This is bizarre, I thought, as I read my stu­dents' es­says. I am teach­ing Eng­lish to tac­i­turn young men (lads as they're called in YTC) dressed in white or brown prison uni­forms (with hand-writ­ten num­bers on them) and my stu­dents write with so­phis­ti­cat­ed punc­tu­a­tion. If colons, se­mi-colons, dash­es and com­mas could be con­vert­ed to clothes, my stu­dents would be dressed in pin-striped suits, silk ties and Guc­ci shoes. Take for in­stance what Marc wrote about Miguel Street by VS Naipaul: "It is im­por­tant to find your­self with­in the pages of a book: hor­ror, in­for­ma­tive, short sto­ry-any type of book. Miguel Street does just that: It draws you in. Even if you are not in a cheer­ful mood, when you sit or lie down to read Miguel Street, you will, I guar­an­tee, cheer up. VS Naipaul's Miguel Street blows even the most hu­mour­less souls on earth away."

Clear­ly, some­where in their past these young men had great teach­ers who cre­at­ed a sol­id, aca­d­e­m­ic foun­da­tion so that I could com­plete a two-year CXC Eng­lish lan­guage syl­labus in eight months. All I had to do was stick my fin­gers in some aca­d­e­m­ic holes and plug them up like the prover­bial Dutch girl plug­ging up a leak in a dam. My prob­lem was my text­books. "I can't stand all that ir­rel­e­vant stuff in the text­books," I con­fid­ed in my friend Nadi­ra Akal, a bi­ol­o­gy teacher. She said, "Talk to Jen­ny Woods," an Eng­lish teacher from Bish­op Anstey High School in Port-of-Spain. "Trust your in­stincts. You don't have to de­pend on text­books. Don't wor­ry about teach­ing for an ex­am. Do what you feel you need to do. Do what is best," Jen­ny told me.

I took her ad­vice and fi­nal­ly felt like I was in charge of my own class. I would do things my way. I be­gan with a cool se­ries from the Ja­maica Glean­er fea­tur­ing a jour­nal writ­ten by the drug lord Christo­pher "Dudus" Coke. Mark Wil­son, who writes ge­og­ra­phy text­books for sec­ondary school, e-mailed me the ar­ti­cles writ­ten in Ja­maican cre­ole. That turned out to be an ex­er­cise is sum­maris­ing, turn­ing cre­ole to for­mal Eng­lish, and writ­ing an­a­lyt­i­cal es­says-all on the Eng­lish syl­labus. The jour­nal would sure­ly show my stu­dents that crime didn't pay-at least that's what I thought un­til I read my stu­dents' es­says. Jah­mai wrote: "Robin Hood to the Kingston, Ja­maican ghet­to, Tivoli Gar­den, is what I would have called Christo­pher "Dudus" Coke. His every move was quite sim­i­lar to the leg­endary Robin Hood, who stole from the rich to give to the poor.

Dudus' ap­proach was a lit­tle dif­fer­ent. In­stead of rob­bing the Ja­maican gov­ern­ment of its cur­ren­cy, he de­prived it of its so­cial de­vel­op­ment when he im­port­ed and ex­port­ed drugs and guns to sup­port the needs of the ghet­to peo­ple along with his own needs. "To law en­force­ment of­fi­cers, he was known as the coun­try's most want­ed man be­cause of his sin­is­ter lifestyle. Fed up of the op­er­a­tions run by Dudus, the gov­ern­ment de­cid­ed that the ghet­to hero and his em­pire had to be de­stroyed. Putting away Dudus would be no easy task be­cause he was a man who had gained sup­port from the needy. It would cause a re­bel­lion in the ghet­to. "All hell broke loose when the law made its move to cap­ture the in­fa­mous Christo­pher 'Dudus' Coke. The peo­ple of Tivoli Gar­den start­ed ri­ot­ing in an at­tempt to avoid Dudus' cap­ture.

Can we be so self­ish to blame the peo­ple of Tivoli Gar­den? I wouldn't! Do not get the wrong idea, I am no re­al sup­port­er of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties, but if I were in their po­si­tion, I would have done the same. Would you? The peo­ple liv­ing in places sim­i­lar to Tivoli face a tremen­dous amount of trou­ble find­ing jobs in Ja­maica. Even if they are ed­u­cat­ed, their res­i­dence caus­es ob­sta­cles for them when they try to get jobs. "In the end of this en­tire chaot­ic episode, 73 peo­ple were killed while try­ing to pre­vent the mod­ern day Robin Hood from be­ing cap­tured. One of those peo­ple could have ap­proached the gov­ern­ment and brought about some kind of eye open­er about the cri­sis of the ghet­to in a more civ­il way. In­stead, Gov­ern­ment chose to be ag­gres­sive about the mat­ter and went about it the wrong way. I hope the Ja­maican gov­ern­ment did not just see the whole mad­ness as the peo­ple try­ing to de­fend wrong, but in­stead, see it as a cry for help."

My stu­dents agreed with Jah­mai. "Dudus helped his neigh­bour­hood," Kendall said. I was shocked. My stu­dents didn't see Dudus as a doomed crim­i­nal. They felt his life had mean­ing be­cause he helped poor peo­ple. To them, what re­al­ly mat­tered is that Dudus didn't turn his back on peo­ple like the Ja­maican Gov­ern­ment had. They didn't see my main point: Dudus's life was doomed be­cause of his life of crime. I am teach­ing Mar­tians, I thought, aliens from an­oth­er plan­et. Then came a jolt­ing rev­e­la­tion: My stu­dents weren't Mar­tians. They lived in an­oth­er world right here in Trinidad.

• Next week: Find­ing Fri­day: Dis­cov­er­ing a unique tal­ent in my class