A beloved tutor and social administrator Sheila George, MS, is a ‘Special Person’

Nov 28, 2010 News

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“I think you just have to do the best you can wherever you are.”

By Crystal Conway

She may be Mrs. Sheila George to most, but for some of us she will always remain Madame George. She will always be remembered as that quiet, refined lady who taught us French … and the phrase, ‘un grande idiot’ although I doubt she meant to teach us the latter.
Wife of the recently retired Bishop Randolph George, who was also featured in this column, Mme. George has done much to merit the title of ‘Special Person’ herself.
A former Diocesan President of the Mother’s Union, her contributions to church and state are matched, if not exceeded, by the contribution she made to the education of so many students.
Having finally managed to tie Mme. George down for an interview, the appointed time arrives and we sit down for a nice long chat. She tells me that when her husband retired she felt that she should take things a little easier herself. Fifteen minutes into the interview I have to ask her if she’s sure she’s really retired because her husband sits across the room, quietly reading, while she takes more calls than a busy CEO.
At eighty, Mme. George is anything but retired. She may have her one-year-old kitchen garden where she’s already managed to reap a harvest of pumpkins and bora; she may be out of the teaching profession and she may be spending more time at home, but she’s far from retired. The reason may lie in a statement she made during the interview, “I help wherever it’s needed.”
It may also be the reason that over her years here in Guyana, Mme George has made it her life’s work to help countless people, especially children.
Born in a small village called Gasparillot just off San Fernando, Trinidad, Mme. George was raised in an Anglican household by her parents, Iris and Sydney James. She attended Anglican schools and eventually went on to teach in Anglican schools for most of her career in Trinidad, so it comes as no surprise that soon after graduating from the Teachers Training College in Trinidad she married an Anglican Priest.
She gave up teaching full-time to stay at home with her three children, but she still ended up teaching at a private school close to home. In 1963 she was awarded a British Council Scholarship that saw her heading off to the University of Exeter in Devon where she majored in teaching English as a Foreign Language.
Qualified in Latin, English and French, the young mother returned to Trinidad and worked with girls reading for their Advanced Levels in French and Latin at the Bishop’s High School. She said she favoured those classes because they gave her the opportunity to work at a level that she enjoyed, one that she found a challenge.
“The literature of any language is what I really like. I find it very exciting. It opens your vision to what people were like, the common threads that bind people wherever they are, even the old tales in Latin … you find the same elements throughout; people are exceptional, they are jealous …”
The Government eventually singled her out for a scholarship that sent her to the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus, where she furthered her qualifications in French and English.
Several years later, however, tragedy struck as she lost her husband of almost 20 years. In spite of the sad circumstances she continued teaching at the Bishop’s High School.
A few years later she met and married yet another Anglican priest, this one a Guyanese, Reverend Randolph George. In 1971, Mme. George moved to Guyana with her husband and three children. An active member of the Mother’s Union in Trinidad she joined the local chapter at the St. George’s Cathedral to pick up where she left off.
She also began teaching French at the Bishops’ High School, a post that she would hold for almost a decade before she eventually ‘retired’ from teaching. Despite that fact she would still teach students privately at her home – for free – since she refused to give “lessons”. She related that she went on to tutor students privately who requested her help, one of those students was former top student Amlata Persaud who sought Mme. George’s help with A-Level French. Amlata eventually went on to become a Rhodes Scholar in her own right.
In the early 90s, Mme. George got a call from the head-teacher of Queen’s College saying that they were short on French teachers and asking for her assistance. She signed on with the proviso that she would teach part-time and ended up spending a decade at Queen’s College.
During her tenure at QC, there were two teachers tasked with taking the fifth form French classes, one was Mme. George and the other was Mrs. Esther Rawlins, another dedicated veteran of the teaching profession. Mrs. Rawlins was nothing short of terrifying to those students for whom French was not their strongest subject, she demanded excellence from her students and got it, which is why those of us who were a little less apt at French breathed a sigh of relief when we heard we were going to be instructed by the quiet, gentle Mme. George. Little did we know that she was worse than Mrs. Rawlins.
Where fear of Mrs. Rawlins calling you up in front of the class would make any child study, it was the look that Mme. George gave us that made us study. She would look at her students with such disappointment that you immediately felt as if you had committed some great crime by not doing the required homework or learning the necessary vocabulary. In her own way she demanded excellence from her own pupils and made sure she got it too.
In the last few years, Mme George has volunteered her time to teach at the Alliance Francaise which instructs adults in French, but her heart stays with the children. She noted that indeed there are adults who are more than willing to learn but in her words, “ … most adults are inhibited; they are not open to the language.” She recalled students that she would have instructed for the entire five years that they were in school, taking them all the way up to CSEC, and she pointed out, “I loved teaching the first formers. They were so curious about the language and always so happy.”
After she resigned from her teaching position at the Bishops’ High School her involvement in church activities and clubs increased as her husband’s career in the church progressed.
Mme. George applied herself to her work with the Mother’s Union much the same way that she did with every other aspect of her life. She went from being a member to the Branch Leader of the St. George’s Cathedral Branch of the Mother’s Union between 1985 and 1988, after which her progression to President of the Diocesan Chapter wasn’t too hard to predict. She held that position from 1988 to 1994.
She recalled one of the challenges that brought her immense satisfaction during her tenure. That was the opening of a new day care centre for children in Bourda. She pointed out that although there was already a Mother’s Union Day Care Facility in Queenstown, it was felt that there should have been another one.
“We saw the need for taking care of children, there was a lot of malnutrition in the country at that time.” She went on to say, “In my time I became very obsessed with the idea that we should have another Day Care centre and so I set about finding funding agencies and doing a lot of begging overseas.”
In 1993, the Mother’s Union succeeded in erecting a new Centre in Bourda which is still operating today with a head count of almost 200 children and manned by a staff of 22.
Mme. George pointed out that they started out by trying to provide the service out of charity, but eventually as the costs such as electricity and security started to add up, they began charging a fee. Despite all of that, however, they are one of the cheapest centres in the city.
Mme. George explained that they catered for single parents especially, and since most women only get three months maternity leave, they felt it necessary to be able to provide care for babies three months old all the way up to nursery age.
“I am very happy about it (the centre). I think it’s providing a real service for the community at a level where it’s most needed.”
The Mother’s Union is the one of the principal charitable organizations of the Anglican Church and its main aim is to support marriage and family life, especially through times of adversity – an aim that Mme .George kept at the forefront of her mind through all of the other activities that eventually engaged her attention.
She related that she once served on the Adoption Board, which comes under the auspices of the Ministry of Human Services and Social Security. After almost eleven years on that board, she eventually resigned in 2006. It was one task, however, that she was not fond of, saying, “That I found very harrowing because of parents … very young parents who would come before you and just say quite happily, ‘Well I can’t afford to mind this child.’ and you want to know why they want to give this child up for adoption.”
She said that she felt her role was not to facilitate the adoption, but it was more to facilitate family life, and wherever she could she tried her best to support that but eventually it got to be too much for her and she eventually gave that up.
Mme. George also served as a member of the Committee on the Rights of the Child before the Constitutional Commission was created. Her contributions to improving the lives of others was noted by the Government, and in October 2002, she was awarded the Medal of Service.

