Common Entrance exam and is now in secondary school.
I know that similar projects are being done by UWI researchers in Jamaican patois and I am interested to see their outcomes. Certainly in terms of the French Creole, if we help our students to read and express themselves in their own language, then build literacy in English, the skills would transfer more easily. We need to continue to do this type of research to find ways of keeping children from falling through the cracks in our education system.
