IRA MATH­UR

On an af­ter­noon in March at the Roy­al Botan­ic Gar­dens in Port-of-Spain, the trees be­come a li­brary, and the coun­try gath­ers to lis­ten. Be­neath the wide samaan canopy, with palms and bam­boo stir­ring in the breeze and sun-baked leaves crack­ling un­der­foot, read­ers lift their voic­es and sto­ries drift through the gar­dens.

The oc­ca­sion is Read­ings Un­der the Trees, AL­TA’s an­nu­al pub­lic read­ing, which re­turns to the Roy­al Botan­ic Gar­dens on Sat­ur­day, March 14, from 2.30 pm to about 5.30 pm. Writ­ers, vol­un­teers and stu­dents take their places be­neath the trees while fam­i­lies, ed­u­ca­tors and long-time sup­port­ers move be­tween the read­ing cir­cles. Cir­cu­lar read­ing spaces form un­der the branch­es, and voic­es car­ry eas­i­ly through the gar­dens in what has be­come one of AL­TA’s most recog­nis­able pub­lic gath­er­ings.

The af­ter­noon forms part of AL­TA’s con­tin­u­ing ef­fort to bring lit­er­a­cy in­to pub­lic con­ver­sa­tion. The au­di­ence hears from pub­lished au­thors, vol­un­teer tu­tors and AL­TA learn­ers read­ing po­ems, re­flec­tions and short sto­ries de­vel­oped dur­ing their lit­er­a­cy jour­ney. For some par­tic­i­pants, it is the first time they read aloud be­fore a pub­lic au­di­ence.

Stu­dents’ sto­ries de­scribe the change lit­er­a­cy brings. Some about read­ing a book in­de­pen­dent­ly for the first time. Oth­ers, of com­plet­ing job ap­pli­ca­tions with­out help, open­ing a bank ac­count, start­ing a small busi­ness or help­ing their chil­dren with home­work. These mo­ments trans­form lives, ex­pand worlds.

AL­TA was found­ed in 1992 by ed­u­ca­tor Dr Paula Lu­cie-Smith, whose work has shaped adult lit­er­a­cy ed­u­ca­tion in T&T for more than three decades. The pro­gramme grew out of Lu­cie-Smith’s ex­pe­ri­ence in the class­room. While teach­ing in a sec­ondary school, Lu­cie-Smith en­coun­tered stu­dents prepar­ing for ex­am­i­na­tions who strug­gled to read the ques­tions placed be­fore them. The ex­pe­ri­ence re­vealed a larg­er na­tion­al chal­lenge: adults who had left school with­out strong lit­er­a­cy foun­da­tions.

Lu­cie-Smith re­spond­ed by cre­at­ing a pro­gramme of­fer­ing free lit­er­a­cy in­struc­tion de­liv­ered by trained vol­un­teer tu­tors. From a small be­gin­ning, the pro­gramme ex­pand­ed in­to a na­tion­al net­work. Be­fore the pan­dem­ic, AL­TA co­or­di­nat­ed more than 300 vol­un­teer tu­tors work­ing in over 50 venues across Trinidad and To­ba­go, reach­ing thou­sands of adults seek­ing to strength­en their read­ing and writ­ing.

Vol­un­tary tu­tors meet learn­ers where they are. Some recog­nise on­ly a few let­ters. Oth­ers read sim­ple pas­sages but strug­gle with spelling or com­pre­hen­sion. AL­TA de­vel­oped sev­er­al lev­els be­gin­ning with a Be­gin­ner Lev­el and con­tin­u­ing through Lev­els One, Two and Three, with the high­est-lev­el prepar­ing learn­ers for ex­am­i­na­tions such as CSEC Eng­lish.

Lu­cie-Smith has writ­ten more than 60 lit­er­a­cy books and work­books, many root­ed in Caribbean life and ex­pe­ri­ence. The work has re­ceived na­tion­al and re­gion­al recog­ni­tion, in­clud­ing the Hum­ming­bird Gold Medal, the An­tho­ny N Sab­ga Caribbean Award for Ex­cel­lence in Pub­lic and Civic Con­tri­bu­tions, and two Paul Har­ris Fel­low­ships from Ro­tary In­ter­na­tion­al. In 2018, the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine, award­ed Lu­cie-Smith an hon­orary doc­tor­ate for con­tri­bu­tions to lit­er­a­cy and ed­u­ca­tion.

AL­TA Tu­tors tes­ti­mo­ni­als

An­nette Robin­son

“My jour­ney with AL­TA be­gan as an ob­serv­er, fu­elled by a deep pas­sion for giv­ing back to my com­mu­ni­ty. Tran­si­tion­ing in­to the role of a tu­tor has al­lowed me to wit­ness first-hand the pro­found and trans­for­ma­tive im­pact of lit­er­a­cy on in­di­vid­u­als and fam­i­lies.

“When the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic struck, I was tru­ly in­spired by how our founder swift­ly and seam­less­ly adapt­ed our pro­gramme to on­line learn­ing, en­abling us to con­tin­ue our vi­tal mis­sion with­out in­ter­rup­tion. Learn­ing to use on­line tools like Zoom ex­pand­ed my skill set, but the great­est source of pride and joy for me comes from wit­ness­ing our stu­dents’ un­wa­ver­ing ded­i­ca­tion to their per­son­al growth. Their com­mit­ment to im­prov­ing their lives and up­lift­ing their fam­i­lies mo­ti­vates me every sin­gle day, re­in­forc­ing the crit­i­cal im­por­tance of fos­ter­ing a lit­er­ate so­ci­ety.”

