Shane Su­perville

For some stu­dents prepar­ing to write CSEC O-Lev­el ex­ams next year, Eng­lish A as a com­pul­so­ry sub­ject is just one of sev­er­al aca­d­e­m­ic hur­dles to over­come.

But un­der­stand­ing the Eng­lish Lan­guage goes be­yond pass­ing a writ­ten ex­am, as the abil­i­ty to read, un­der­stand and in­fer mean­ing, while prop­er­ly ex­press­ing one­self, forms the ba­sis of all com­mu­ni­ca­tion, from ask­ing for di­rec­tions to high-stakes work­place meet­ings.

It’s for this rea­son that part-time Eng­lish tu­tor Pa­tri­cia Schel­born seeks to not on­ly help her stu­dents pass, but al­so de­vel­op a more thor­ough ap­pre­ci­a­tion for their com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills, re­gard­less of their skill lev­el.

Schel­born is the main tu­tor and founder of P’s Vo­cab­u­lary Vil­lage, an on­line tu­tor­ing plat­form which has grad­u­al­ly grown in pres­ence since its emer­gence in 2024.

The class­es, which are held vir­tu­al­ly via Zoom, fa­cil­i­tate stu­dents prepar­ing for CSEC and adults seek­ing to sharp­en their lit­er­a­cy skills.

From pas­sion to pur­pose

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia Ltd, Schel­born says teach­ing has al­ways been a pas­sion of hers, help­ing her nephews with their Eng­lish home­work and even proof­read­ing let­ters for rel­a­tives.

“It’s some­thing that has al­ways been on my mind grow­ing up, but it wasn’t a main fo­cus ca­reer-wise.

“I was en­cour­aged by a lot of peo­ple around me and as much as I want­ed to take the first step, there was a lot of self-doubt that kept me from do­ing it.”

Schel­born at­tend­ed the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), St Au­gus­tine, where she earned a dou­ble ma­jor in So­ci­ol­o­gy and Eng­lish.

Her fo­cus tem­porar­i­ly shift­ed to so­cial work, even briefly work­ing with the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices, but even with her new­found pro­fes­sion, she con­tin­ued to nur­ture her pas­sion for teach­ing.

It was from this de­sire and a need to be­come more fi­nan­cial­ly in­de­pen­dent that prompt­ed the cre­ation of P’s Vo­cab­u­lary Vil­lage.

Us­ing so­cial me­dia and her free time, Schel­born spent months craft­ing her brand, even­tu­al­ly amass­ing a size­able fol­low­ing, with class­es every day of the week.

Bal­anc­ing work

and teach­ing

But strik­ing a bal­ance be­tween her reg­u­lar work­day and tu­tor­ing has its chal­lenges.

“De­pend­ing on the day I have with my 9 to 5 job, I am ex­haust­ed.

“But I try to make sure I do every­thing to get ad­e­quate rest.

“There are some days I feel as if I’m on my last legs, but when I log on and teach my stu­dents, it helps me to find that mo­ti­va­tion to push on.

“I al­ways feel my stu­dents should nev­er have to suf­fer just be­cause I had a hard day. That’s not fair to them so I put my best foot for­ward.”

And while none of the class­es are held in per­son, Schel­born says she feels this has not placed her stu­dents at a dis­ad­van­tage, as small class sizes al­low her to give in­di­vid­ual at­ten­tion to meet every­one’s needs.

Teach­ing in the age of AI

But even as tech­nol­o­gy has helped fa­cil­i­tate a bet­ter learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence, Schel­born says she is al­so aware of how new AI tools can be used by stu­dents to find short­cuts in their lessons.

For this rea­son, she says that teach­ing in the mod­ern age de­mands a high­er de­gree of scruti­ny to en­sure that work put for­ward by stu­dents is au­then­tic.

“It is a chal­lenge in how eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble it is and you can get what­ev­er you want when you type it in­to the prompt.

“I know it can be tempt­ing for many peo­ple, but I per­son­al­ly don’t use AI when it comes to my stu­dents.

“I know what my stu­dents learn­ing styles are, what their writ­ing styles are as well, so un­der­stand­ing their strengths and their own unique way of do­ing things re­al­ly helps in recog­nis­ing red flags to in­di­cate cheat­ing or whether they got help from some­where.”

