Sama­ki Fe­li­cian

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

Vanes­sa Ra­moutar-Singh, a teacher with 20 years of ex­pe­ri­ence, has had the priv­i­lege of ed­u­cat­ing nu­mer­ous Pres­i­dent’s Medal win­ners and schol­ar­ship win­ners.

She has re­cent­ly added an­oth­er ac­co­lade to her re­sume with the pub­li­ca­tion of a book for CAPE stu­dents. The new au­thor has writ­ten a text­book called CAPE Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Stud­ies Mul­ti­ple-Choice Book­let, which con­tains ten prac­tice tests, ten an­swer sheets, an ex­pla­na­tion for each ques­tion, and many more. Ra­moutar-Singh said she was the first teacher in the Caribbean to re­lease a text­book of this kind.

“It’s the first text in the Caribbean writ­ten by a Trinida­di­an teacher for stu­dents across the Caribbean to help them ace this ex­am be­cause there was noth­ing like this be­fore, and now we have the new top­ics and new changes that were made to the syl­labus. It is a learn­ing re­source, and it is for teach­ers and stu­dents,” she said.

Ra­moutar-Singh was in­spired to write the book when she no­ticed the chal­lenges stu­dents face when do­ing Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Stud­ies. What mo­ti­vat­ed her to pub­lish this book was the re­al­i­sa­tion of her ex­per­tise and pro­fes­sion­al growth in the sub­ject, which she used as her guide­line when cre­at­ing it.

She fur­ther ex­plained, “I have been teach­ing CAPE Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Stud­ies from the in­cep­tion, and I am aware of stu­dents’ chal­lenges over the years. There has nev­er been a book like this be­fore, es­pe­cial­ly with the new syl­labus and with my past Pres­i­dent’s Medal win­ners. I am high­ly rep­utable, so that is why I was able to use my knowl­edge and ex­per­tise to put it in­to cre­at­ing this book.”

Since the book is now ac­ces­si­ble to the gen­er­al pub­lic, the St Au­gus­tine Girls’ High School (SAGHS) teacher’s main goal is to im­prove the stu­dents’ readi­ness and make sure they can com­plete the pa­per me­thod­i­cal­ly and thor­ough­ly to get a good ex­am grade. It may seem that writ­ing this book was ‘smooth sail­ing’, but Ra­moutar-Singh ex­plained that it was no easy task.

“This book was in progress for quite some time, and when I was ready to print, CXC held a work­shop at the end of Au­gust, a week and a half be­fore school re­opened, say­ing that they are hav­ing a re­vised syl­labus. I de­cid­ed to pause and wait to see what those changes were, and when I at­tend­ed the work­shop, sig­nif­i­cant changes were made to the syl­labus, so sig­nif­i­cant that I had to go and re­vis­it the book af­ter I had cre­at­ed it,” she said.

This chal­lenge put strain on her men­tal­ly, emo­tion­al­ly, and phys­i­cal­ly. How­ev­er, she did not let that de­ter her as she went over every­thing, tak­ing out the old ques­tions, adding in the new top­ics, chang­ing the an­swers, and writ­ing over the ex­pla­na­tions, which re­sult­ed in her com­ing out with the book at the end of Sep­tem­ber 2024.

La­belled by her stu­dents, ‘The Comm Stud­ies Boss’, Ra­moutar-Singh came from hum­ble be­gin­nings grow­ing up in the Ch­agua­nas area. She spoke proud­ly about her par­ents, who in­stilled in her the val­ue of hav­ing an ed­u­ca­tion, which made her in­to the strong, in­de­pen­dent woman she is to­day. Ra­moutar-Singh shares her knowl­edge with young girls, where she teach­es to em­pow­er them and teach them the im­por­tance of hav­ing a sound ed­u­ca­tion.

Ex­plain­ing the main rea­son she de­cid­ed to be­come an ed­u­ca­tor, Ra­moutar-Singh said, “It’s be­cause of my love for kids from a very young age. I ac­tu­al­ly start­ed out teach­ing at the Form Six lev­el. I had my own lessons; I start­ed do­ing my own pri­vate tu­ition, and even­tu­al­ly, I start­ed work­ing at pri­vate in­sti­tu­tions be­fore I got in­to SAGHS.”

The re­spect­ed and ded­i­cat­ed ed­u­ca­tor added, “I have been work­ing at pri­vate in­sti­tu­tions in Trinidad, do­ing a range of things such as CAPE Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Stud­ies, Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tion Coun­cil (CXC) Eng­lish A, and I once did SEA Eng­lish A and SEA Cre­ative Writ­ing. This made me look at the process of chil­dren from young to much old­er, and work­ing with them helped me as an ed­u­ca­tor; that is why I want­ed to be­come a teacher.”

‘The Comm Stud­ies Boss’ stat­ed she does not ex­act­ly have a favourite mo­ment of be­ing a teacher but said that she en­joys spend­ing time with the chil­dren, hear­ing about their sto­ries on what is go­ing on in their lives, and see­ing them suc­ceed.

Some of her past stu­dents in­clude Pres­i­dent’s Medal win­ners Ryk­er Har­richa­ran and Nish­ka Ma­haraj in 2023, Saira Mo­hammed in 2022, Ni­kee­sha Nan­coo in 2021, Am­rit Gal­baran in 2020, and Saan­jali Ma­haraj in 2017.

She al­so taught stu­dents who were placed in the top ten re­gion­al mer­it lists in the Caribbean.

To get more in­fo on Ra­moutar-Singh, you can fol­low her on In­sta­gram @vra­moutars­ingh_comm_stud­ies and Face­book “Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Stud­ies with V Ra­moutar-Singh.”