Shur­rine Camp­bell-Carr

“Grow­ing up, I loved teach­ing. In my teenage years, I was a Sun­day School teacher and lat­er be­came the Sun­day School Su­per­in­ten­dent at my church.

“In 2002, when I had free time in the evenings, I de­cid­ed to look for some­thing mean­ing­ful to do. I saw an ad­ver­tise­ment about AL­TA and thought that, since I en­joyed both learn­ing and teach­ing, I could give it a try. I even­tu­al­ly went through their train­ing pro­gramme, which was an eye-open­er be­cause their teach­ing meth­ods were very new to me. But they made learn­ing much eas­i­er, es­pe­cial­ly with phon­ics and rule cards.

“I won­dered why this method was nev­er used in schools—it would have made learn­ing much eas­i­er for some strug­gling stu­dents. Be­ing a tu­tor and work­ing along­side oth­ers who are equal­ly ea­ger to give back to so­ci­ety and help peo­ple with their lit­er­a­cy skills brings a sense of be­long­ing. See­ing learn­ers im­prove their lit­er­a­cy skills with your help gives a deep sense of pur­pose and ful­fil­ment.

“I en­joy every mo­ment of be­ing an AL­TA Tu­tor.”

Pro­gramme *to place in abox*

Sat­ur­day 14 March, Roy­al Botan­ic Gar­dens, Port-of-Spain. Read­ings from 2.30 pm to 5.30 pm. ( Open to the pub­lic)

Blue Tree: 2.30 Camille Hernán­dez Ramd­war Per­las; 2.50 Miguel Browne Tri­ni Talk and Talk Dat Talk; 3.10 Tra­cy Ass­ing to be re­mem­bered un­ac­count­ed for; 3.30 Vashti Bowlah O My Pa­pa; 3.50 Mi­ran­da Dook­er­an Breeze of Hope po­ems; 4.10 Der­ron Sandy spo­ken word; 4.30 Ira Math­ur Po­ems by the late po­et Gilberte Farah O’Sul­li­van.

Or­ange Tree: 2.30 Jilean Fa­bi­en Mrs Fab The Bent­ley Chron­i­cles Bent Out of Shape; 2.50 Ruth Os­man All Made of Long­ing po­ems; 3.10 Bre­anne Mc Ivor The God of Good Looks; 3.30 Moti­lal Boodoos­ingh The Mike Men of Pe­nal; 3.50 Danielle Boodoo For­tune po­ems from new col­lec­tion; 4.10 La­toy­aa Roberts The Tide Re­claims; 4.30 Richard Cha­ran Vil­lage of One.

Pur­ple Tree: 2.30 Moti­lal Boodoos­ingh Mousie from Bar­rack­pore; 2.50 Paula Obe Re­mem­ber­ing Her Brown Head­tie; 3.10 Ruth Os­man All Made of Long­ing po­ems; 3.30 Miguel Browne Tri­ni Talk and Talk Dat Talk; 3.50 Kervisha Cordice Sun­rise on the Quad­ran­gle; 4.10 Eliz­a­beth La­dy Mon­tano King of So­ca; 4.30 Car­o­line Macken­zie The Dy­ing Wish.

Pink Tree: 2.30 Lance Dowrich Ethel­bert and the Free Cheese; 2.50 Ger­ry Bar­row Boy Days Grow­ing up in Trinidad; 3.10 Muli Amaye Four Ways Out YA nov­el; 3.30 Shiv­a­nee Ram­lochan My Grand­moth­er Plaits My Hair at the End of the World Ma­ter­na; 3.50 Ryan Ba­choo An Un­end­ing Search; 4.10 Aman­da McIn­tyre Shelf In­dul­gence Notes on Qing­dao and Icarus De­scend­ing; 4.30 Stu­art Ram­nath For­tune From Ibadan to Hell Yard.

Kids Tree: 2.30 Mel­ly and Drag­onzela Zel­ly Bo­cas; 2.45 Je­u­nanne Alkins Play Ah Mas; 3:00 Marise Warn­er; 3:15 Eliz­a­beth Mon­tano Boy Boy and the Mag­ic Drum; 3:30 Mi­ran­da Dook­er­an Tom­my the Shark; 3.45 Phillip Si­mon Pe­tra and the Pan­man’s Daugh­ter; 4.00 Ka­t­ri­na Khan Roberts Mer­t­ri­na the Mi­ni Ma­rine Bi­ol­o­gist Mer­maid; 4.15 Mi­lan Ro­many and Zo­la Clarke Mer­maid­orn Ad­ven­tures A Quest for Gold; 4.30 Mi­la Smith This is Mi­la; 4.45 Shan­tal Sama­roo Mon­key on Char­lotte Street; 5.00 Games.

If you wish to be part of Al­ta as a tu­tor or sign up as a stu­dent, go to https://al­ta-tt.org/

IRA MATH­UR is a Trinidad Guardian colum­nist and win­ner of the 2023 OCM Bo­cas Prize for Non-Fic­tion for her mem­oir Love the Dark Days.