A 19-YEAR-OLD teacher walks into a classroom…and she builds a legacy.

Primary school educator Keshmani Dhaniram-Gosine has assisted massively in crafting a legacy of academic excellence at the Gandhi Memorial APS Vedic School in Aranguez.

From assistant teacher to principal, consistently developing students that topped the SEA exam along the way, she heads into retirement proud of her four decades of work.

Dhaniram-Gosine, 60, grew up in the quaint village of Avocat in Fyzabad with eight siblings.

She told WMN it was actually her brother Surendra Dhaniram who sparked her interest in becoming a teacher when she was still a child.

He taught at her primary school – Avocat Vedic School.

“And he later became the principal. So he has actually been my role model. That was the type of person I wanted to grow up to be.”

She also had a cousin, Vijay Persad, who taught her in standard five.

She would sometimes sit in a room and gather her younger cousins so she could pretend to be a teacher.

“I would teach math,” she recalled. “That was always my favourite subject. I was always really good with numbers.”

She joked that sometimes she would do it with no audience.

She then moved on to Iere High School, where she said she also had “excellent teachers."

“My teachers had their students’ best interests at heart. So I guess that’s also where my passion came from.”

She said she also learnt the value of hard work and perseverance through her mother. Her father died when she was eight years old.

“She, together with the older siblings in the house, ensured that they kept the younger ones on track.”

After A levels, she jumped straight into teaching, starting off as an assistant teacher at Gandhi Memorial where she remained for her entire career.

She was the youngest staff member back then.

“All teachers needed to start off at that rank before going to training,” she explained.

[caption id="attachment_1147990" align="alignnone" width="526" height="1024" alt=""] From assistant teacher to principal, Keshmani Dhaniram-Gosine at the Gandhi Memorial (APS) Vedic School library.[/caption]

Asked why she decided to teach at the primary school level, she said she loves working with younger children.

“I think it's so easy to mould because their whole value system is still being formed, they’re a bit more disciplined than the ones who are older…And I really enjoyed teaching them.”

She experienced the evolution of the Common Entrance exam to the SEA exam. She said this required a bit of a different approach to teaching standard five students.

“When they did the shift, we had what was called the portfolio assessment. So it required teaching creative writing, etc, differently in that you actually got to invest time with the writing process with the children…So I think it really helped the writing process a bit more.”

To her, the approach to math remained the same, though the syllabus had expanded.

“So it meant that we had to teach children to think critically. You actually had to get scenarios and engage