Falmouth, Trelawny

It is an unconventional classroom setting in which the students are seated on the verandah of the home of Lloyd L Thompson, who describes himself as a “freelance teacher”.

But there’s nothing unorthodox about his teaching methods.

It is, however, challenging to fathom how the 56-year-old teacher has been able to groom the students to the level where their attention does not drift to the passing motor vehicles and pedestrians on the street so close to where classes are conducted. When the OBSERVER WEST visited the ‘classroom’ last Saturday morning, the eyes of the four students present remained firmly glued to their books. They were seemingly oblivious to the intrusion.

“This gentleman is from the Observer. Say good morning to him,” a smiling, but stern Thompson instructed.

“Good morning sir!” came the chorused response.

Thompson, who was born in Falmouth on June 3, 1951, said he was forced to quit his secondary school studies at the Montego Bay Technical Institute because of ill health. But he remained resolute in his quest to acquire a solid education and studied privately to achieve eight subjects in the Jamaica School Certificate (JSC).

This helped him to secure entry at the newly opened Brown’s Town Community College in 1976, where he undertook a two-year course in nursing. Afterwards he was assigned to the Spauldings Hospital for practical studies, but had to pull out of the course because of his blood phobia.

“I got turned off and did not go on because I am afraid of blood and delivering babies and those sorts of things,” the private tutor disclosed.

He subsequently spent a year at the Daniel Town All-Age as a pre-trained teacher before a lady influenced him to do private tutoring in 1993. He began tutoring the lady’s granddaughter. His lone student passed the now defunct Common Entrance Examinations and earned a place at the prestigous boarding school in Trelawny, Westwood High School.

The successful student encouraged her friends to sign up with Thompson, who reluctantly agreed. He started the class with two female students. It was a Monday evening, he recalled. That evening, the number of students moved to seven, and by the next week it grew to 20.

“At the end of it, 18 passed the Common Entrance. Most went to traditional high schools and the ones with the lowest grades went to Muschete (High School). One is doing law now, and another doing is medicine,” noted Thompson, who did not attend a teachers’ college but did a diploma course in teaching. “They claim that I am good at Mathematics. I don’t know. But I know I do well in general knowledge. It

is my thing, international or local”.

He added that professionals such as nurses, police, and teachers who wanted CXC Mathematics to qualify themselves for advanced studies have sought

his assistance.

The educator admitted that he used to apply flogging as a means of procuring discipline and recounted that he once employed this method on a young female teacher, who was among his CXC students.

“This young lady, a teacher, came and wanted to do Math. I took her aside and told her ‘Listen to me, I clap these young ladies when I am satisfied with what I have done and they don’t provide me with the correct answer, so I don’t want you in that group. If you don’t get it right, I am going to clap you too’. She agreed,” Thompson broke out into laughter. “One evening I gave an assignment and instructed them that if anyone get it (some Math problems) wrong they are in problem. The evening I came after marking the book; up to the teachers get it wrong, and I whipped everybody including the teacher. You want to hear the big joke: everybody cried.

But a young man dried the tears as quick as possible and said ‘since Miss get lick, I am not going to cry’. They all started to laugh”.