A selfless and dedicated educator

Sep 20, 2009 Peeping Tom

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Ingrid Fung is this week’s ‘Special Person’

 

“Although my purse is not heavier in terms of dollars, I wouldn’t trade my teaching profession for the world. If I was asked to go through it again I would teach, because it is really and truly fulfilling to see your students graduate and be able to realise their hopes and dreams…”

 

By Sharmain Cornette

 

Being a teacher today may not seem an auspicious career to some, but for Mrs Ingrid Fung it has been a 40-year journey of trying to assist in shaping what has become an increasingly distorted society, a task which according to her has no end in sight.

In fact, her contributions to the local education sector are so numerous, that it would be a near impossible task to chronicle them in this article. However, I will endeavour, though concisely, to highlight her dedication and sustained commitment to a career which started on September 19, 1969 and continues even today.

Many would remember her best as the principal of the St Joseph High School, located on Woolford Avenue, a position from which she retired in 2006. She nonetheless, remains a crucial asset to the education sphere as she still offers the experience and skills she acquired over the years in varying capacities.

What many people, even some of her close colleagues, may not have known, at least up until now, was that as a young girl, she never planned on becoming an educator. Her advent into the teaching profession was in fact, as a result of unanticipated circumstances.

Born Ingrid Jennifer Angela Richards, she grew up with her parents in the Cinderella County of Essequibo, in a small village called Affiance, situated just about midway of the 38-mile stretch of the Coast. And it was a quiet country life for a happy family of five, mother, father and three beautiful girls, with Ingrid being the youngest.

But tragedy would strike the humble household, snatching wife and mother, leaving a clueless father to care for three girls, the youngest being just one-and-a-half years old. “Looking back, my father perhaps panicked. He was left with three little girls and I dare say he left us…,” Mrs Fung mused.

However, the girls were not neglected by their great-grandmother, who was 80 years old at the time, and great aunts who came to their rescue, bringing them up in a way that would shape their lives forever. “I remember my great-grandmother, especially, how she would take me to Georgetown and Plaisance. Those are fond memories I have of her. She eventually died at the age of 96. I was 13 at the time,” Mrs Fung solemnly reflected.

However, her aunts took up the mantle and kept them on track. “They cared for us until I became an adult and started working. They were doting supervisors of our lives and gave us the very best they could and we were happy. We grew up in a family home where everybody ran back to when there was a problem.”

As a child, Mrs Fung attended the Taymouth Manor Methodist School. Her participation in the common entrance examination saw her gaining a place at Anna Regina Secondary now known as Anna Regina Multilateral.

As a young high school graduate her heart was set on becoming an air hostess, which was back then, believed to be one of the most glamorous careers a girl could venture into. However, she was thrust into the field of education almost immediately after moving to the city with one of her aunts after graduation.

“I remember a family friend inviting me to a staff meeting at the St Theresa’s Anglican School, now the Peters Hall Primary School, on the East Bank of Demerara. It was headed by Basil Barnett Blair, an all-time great in education. He was a trade unionist and one of the best head teachers…”

Not fully aware of her purpose at the meeting, the young Ingrid was yet enthralled with her desire to become a “saucy” air hostess until her aunt informed her that she was going to become a teacher and therefore needed some clothes. “A teacher!” Mrs Fung remembered muttering to herself. But she was obedient and turned up at the East Bank School on that early mid-September morning in 1969.

And it was no easy task for a mere 18-year-old to deliver lessons to students in the secondary department of an all-age school. Some students, Mrs Fung recalled, were as old as or even older than she was. “I remember some of the boys would stare at me all the time and made me remember that I was just as young as they were. I eventually got over that intimidation and just became a teacher to them.”

But though she had gotten past the initial challenges, she still had not made up her mind to remain in the teaching profession. In fact, she was aware that many persons had used the field as a stepping stone. But her headmaster, Mr Blair, without any consultation with her, notified the acting teacher that she should prepare herself for teachers’ college, then known as the Government Training College for teachers.

“We all looked up to him as teachers and I respected his wishes. So I decided that the only thing I could have done was to go to the interview and fail it.” According to Mrs Fung, back in those days it was no easy mission to get into teachers’ college as there would usually be about 1000 applicants of which only the best 150 were selected. The process entailed the examination of an applicant’s academic qualification which once found acceptable was followed by an interview. Though intent on failing the interview, fate would ensure that the young Ingrid would pass, and she was offered a place at the college. She graduated with a Trained Class One Teacher’s Certificate in 1972.

At college, her major was Literature and her minor was drama, a field which saw her being among the first group of dramatists to perform at the National Cultural Centre and also to infiltrate the Caribbean with Guyanese theatre talent.

