Cori Baynes

Ed­u­ca­tor, life-teacher, word smith, au­thor, moth­er, grand­moth­er, care giv­er, sto­ry teller, those are just some of the names which were at one time or an­oth­er used to de­scribe 70-year-old Enid Kir­ton. Be­hind her soft eyes and kind stare there is an alert­ness which, most would say is part and par­cel of be­ing a teacher. Born at a time when there were al­most no elec­tron­ic dis­trac­tions such as tele­vi­sions, iPods and gam­ing sys­tems, Kir­ton's favourite past time was read­ing and us­ing her vivid imag­i­na­tion to bring to life the char­ac­ters por­trayed with­in the pages of the books she read. As she sat com­fort­ably in the liv­ing room of her Cir­cu­lar Road home, Kir­ton re­mem­bered her child­hood days and the amount of fun she had spend­ing time with rel­a­tives at Man­a­ham­bre Road, Princes Town.

"We would sing and my aunt would tell sto­ries. The el­ders on the ma­ter­nal side of my fam­i­ly were great sto­ry tellers. Every­body would tell a sto­ry," she said. "As a child I was an ac­tive night-time dream­er and in the morn­ing my fam­i­ly had the habit of telling what we dreamed the night be­fore. I al­ways had the longest sto­ries," she said with a laugh. De­scrib­ing her­self as a "peo­ple watch­er," she added that part of her en­ter­tain­ment came from ob­serv­ing the pe­cu­liar­i­ties in peo­ple. She con­tin­ued how­ev­er, that she used writ­ing as a means of cop­ing with the hard­ships in her life."I went in­to se­ri­ous writ­ing dur­ing the tri­als in my life. When I was re­al­ly un­hap­py, I used to es­cape in­to my jour­nals and oth­er writ­ings," she said.

To date, Kir­ton is an ac­com­plished au­thor and last year pub­lished a tril­o­gy of Caribbean Sto­ry­teller Clas­sics en­ti­tled, Of Lead­ers and Fol­low­ers, Of Friends and Foes, Of Boys and Girls. These books, she said were meant to en­ter­tain and to en­cour­age peo­ple, es­pe­cial­ly chil­dren to en­gage in read­ing as a soli­tary ac­tiv­i­ty. Kir­ton ex­plained that she has had a mea­sure of suc­cess pro­mot­ing the books in school li­braries, both lo­cal­ly and through­out the Eng­lish speak­ing Caribbean. In ad­di­tion to be­ing a teacher for 35 years, Kir­ton was a part time coun­sel­lor at the Col­lege of Nurs­ing, has trained peo­ple in var­i­ous in­dus­tries and has at­tained her Mas­ters in Ed­u­ca­tion­al Stud­ies. "What I have no­ticed is that imag­i­na­tions are dor­mant now among the youths. Some of the chil­dren are less alert be­cause some of the skills in them are dor­mant," said Kir­ton, who has been teach­ing CXC Eng­lish at her home since 2003.

"Long ago, lit­tle boys made their own kites but now they are be­ing sold ready made at the side of the road." "A lot of the things that yes­ter­day's chil­dren had to work for, are now be­ing hand­ed to them with­out any ef­fort." She added that the sto­ries in her books can be in­ter­pret­ed at many lev­els and are ap­plic­a­ble to peo­ple of dif­fer­ent ages. "Stu­dents need the right stim­u­la­tion. A lot of them are men be­fore they are boys and women be­fore they are girls." "I be­lieve that there are oth­er teach­ers and writ­ers like my­self out there who are try­ing to open the minds of the chil­dren." "Af­ter all my years in ed­u­ca­tion, I have de­cid­ed to put what I have learnt to use. But I too am still read­ing be­cause even though I am not go­ing to en­roll in any more class­es, I am a life­long learn­er," she laughed.