– a teacher’s journey of faith and perseverance

BORN in Region One and raised in the close-knit community of Leguan, Lavern Carryl’s journey through life and education has been shaped by perseverance, sacrifice and an unshakeable faith.
Thirty-eight years after entering the classroom as a young Acting Teacher, Carryl is preparing to retire from a profession that became far more than a job.
Along the way, she taught at every major level of Guyana’s education system, helped train and support other educators, raised a family and overcame personal setbacks that might easily have discouraged someone else.
But her story did not begin with success. In 1988, while attending Leguan Secondary School, Carryl sat three CXC subjects and passed none.
The disappointment was painful. She left school ashamed of the results, but she refused to allow that moment to define the rest of her life.
Instead, she made a decision that would become a recurring theme throughout her journey: she would keep going.
Soon afterwards, Carryl moved to Georgetown in search of work while waiting to hear from the Ministry of Education about an application she had submitted to become a teacher.

In the meantime, she found employment as a Sales Clerk at Twins Pharmacy. The salary was modest, but Carryl believed firmly in the value of honest work.
“There is dignity in labour,” she would often say, words she lived by.
Rather than remain at home without employment, she worked diligently, using what she earned to help support her ailing father and younger siblings in Leguan.
Then, on September 8, 1988, the call she had been waiting for finally came.
Carryl was appointed an Acting Teacher at the Shirley Merle Field Ridley Nursery School on the West Bank of Demerara.
For her family, it was a blessing. But the new opportunity came with challenges of its own.
Each day involved a demanding journey from La Penitence to Phoenix Park, including ferry crossings and long commutes. On some days, rain soaked her before she reached the school, and she would spend hours at work still wet from the journey.
Yet she continued and the difficult commute was simply another obstacle to overcome, nevertheless, when Carryl received her first salary, she sent much of it home to help her younger siblings.
It was an act that reflected both her generosity and her strong sense of responsibility towards her family. Before long, however, helping her siblings became more than a voluntary gesture.
Her father died when Carryl was just 17 years old, leaving her to assume an even greater responsibility for the household. Her mother had died years earlier, when Carryl was only six.
At an age when many young people were still trying to determine the direction of their own lives, Carryl suddenly found herself helping to lead and support her siblings.
Following her father’s death, she was transferred back to Leguan, where she began teaching at Kingston Nursery School and could be closer to her family.
Returning home brought emotional comfort, but it did not necessarily make life easier. Every day, she walked approximately two miles to work and another two miles home. Still, she pressed forward.
Her determination would again be tested when she sought admission to the Cyril Potter College of Education.
There were several attempts at the required examinations. Illness and periods of hospitalisation interrupted her progress, while Mathematics proved to be another formidable challenge.

Not passing the subject initially meant that she received provisional acceptance to the college.
But Carryl was not prepared to surrender and eventually, she passed.
By 1995, she had graduated from the Cyril Potter College of Education with her Trained Teachers’ Certificate, another significant milestone in a journey that had already required years of persistence.
The decades that followed took her through virtually every level of Guyana’s education system.
Carryl taught at nursery, primary, secondary and tertiary institutions, gaining experience across the profession and contributing beyond the walls of the classrooms in which she worked.
She facilitated literacy workshops, contributed to the development of a Six-Year Transition Curriculum and supported teachers in communities across Guyana.
Her work was recognised in 2002 when she was named Teacher of the Quarter.
She continued investing in her own education as well, graduating from the University of Guyana in 2006. She later completed an Advanced Graduate Diploma in Educational Management and Supervision and pursued several additional leadership courses.
For Carryl, however, education was never simply about collecting qualifications or advancing professionally. It was about service.
That commitment would eventually bring her back to Region Three, the region where her teaching career had begun.
In 2022, after St George’s High School was destroyed by fire, Carryl received her final posting at Patentia Secondary School.
There was a sense of coming full circle. Years earlier, she had travelled through Region Three as a young teacher, enduring rain, ferry crossings and exhausting commutes on her way to work.
Throughout her career, she had quietly hoped that she might eventually end her professional journey in the same region where it had started.
In the end, that is exactly what happened. Carryl views it as providence.
Yet, despite the many professional accomplishments that marked her career, she maintains that one of her greatest legacies was built outside the classroom.
For 25 years, she was married to the late Francis Augustus Carryl, a Labour Consultant and community leader.
Together, they raised two daughters, Tammy, a university lecturer with a Master’s Degree in Special Education, and Frances, a lawyer and university lecturer with a Master’s Degree in Oil and Gas Law.
They also fostered a son, Naresh Samuel, who is now an entrepreneur, husband and father living in the United States.
Today, Carryl has embraced another cherished role: grandmother. She is the grandmother of Majesty, the newest member of a family whose story, like her own, has been shaped by education, opportunity and perseverance.
After serving at 10 schools and dedicating nearly four decades to the profession, Carryl is now preparing to retire.
“I have given the best years of my life to nurturing young minds, and now it’s time to pass the baton,” she says.
It is a simple statement, but behind it lies 38 years of classrooms, lesson plans, examinations, professional development, long journeys and countless young lives touched along the way.

Her story is also a reminder that success rarely follows a straight path; there were failed examinations, illness, family responsibilities, financial struggles, long walks and rain-soaked journeys to work.
There was grief at a young age and the enormous responsibility of helping to care for younger siblings. But through each chapter, Carryl continued moving forward. Day after day. Ferry after ferry. Examination after examination. Placement after placement. Challenge after challenge.
She kept going, even when there was no guarantee that things would work out as she hoped.
For young Guyanese, Carryl’s journey offers lessons in patience, resilience, generosity and the value of remaining faithful to one’s purpose.
From a teenager who left school disappointed after failing three CXC subjects to an educator whose career spanned 38 years and every major level of the education system, her life demonstrates that a difficult beginning does not have to determine the ending.
As she steps away from the classroom, Lavern Carryl leaves behind more than a professional record. She leaves a story of purpose. A story of responsibility. And, above all, a story of a woman who decided, time and again, that no matter how difficult the journey became, she would keep going.