Debbie Jacob
I LOVED every subject in school except for mathematics, so if you had told me 55 years ago that a maths teacher would shape my future in unimaginable ways, I would have laughed and dismissed any possibility of that ever happening.
Fortunately, I wasn’t clairvoyant, and I had no idea that anyone in my future would exist like Gwendolyn Pope, who many people say was one of the best maths teachers this country ever had.
We would meet when she retired from the government education system after teaching at Holy Name Convent and Bishop Anstey High School in Port of Spain and came to the International School of Port of Spain to teach maths and statistics.
For about 15 years we were a formidable team teaching maths and English for the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), the entrance examination for many US-based universities.
Gwen was a no-nonsense teacher, passionate about her subject and dedicated to her students. Teaching was not a job for her, it was a calling. She had a Master’s degree from Columbia University, and she could have had her pick of jobs, but she chose teaching.
Together, she and I helped many students get into universities in the US. We had a surprising number of students accepted at Ivy League schools in the eastern US and in prestige schools on the West Coast, including Stanford University in California.
Eventually, Gwen left ISPS to teach maths in Bishop Anstey High School East where she also served as dean. The last few years we taught SAT lessons together, she worried about how well students would fare on the exam where reading had become more important.
“Students don’t realise the importance of reading – even in maths,” she said. Some of the best maths students struggled with basic comprehension in newly introduced word problems on the SATs.
Gwen’s whole world was maths. When she wasn’t teaching in school or teaching SAT maths, she helped friends’ children with SEA and CXC lessons.
Everywhere Gwen went she ran into past students who treated her with respect. She remembered every student she taught and followed their paths to success. She shaped and changed lives, nurtured strong maths students and demonstrated how teachers should work with pride and enthusiasm.
Gwen was my model for the perfect educator. Then, she encouraged me to teach CXC English at the Youth Training Centre (YTC). While she had been preparing one student there for the CXC maths exam, she learned of the institution’s need for an English teacher and thought of me.
Every article I wrote about how I came to teach in the prison system mentions her. The columns that first appeared in the Trinidad Guardian and the book Wishing for Wings that I wrote about teaching CXC English to eight teenagers incarcerated for violent armed robbery or murder in YTC credit Gwen for that life-changing move.
In Wishing for Wings, I wrote, “Miss Pope from Bishop Anstey High School East had been calling me religiously for at least a year before I finally gave in.
“You will enjoy working with these young men,” she said