Looking back at the details of her life that she had related to me, I had to ask her how she felt about children, because it appeared that a large part of her life and work was dedicated to the wellbeing of children. She said, “I love children, they are my passion. That’s why I teach, because I love children. I think you just have to do the best you can wherever you are.”
“I feel very hurt sometimes and terribly upset when I read some of the things that are happening to children now, I feel it personally. I believe that children should be happy in their homes, they should be protected and given love and affection so that later on it would cushion them for whatever is to come in their lives. But to be bereft or to be denied these things … the joys of childhood, is to bring up people who are emotionally paralyzed sometimes and half-developed.”
She went on to say, “If you look at children, they are willing to smile, they are trusting, they will talk to anybody until they are faced with either cruelty or inhibitions ingrained by punishment.”
Staunch in her stance against Corporal Punishment, in school and in the home she said, “You cannot inflict pain on anybody and expect them to learn that way.” She went on to point out that to discipline children without hitting them is a much longer path. It takes time to talk to them, reason with them, put boundaries in place and enforce those boundaries, but in the long run there are better results.
She said, “Children should be nurtured and handled properly, they grow into good decent adults, willing to help other people … they (children) have a lot to teach adults, by their openness and trust and they teach adults a lot of patience.”
Now she calls herself a “free agent” yet she still serves as Treasurer to the Mother’s Union and sits on the Board of Directors of Demerara Bank as well. Meanwhile at home she tends her vegetable garden.

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