Fay­ola Fras­er

On a “clear and sun­ny morn­ing in Sep­tem­ber 1994,” Lynette Chote opened the doors to her pas­sion project, the Spe­cial­ist Learn­ing Cen­tre, on Ca­maca Road, Val­sayn. A pas­sion­ate ed­u­ca­tor, Chote har­nessed more than 30 years of ex­pe­ri­ence and lessons learned in pub­lic ser­vice to build one of the top-per­form­ing pri­ma­ry schools in the coun­try from the ground up.

In 1994, and even at present, a woman found­ing a school is quite rare; how­ev­er, Chote has re­mained com­mit­ted to “the de­vel­op­ment of the hu­man mind” and cre­at­ing a last­ing im­pact on chil­dren’s lives through ed­u­ca­tion.

Chote grew up in Rio Claro in a fam­i­ly of many chil­dren. From ear­ly on, she was swathed in her pur­pose, as her moth­er “had a dream for her daugh­ters to be fi­nan­cial­ly in­de­pen­dent,” and her old­er broth­er, “a gi­ant of an ed­u­ca­tor”, guid­ed her and many of her sis­ters along the path of ed­u­ca­tion. Fol­low­ing her suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of the Teach­ers’ Ex­am­i­na­tion, in which she placed first na­tion­wide, she at­tend­ed the Na­pari­ma Teach­ers’ Train­ing Col­lege to qual­i­fy as a trained teacher.

Chote de­scribes her years in the pub­lic ser­vice, hon­ing and de­vel­op­ing her teach­ing skills, but si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly be­com­ing frus­trat­ed at cer­tain road­blocks that ex­ist­ed in the pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem. As a moth­er of three, she strug­gled to pro­vide for her fam­i­ly on the pri­ma­ry school teacher’s salary, and be­gan, with the en­cour­age­ment of friends and fam­i­ly, brain­storm­ing ideas for the school she would lat­er open.

Open­ing a school did not on­ly re­quire her to be versed as an ed­u­ca­tor, but she quick­ly sought to learn busi­ness and in­sti­tu­tion­al man­age­ment to en­sure that she could ef­fec­tive­ly run the school. Af­ter the school’s open­ing, the num­bers quick­ly grew “thanks to the many par­ents who placed their con­fi­dence in me”, and the “ear­ly mem­bers of staff who worked hard to en­sure that the school es­tab­lished a sol­id rep­u­ta­tion for qual­i­ty ed­u­ca­tion.”

With the boom­ing num­ber of stu­dents, Chote in­vest­ed in a new prop­er­ty and re­lo­cat­ed to St Au­gus­tine, where the Spe­cial­ist Learn­ing Cen­tre (SLC) was for­mal­ly opened in 1998 by the then-Pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate Ganesh Ram­di­al. Chote re­mains in­cred­u­lous at the in­flux of stu­dents at that time.

SLC has con­sis­tent­ly placed in the top ten pri­ma­ry schools and has, for the last 25 years, had sev­er­al stu­dents plac­ing in the top one per cent of Com­mon En­trance and Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) Ex­am­i­na­tions. No small feat for a rel­a­tive­ly new­ly found­ed and small pri­vate school.

“Hall­mark of Ex­cel­lence” is the SLC’s mot­to, and Chote is dri­ven by her de­sire to cre­ate a sound learn­ing en­vi­ron­ment to help any child de­vel­op their po­ten­tial to­wards be­com­ing a pro­duc­tive cit­i­zen. Chote holds her­self to the same stan­dard of ex­cel­lence by con­tin­u­ing to de­vel­op the school along­side con­tem­po­rary learn­ing ped­a­go­gies.

“Ed­u­ca­tion is some­thing that changes con­stant­ly be­cause of con­sis­tent re­search, and adap­ta­tion to tech­nol­o­gy has helped us widen our scope,” Chote says, and she has even in­volved her daugh­ter, Lisa Chote, in her school’s im­prove­ment, as Lisa is a qual­i­fied pro­fes­sion­al with ex­per­tise in Change Man­age­ment.

She en­cour­ages her staff through work­shops and fur­ther ed­u­ca­tion op­por­tu­ni­ties to de­vel­op new and in­no­v­a­tive meth­ods of teach­ing and calls on them to al­so learn from their stu­dents. Con­tin­u­ous learn­ing is Chote’s cho­sen path­way to­wards ex­cel­lence, and she un­apolo­get­i­cal­ly in­sists that she, her teach­ers and her stu­dents re­main com­mit­ted to high stan­dards.

Chote’s road has not al­ways been an easy one. As a moth­er of three chil­dren, she de­scribes moth­er­hood “as the great­est joy of my life, al­though dif­fi­cult at times.” Her chil­dren, and son-in-law, who are now adults, have giv­en the same lev­el of un­wa­ver­ing sup­port to Chote and her school that she has giv­en to them.

As a woman, a pro­fes­sion­al and a moth­er, Chote in­di­cates that many chal­lenges present them­selves, “and peo­ple have an idea that they can take ad­van­tage of you,” but as peo­ple get to know her, they can at­test to her strength and abil­i­ties.

An­oth­er chal­lenge she faced when start­ing the school was hav­ing to con­vince banks of the vi­a­bil­i­ty of her busi­ness when so few pri­vate­ly owned and in­di­vid­u­al­ly es­tab­lished schools ex­ist­ed at the time. This notwith­stand­ing, she has re­lied on God’s guid­ance to help her make the right de­ci­sions and face, head-on, many of these chal­lenges.

Quot­ing for­mer US Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma, Lynette Chote de­scribes ex­cel­lence as a jour­ney that “comes with fits and starts.” Serv­ing as a pri­ma­ry-lev­el ed­u­ca­tor for more than 60 years, Chote has reached the pin­na­cle of her jour­ney and has no plans to re­tire soon. Her faith, de­ter­mi­na­tion and per­se­ver­ance have been crit­i­cal tools em­ployed by Chote through­out her jour­ney as an ed­u­ca­tor, moth­er and busi­ness own­er.

Dri­ven by her pur­pose to in­spire young minds, Lynette Chote is a force to be reck­oned with as a woman who has been at the helm of pri­ma­ry ed­u­ca­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go.