Teaching what matters most

Earlier this year, Shaakira Gangadeen’s story was shared in a vibrant post by local women’s Muslim wear brand IMAAN Trinidad and was widely seen and embraced by local viewers and readers on Facebook. Her story is one of redemption and giving back to a community that desperately needs it, in spite of and likely because of her own experiences as a young person growing up in a time of immense strife and difficulty. Her story is a reminder that, at all times but particularly this time of the year, that there is a need to try to help solve many problems in TT without waiting on the powers-that-be.

Currently teaching Social Studies and Health Family Life Education at Malick Secondary, Gangadeen is on the front lines of what she calls a crisis and a war in the nation’s schools – with students as young as 13 already coming into the school system as parents but also heavily involved in the territorial disputes that have spread like plague across our communities. Her upbringing in a sheltered home, with two brothers, her mother and father did not help her being thrust into the wider world and its issues when she entered Success Laventille Secondary School. “It was a culture shock to my system,” she told WMN.

“I had to quickly learn a lot of life lessons that opened up my eyes having attended a primary school in which I was also very sheltered,” she adds. She studied Agri-Business Studies at The University of the West Indies and then pursued a double major in Sociology before applying to the teaching service. She was accepted to teach at Malick Secondary. “When I was accepted to UWI, I didn’t think I could do it so I had instead applied to the On-the-Job Training Programme, but eventually my brother offered to assist me with the fees which was the only way I could get to pursue my studies.

“We never had it easy growing up. My mother would make roti and pies and give my father to sell them for us to earn an income at all. But she eventually became unwell during my studies for a number of reasons. At some point, we were told my father owed people a lot of money and he was starting to come back home with all the food sold, but no money. One night, while sleeping, we heard shots being fired and we quickly realised, the guns were pointed at our house in the dead of night,” she recalled.

“It was 2 am and we went to the floor. They kept shooting but before leaving but they shouted out ‘allyuh lucky tonight!’. We stayed on the floor not moving until it was at least 5:30 am and we could see some sunlight to know that it was safe to look around and move. It was an incredibly traumatic experience to the point after that where we would leave home just before it got dark to sleep, on the floor, on cushions wherever we could, at the home of another family member, because we heard the men saying that they were going to come back – and that was just the warning,” she said, visibly reliving the moment. Eventually, her mother divorced her father and she began paying the money owed where she could – which all added to further illnesses and hospitalisations from the stress and exhaustion. But as a mother, she was doing anything to keep her and her family alive.

While it may appear to be stigmatisation of an entire community that already faces this every day, it’s simply the reality of what’s happening on the ground in dozens of communities across TT. They’re dying – with good people doing what they can to stay alive and the bad ones doing what they can to seize more territory and more young people for their pointless armies. Knowing this reality, Gangadeen always knew she wanted to give back to that community – to be a light in the dark. “I know what people face when they apply for jobs and the employers see their address in Morvant or Laventille and I know the challenges you face in the schools having gone to school here in addition to living here,” she points out. Still, her foray into teaching wasn’t easy. She found a student population that included among the diligent ones, young people who had little hope for the future – whose aspirations only went so far as owning a car so they could "work taxi". But she persisted particularly because she had some of the toughest classes on her hands – older students and often delinquent ones too. Then there was a breakthrough.

“One day when I got to classes with the Form Five students, I was using a Real Madrid pen and my students noticed – they were excited that I knew the team but little did they know how much I love football. From there, it was easy to connect with them through the sport and my love of it – we suddenly had a connection!” she said. Gangadeen, to this day, is one of the biggest supporters at each of the matches that Malick plays and is an ardent follower of football at the secondary school level. “Now I was able to work with them because we shared something in common and the students started staying back with me to do their school based assessments (SBA’s) because I was able to reach them. They settled down and some began performing better at the academic level,” she said. “More importantly though, they all began to really listen to me – and in so doing I was able to help make them better citizens and better humans. I believe in one simple thing – to save at least one every year from the realities on the streets of country.

“Everything that I have been through, has made me a better person. I saw how my mother struggled. I saw how my grandparents and aunts and uncles reached out to help with my school books and I knew I had to reward that,” she said.

Gangadeen became the first person in her family to graduate at the CXC level with passes, the first person to do A-Levels and the first family member to attend university. That experience set the bar in her family – with one of her cousins recently receiving a scholarship to pursue medical studies and others completing their secondary school studies including CAPE. Still she didn’t expect the response from the IMAAN Trinidad Facebook Page – stories of Muslim women shared by the company that sells hijabs and Islamic wear about the struggles and successes of their clients and other Muslim women in the country. “I got emotional when I saw how this story connected with people – there are so many stories that are on there that people should read to see what people go through here at home,” she advised.

All these experiences have deepened Gangadeen’s understanding of people, allowing her to find her true self and using that true self to help those in need – particularly those that mask what they are going through. Her story is one of turning the worst of humanity into the best of it – becoming the kind of person she needed in her life, for people that now need it too.