Dear Editor,

It is quite fitting that the Jamaica Teacher’s Association (JTA) celebrate its annual education conference just after Easter Sunday, on Tuesday April 22-24, 2025. The JTA holds the key to the revitalisation and resurrection of all that is good in Jamaica’s education system

On the proverbial bad road from Jerusalem to Jericho, the Good Samaritan intervenes to save the robbed traveller. Not only is the patient client treated with dignity, but there is intensive follow-up to ensure rest and recovery. (Luke 10: 25-37)

In the context of nursing medical care, Jamaican Mary Seacole did not need the approval of British Florence Nightingale to minister to wounded soldiers in the Crimean War. Seacole launched her own nursing career. Nonetheless, while individual prowess is commendable, the JTA as an association provides a sturdy anchor and protection for teachers in the classroom.

The JTA embodies the kind actions of many good, outstanding educators in our country. Not only does it pull out all the stops sacrificially to help students, but it is cognisant of embracing the diverse skills of other educators. It navigates those dangerous hallways among government bureaucrats, school administrations, teachers, and pupils. Wars are averted. It performs these brave interventions with an armour of love.

These educators move beyond the sphere of a classroom while scolding children to keep it clean, working with them, broom in hand to get the job done. Students feel no stigma in the task, recognising that if “Miss” can do it, so can I.

Learning and teaching is a mixed marketing paradigm, but there is no greater pull than love. Providing a meal to a weary counterpart and to retired teachers is the mark of excellence. Even if you cannot read or afford to purchase a textbook, the love of such educators keeps you moving to higher heights.

When you save the life of a student who has been labelled “irredeemable”, you save a nation. If you rescue the intellectual property of a staff member in the sector, you never know the blessing to come. Very likely, as politics goes, that individual will be tomorrow’s minister of education, ensuring that you receive the national honours due. You experience boundless joy when the one “leper” student, a despised Samaritan now with “learning limitations” removed comes to say “thanks”.

Teachers, you really do not need to step up to that podium. The seeds of love you have planted in practice is the difference between light and darkness. You make others able to see, and not just perceive with dreadful worry, the oppressive shadows of sadness.

Well done, JTA, for reaching out to our educators and cheering their pathways with good deeds and other small ways.

Jamaican teachers really do and teach.

Grateful students and teachers