SEPTEMBER is designated Education Month, and the Guyana Chronicle would like to feature a special teacher, Miss Grace Brumell, who has, over the years, made strides to promote literacy in Guyana.

Ms. Brumell spoke of her 32 years of teaching, a profession she still enjoys to this day, and would not give up for any other.
Grace Brumell is presently a part-time lecturer at the University of Guyana (UG). Her course is ‘Teaching of Reading’ in the Education and Humanities Department, and she gets her satisfaction when her students excel academically to become doctors, lawyers etc. and take up high- status jobs.
She said, “I feel satisfied when I see one of the students I taught in school grow up to become an adult and is doing a good job, such as a teacher, a bank employee etc., and (I would say to myself) he or she is the product of my teaching years.”
She told the Guyana Chronicle that, if offered another job, she would not take it up, since teaching is in her blood, is something she enjoys doing, and has grown very accustomed to doing over the years.
Growing up, Ms Brumell disclosed, she knew she wanted to become a teacher, qualified herself accordingly, and is pleased with the outcome thus far.
Asked why she likes teaching so much, Miss Brumell said, “teaching is a divine appointment, and those who are called to it, when you look at them you will understand why; because it becomes your passion, your joy, and is instilled in you.”
Talking about her years of teaching with so much joy and passion, Ms. Brumell is quite interesting to sit and chat with. Despite all the challenges she has encountered, she knew what she wanted as her career, and went after it diligently.
She said she wishes that the youths of today would diligently pursue their dreams in order to become successful.
Being a mother of a girl and two boys, and the wife of Acting Police Commissioner Leroy Brumell, she said life wasn’t always ‘a walk in the park’, so to speak. She remembers having to take her younger son, when just months old, to school while teaching; but she said she managed her time well, and her children have all done well academically and hold good jobs.
She said that while she was a teacher at Sacred Heart Primary School, the teachers had a bond in which it was understood that all teachers’ children had to work even harder than the others, and it became their mantra.
She previously taught at the Covent Garden Primary School, where she spent a year before going to the Cyril Potter College of Education (CPCE) for two years to become a qualified teacher. She later taught at the Diamond Primary School for about 10 years.
She taught at the Sacred Heart Primary School in 1993 while pursuing a degree in Education, majoring in Reading (Literacy) in 2003.
She was motivated by her sister, a teacher, and always found it fascinating to assist her in making teaching aids for her class, because she had been blessed with artistic skills which she managed very well.
Ms. Brumell’s mentor was her class teacher at Covent Garden Primary School, Sir Madan Gopaul, her literature teacher, who often asked her to read before the class.
Ms. Brumell said she always liked reading, and often at home, when she was given chores to do, she would pick up a book and would not do any work until she had completed reading that book.
She  also penned several short stories and poems, and even wrote one for “Sunshine Corner” under her sister’s name, Donnette, winning a prize in the process.
Ms. Brumell is also fond of drawing animals and landscapes. She noted that she still has some of her work in storage at her mother’s place. Over the years, her mother kept those for her.
She is also good at story-telling, and would like to encourage all adults to assist their children in reading, so that more children can develop literacy skills at an early age.
In an effort to promote literacy, Miss Brumell said, last weekend, she and a group of 17 teachers came together and formed the Guyana Association for Reading and Language Development (GARLAND), in which they had a booth set up and had a mini fair.
At the mini fair, held in the Main Street Avenue in downtown Georgetown, there were interactive programmes geared towards encouraging and motivating children to read more. There were four sections: “Mother Goose corner”, a book sale, the “Read a book get a book corner”, and the games section, which were all successful. More such programmes will be organised across the country.
Ms Brumell stated that GARLAND is a programme which has the tools to equip children with the necessary reading skills, and the group of teachers has the expertise to push literacy, because their strategies were tried and proven, and they would like to do much more in  GARLAND to promote reading in Guyana.
She added that every child has specific needs in the world of teaching, and learning isn’t “one size fits all”; a teacher must recognise that and work around that to bring a child to learn.
She was also the National Literacy Coordinator for schools at the National Centre for Educational Resource Development (NCERD) from 2009-2011, a portfolio which she valued and had the opportunity to mentor a lot of teachers, as well as work with Education Officers in all the regions.
Ms Brumell said, “If we really want our children to be knowledgeable, we should put policies in place and work towards it to make it happen.”