De­spite this, Schel­born says once AI is de­tect­ed, her first in­stinct isn’t to scold the of­fend­ing stu­dent.

“I un­der­stand the way that AI can be tempt­ing, but it can al­so make us lazy in tak­ing away the mo­ti­va­tion to want to be bet­ter.

“I have to con­front them about it, but I ex­plain that they are on­ly hurt­ing them­selves or putting them­selves at a dis­ad­van­tage by not be­ing hon­est and do­ing the work on their own.”

In this way, Schel­born says get­ting stu­dents to fo­cus means be­ing un­der­stand­ing of their in­di­vid­ual weak­ness­es with­out ap­pear­ing judg­men­tal or harsh.

Build­ing con­fi­dence

in adult learn­ers

She says this ap­proach to teach­ing is par­tic­u­lar­ly im­por­tant in her adult lit­er­a­cy class­es, where she sees first-hand how in­se­cure some peo­ple are in their read­ing and com­pre­hen­sion skills.

“A lot of times when adults come to me, they are very hes­i­tant and ashamed.

“What I’ve no­ticed in speak­ing with them is that un­for­tu­nate cir­cum­stances pre­vent­ed them from fin­ish­ing school when they were younger, so when we got in­to class­es a lot of them opened up and ad­mit­ted that even when they were in school, teach­ers didn’t have the time, or weren’t as pa­tient with them to ex­plain cer­tain con­cepts.”

For these adult stu­dents, she says, the goal isn’t sim­ply to get enough marks to pass an ex­am, but some­thing much more sig­nif­i­cant.

“They want to know that they’ve achieved some­thing by ac­tu­al­ly work­ing hard and do­ing their best.

“They want to read and un­der­stand doc­u­ments at work, they want to write bet­ter, they want to speak bet­ter and be more con­fi­dent us­ing cer­tain ‘big words,’ yes they may doubt them­selves, but it’s a re­al­ly beau­ti­ful thing to see peo­ple trust you to help them and see­ing them achieve what they were so afraid of.”

Par­ents have a role to play

It’s a se­ri­ous re­spon­si­bil­i­ty that Schel­born says she doesn’t take for grant­ed, as she hopes that teach­ers and par­ents can con­tin­ue to play their re­spec­tive roles in shap­ing the minds of their chil­dren.

And even as tu­tors like her­self can be a guide to get­ting high­er grades, she says par­ents, par­tic­u­lar­ly, should be re­al­is­tic about their child’s abil­i­ty, as she re­minds them that ex­tra lessons aren’t a guar­an­tee for suc­cess.

In this way, she says the brand’s ti­tle as a Vo­cab­u­lary Vil­lage is more than just a catchy moniker.

“When par­ents see stu­dents at­tend­ing a par­tic­u­lar lessons teacher and get­ting good re­sults, they may think that lessons teacher is some sort of mir­a­cle-work­er, but it doesn’t work like that.

“I al­ways tell the par­ents of new stu­dents that once we all work to­geth­er, noth­ing is stop­ping us from get­ting favourable re­sults, but there’s no one-size-fits-all ap­proach to learn­ing.

“If your child isn’t in­vest­ing the same amount of time and ef­fort as oth­er stu­dents, they will fall be­hind.”

Schel­born al­so notes that while par­ents would want their chil­dren to get good grades for the new term, they should al­so be mind­ful that con­stant­ly push­ing them isn’t a recipe for suc­cess.

“Every­one has their lim­its in how much in­for­ma­tion they can ab­sorb.

“Even adults get flus­tered, so it’s re­al­ly im­por­tant to be mind­ful of what your child is ca­pa­ble of and how they can in­ter­nalise in­for­ma­tion. So that’s why it’s so im­por­tant to work with the teach­ers and sup­port what they do, not just to put more work on your child, but to get a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of who they are in the class­room.”

Schel­born says the brand con­tin­ues to grow and is pleased with the suc­cess re­ceived so far, not­ing that while so­cial me­dia en­gage­ments con­tin­ue to trend up­wards, the re­al ac­com­plish­ment is in the lives she has helped im­prove with her lessons.