Upon graduation she was placed at Queenstown Primary where she taught until 1982 when that school merged with St Gabriel’s Primary, rendering the former institution non-existent. She went on to the University of Guyana and graduated in 1984 with a degree in Education and was assigned to Comenius Moravian, an all-age school, before she was transferred to St Joseph High in January 1985 where she remained for 21 years.

As a specialist in English, she entered the high school as an assistant mistress, was promoted to senior mistress and eventually Deputy Head before becoming Principal. She further sought to upgrade herself, attaining a Masters Degree in Education from the Framingham State College in Boston, United States.

And during her tenure at the school there were many high points as there were lows. Among the high points, Mrs Fung remembers, is the contribution from the alumni towards the setting up and furnishing of a computer laboratory. According to her, with the much needed assistance, St Joseph was able to and continues to offer Information Technology at the CXC level. And there were many notable success stories, in terms of the school’s pass rate.

“Many of our students are today lawyers, doctors, immigration officers, hairdressers, dress makers, pilots, they cover the professions…. It makes for easy selling for us and I think that I enjoy having that more than pension,” Mrs Fung joked.

The lowest point of her teaching career though was the fateful day, March 1 2003, when Yohance Douglas was killed. Douglas had only recently graduated from St Joseph High with distinction and at the time of his death was a student of the University of Guyana when he was gunned down like a common criminal.

“When we lost our very promising, handsome, intelligent Yohance, in that crazy era, that was for us – me, my colleagues and the students – the lowest point of all times. We just couldn’t understand…We were given a mandate to qualify and make people fit for society. We did so in a student who graduated with distinction and we sent him out there and then society gave him back to us in a coffin, without a good reason. We had buried many students but of natural causes and disasters but not like that, this one was without a reason,” Mrs Fung in a saddened tone insisted.

But as dedicated as she was to school life, the stalwart teacher yet had her own personal dilemmas to battle. The most tragic was the death of her husband, Patrick Fung, her sweetheart from her childhood days in Essequibo. They had met for the first time in 1966 when she was just 15 years old. After she assumed her teaching career they tied the knot, a union which produced five children, four boys and a girl. “He was an adoring father and a wonderful husband. We couldn’t ask for anything more…,” Mrs Fung fondly reflected.

And it was just when she thought that life couldn’t get any better that things took a drastic turn for the worse. Mrs Fung recounted that it was 1991 when her husband became ill and suddenly died. “We were not expecting death. So it was a major shock and was the darkest moment of my life. My kids were young; the last one was only two. It was too much for us to understand, not only because he was a breadwinner, but he was the love of our lives.”

“Somehow I felt that my heart too was plucked out and buried with him. But of course I saw my five beautiful children and I recognised that he would have wanted me to go on with the strength he knew that I had to take care of them.”

Assuming the role of both mother and father to her children, the selfless educator said that she was forced to find a second job but very quickly learnt to manage and juggle the pressures of dealing with her own children as well as the nation’s children.

Mrs Fung entered the teaching system as an acting teacher with six GCE subjects and left as a principal with a Masters in Education. Today she offers tutelage in the subject area of English ‘A’ and ‘B’ to students preparing for CXC. In fact she has been a CXC examiner for the past 23 years and has never failed to share her knowledge with fellow teachers.

She has even been appointed a place on the CXC panel which is the single body responsible for amending and adjusting the syllabus.

Mrs Fung is also a national facilitator attached to the National Centre for Educational Research and Development (NCERD) and is tasked with delivering the intermediate distance programme that is ongoing for non-graduate English teachers. She is also involved with the Ministry’s distance education mode programme for students, via television.

Through her many years of tutelage she has positively impacted many lives, a fact to which many testimonials were offered when a valedictory function was held for her after she retired from her position as principal in 2006. ‘Friend, mother, food in the midst of a famine,’ were some of the terms used to express who Mrs Fung was to her students.

According to her “although my purse is not heavier in terms of dollars, I wouldn’t trade my teaching profession for the world. If I was asked to go through it again I would teach, because it is really and truly fulfilling to see your students graduate and be able to realise their hopes and dreams…”

Though she was on several occasions encouraged to take her skills to greener pastures, Mrs Fung over the years remained committed to the local education sector and the children of Guyana. She emphasised that “commitment on the part of teachers is crucial if the education sector is to move forward. Teachers must understand that their salaries may never be top notch, but once you are doing something, you should endeavour to do it well…You must feel good about what you have done at the end of the day,” said a passionate Mrs Fung, who is truly a special person.

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