Car­ol Quash

Dr Juli­et Jones’ ca­reer in ed­u­ca­tion did not un­fold overnight, nor was it dri­ven by am­bi­tion alone. It was built pa­tient­ly—step by step—through class­rooms, cur­ricu­lum rooms and count­less learn­ing mo­ments. To­day, that jour­ney has po­si­tioned her as both a schol­ar and a men­tor to ed­u­ca­tors and oth­ers at home and abroad, gen­er­ous­ly shar­ing her knowl­edge.

As a fac­ul­ty de­vel­op­ment spe­cial­ist at the St Au­gus­tine cam­pus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ Cen­tre for Ex­cel­lence in Teach­ing and Learn­ing, Dr Jones un­der­stands the in­ner work­ings of the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem in the Caribbean. Jones spent decades work­ing her way up from a CXC as­sis­tant ex­am­in­er to earn­ing a Doc­tor of Ed­u­ca­tion from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Sheffield in the UK in 2018. She told WE dur­ing that time she used every op­por­tu­ni­ty along the way to learn the­o­ret­i­cal­ly and prac­ti­cal­ly, gar­ner­ing a wealth of knowl­edge she now will­ing­ly shares with her ju­niors in her field.

“Men­tor­ing, in the truer sense of the word, is giv­ing guid­ance, pro­vid­ing sup­port, and as­sist­ing per­sons with their pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment. In the ed­u­ca­tion­al con­text, I would have start­ed in a more el­e­vat­ed or ex­pan­sive man­ner when I was an Eng­lish teacher and then a head of de­part­ment at San Juan North Sec­ondary School.”

Jones said she was then hap­py to col­lab­o­rate with her peers, es­pe­cial­ly on cur­ricu­lum mat­ters, as she had just com­plet­ed a year-long cur­ricu­lum writ­ing ex­er­cise at the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and was a mem­ber of the Eng­lish Lan­guage Arts cur­ricu­lum writ­ing team for the Na­tion­al Eng­lish Lan­guage Cur­ricu­lum for Forms Four and Five.

“The head of de­part­ment, whom I suc­ceed­ed, had asked me to re­view our schemes of work and to re­vise them … Then I would ex­plain to the teach­ers the ra­tio­nale be­hind the re­vi­sion, help­ing them to un­der­stand how to struc­ture their schemes of work and plans for the aca­d­e­m­ic year.”

From the class­rooms of San Juan North Sec­ondary, Jones was then pro­mot­ed to cur­ricu­lum of­fi­cer with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, a job that en­tailed writ­ing as well as mon­i­tor­ing the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the cur­ricu­lum, con­duct­ing pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment ses­sions with teach­ers all over the coun­try and be­ing avail­able to schools to pro­vide sup­port.

“But I want­ed to em­pow­er teach­ers to the ex­tent where those who had re­ceived pro­fes­sion­al teacher train­ing in ped­a­gogy would not just call on a cur­ricu­lum of­fi­cer to come in and do a site work­shop but would learn to do it.”

She re­called once of­fer­ing to co-teach a les­son with a teacher who was strug­gling with pre­sent­ing lessons and how much it meant to be able to sit with her to plan and ex­e­cute the les­son.

“She was a lit­tle timid, but I was learn­ing about the pow­er of sup­port­ing a peer; I was un­der­stand­ing that men­tor­ing can be about be­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive, be­ing col­le­gial. It’s al­most sym­bi­ot­ic at times.”

Jones is the au­thor of Pa­pa Croc, A Chil­dren’s Sto­ry, and has pub­lished and pre­sent­ed a num­ber of aca­d­e­m­ic pa­pers. Cur­rent­ly her work in­volves cur­ricu­lum de­sign and fac­ul­ty de­vel­op­ment; plan­ning and de­vel­op­ing pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment train­ing work­shops/we­bi­na­rs on best prac­tice in teach­ing; and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of train­ing needs, among oth­er things. But shar­ing her knowl­edge and in­ter­act­ing with teach­ers has al­ways been her favourite part of the job.

“Just let me work with teach­ers on ped­a­gogy, and if I could just do on­ly that now in my life, I’d be the hap­pi­est per­son in the world.”

But her men­tor­ing reach is not ex­clu­sive­ly job-re­lat­ed. Two years ago she was in­vit­ed by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Sheffield to be part of its alum­ni pro­gramme that fo­cus­es on ca­reer men­tor­ing.

“They match you with a stu­dent who has an in­ter­est in your field, and over a pe­ri­od of ten weeks you spend time talk­ing vir­tu­al­ly about your work ex­pe­ri­ence while they ex­plore op­tions about their life ca­reer path.”

Al­so, as a mem­ber of the New Covenant Life Cen­tre in St Au­gus­tine, Jones gives the young peo­ple at the church the ben­e­fit of her ex­ten­sive knowl­edge in ed­u­ca­tion and, at the re­quest of her pas­tor, works with them in dra­ma.

“I did dra­ma at church way back when be­cause it was some­thing I had al­ways liked, but nev­er with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for a group of young peo­ple. I end­ed up do­ing a prac­ti­tion­er’s cer­tifi­cate in dra­ma/the­atre in ed­u­ca­tion be­cause I want­ed to be able to prop­er­ly guide them.”

She de­vel­oped a pro­gramme that taught them a num­ber of skills that served them well as they grew old­er, among them im­pro­vis­ing, ra­dio broad­cast­ing, tran­scrip­tion and script de­vel­op­ment.

She said the ef­fects of that pro­gramme have had far-reach­ing, pos­i­tive ef­fects on so many of the par­tic­i­pants who have gone on to achieve great things.

“And I have their tes­ti­mo­ni­als of how they were im­pact­ed and how their lives and ca­reers were im­pact­ed by what I con­sid­ered to be a very sim­ple ac­tiv­i­ty back then.”

These tes­ti­mo­ni­als formed the ba­sis of her ar­gu­ment in her doc­tor­al the­sis, in which she shared about the process in which she en­gaged them cre­ative­ly to de­vel­op their cre­ative ca­pac­i­ties and their think­ing skills.

“And they were al­so par­tic­i­pants in my study, my re­search. I’ve done a nar­ra­tive en­quiry in­to cre­ative ed­u­ca­tion in Caribbean/Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States con­texts, and some of those same young peo­ple were able to speak to their ex­pe­ri­ences and how they con­sid­er them­selves to have been men­tored in some way.”