Thirty-five years ago, I made a career change.

I had started life as a civil servant. Never mind that my father looked at me and said “You can’t work for government, Nico,”—not meaning that he would not permit me to, but that I was constitutionally unformed to do so. My grandfather was a good and faithful civil servant. My mother was one. My father was one. My great-uncle was, and my great-aunt. So what was stopping me?

Turns out, my father knew his daughter better than she knew herself. Three years after I started in the Ministry of Youth, Sports and Community Affairs, I changed careers. I went into teaching, which is for some people jumping from fat to fire, but which for me blew my mind.

I started at St. Anne’s High School in September 1989, and the class they gave me as a form room teacher changed my life forever.

St Anne’s Class of ‘92, top stream, you know who you are. You were 28 adolescents who looked me in the eye when you saw me walk into our classroom (which I had been in before you arrived, which I had painted and decorated and accented with a bright happy yellow) and said Youne ga last. We made our last formroom teacher cry. And he was a man.

And I said: Y’all ga leave me here.

Turns out, we were both partly right. You didn’t run me. Instead, we forged a bond for which I was not prepared. I looked into your young/troubled/mischievous/angry/nervous/eager faces and saw the lively minds behind. You caused trouble because you were bored. You were smart as whips and you knew it, and you were ready to pounce on any teacher who seemed weak or insecure. I guess I seemed, well, little, and young. Every one of you was taller than me, some of you by a foot or more. You pushed me and I didn’t move. I laughed at your efforts and pushed back. I pushed you and you grew. We fought one another, but by the end of the first year we both knew that we didn’t want to be parted.

I remained your formroom teacher till we graduated, and I left St Anne’s when you did.

The things you struggled with!

The things I made you do!

Remember the day I told you a tall tale and you swallowed it, hook, line and sinker? (At least most of you did … some of you might have been sceptical but you didn’t speak up, thank you). And then the next day when I told you I had lied? The shock on your faces was priceless:

But Ms Bethel, you’s a teacher! Teachers are not supposed to lie!

This was the lesson I was teaching you that day:

Always check the facts. Just because a teacher (or a pastor or a politician or anyone in power) tells you something that doesn’t make it true. Sometimes they lie BECAUSE THEY CAN. Check the facts for yourself.

You were a class who I knew would go far, and you did. You have. I honour you all, and when I think about that September in 1989, I almost always grin. I loved you.

***

And this week, we lost one of you. Jamie Tynes. Another gunshot victim.

I wasn’t ready.

I worried about you all when you were in high school, and then later, when you left high school and started to make your way. It was, after all, the early 1990s, and the shadow of cocaine was still hanging over us all. I worried about you all, even though you didn’t know it, until you passed through your twenties and into your thirties. I worried because despite your tough exteriors I had learned how vulnerable and how kind you were underneath—how big your hearts were, and how much striking first was sometimes the best way you had of making sure you didn’t get hurt more than you had been.

I stopped worrying so much when you crossed forty. I was amazed to be around to see that—you don’t think of thirteen-year-olds turning forty—but I stopped worrying. I let myself get comfortable, let myself believe that if you made it through your youth you could all be marked safe from random/not-so-random violence.

And I was wrong.

So here’s to my class of 1992, St Anne’s School. Here’s to our form. Here’s to Jamie. I still hold you all in my heart. Sometimes you pop into my dreams. I will always love you.

God bless you and keep you. May God’s face shine upon you and keep you safe; and …

RIP Jamie. You took a little piece of my heart.