Gill achieves the impossible dream

At the age of ten, Akini Gill was told by educators that he was mentally challenged and would amount to little.

Yesterday he stood on the National Library stage as a respected university music instructor, national scholarship winner and author as he launched his memoir, From Behind the Bridge to the Impossible Dream.

Gill, of Laventille, got a bachelor’s degree in musical arts with honours from the University of the West Indies, St Augustine, in 2009. In 2014 he won a national scholarship to New York University to do a master of arts in music education.

He returned to Trinidad to write his book, which outlines what and who brought him to where he is today, despite the challenges of his diagnoses of dyslexia (a reading disorder) and dyspraxia (a developmental disorder that causes difficulty in activities requiring co-ordination), and the financial instability in which his family was living.

“Elizabeth Ann St Clair, my mother – to whom the book is dedicated – has been my greatest resource, my champion, my everything and all that I have achieved. Her name deserved to be on it too,” Gill told reporters at the event yesterday morning.

St Clair said, "No one expected him to finish school. much less end up in UWI. When I looked down the road with these two children I saw a dark empty road.

"But I never tell him that. Whenever (people) were negative I told him, 'Prove them wrong, Akini.' I never treat him different,"

Despite being unable to read, the mother of two recognised that her son was not learning at the same speed as other children and sought help to ensure a bright future for him. Only through Gill's diagnosis did she realise that she had the same condition, and learnt to read at the age of 25 through the Adult Literacy Tutors Association (ALTA).

“There’s a chapter in the book that says ‘It takes more than a village,’ (which) showed, step by step, the people that helped me along the way” GIll explained. “I believe my village replaced the system” which he believes has failed many students with learning disabilities.

Gill hopes this book "can inspire and give hope to students, teachers, mothers, fathers, family and friends who are responsible for children with learning disabilities and even children who are typically developed in each community throughout TT.”

To children who have been recently diagnosed with learning difficulties,, Gill said, “Giving up is not an option,” and asked that parents “not only provide financial resources but actually spend physical time with their children.” He believes his mother’s encouraging him to participate in extracurricular activities and their trips to cultural landmarks in TT contributed to his motivation "to want to do something special, to do something big,” which he believes he has achieved.

Asked what motivated her, Gill's mother told Newsday she didn’t want her sons to be a burden to society.

“Where we was living in Laventille, every minute police breaking down somebody door, they come for somebody child.

"I didn’t want that for my children, I wanted something different,” she said, urging parents of children with learning disabilities not to give up on their children.

Gill is an now instructor in education at the Centre for Education Programmes at the University of Trinidad and Tobago and looks forward to doing a PhD in special education.