KRISTY RAM­NAR­INE

kristy.ram­nar­ine@cnc3.co.tt

Prof Faria Khan is com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing that stu­dents have the best re­sources to suc­ceed. It’s the rea­son she launched her first book, CSEC Span­ish Oral Con­ver­sa­tion, in No­vem­ber 2022.

“You know, as teach­ers, on a dai­ly ba­sis we mo­ti­vate, in­spire, and en­cour­age our stu­dents to do their best, but this time it was my stu­dents who mo­ti­vat­ed, in­spired, and en­cour­aged me to write my first book,” she said.

“Be­ing an au­thor was nev­er in my ca­reer goals or on the list of things that I want­ed to ac­com­plish. It just hap­pened as a re­sult of try­ing to help my stu­dents suc­ceed.”

The AS­JA Girls’ Col­lege San Fer­nan­do teacher holds a Mas­ter in Ed­u­ca­tion­al Lead­er­ship, a Bach­e­lor of Arts de­gree in Span­ish and Lin­guis­tics, and a Post Grad­u­ate Diplo­ma in Ed­u­ca­tion spe­cial­is­ing in For­eign Lan­guages, all from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine. She al­so holds a Post­grad­u­ate Diplo­ma in Method­olo­gies for the Teach­ing of Span­ish as a Sec­ond Lan­guage for Teach­ers of the Eng­lish-Speak­ing Caribbean from the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Uni­ver­si­ty of Ed­u­ca­tion­al Sci­ences in San­ti­a­go, Chile.

She stud­ied at uni­ver­si­ties in Colom­bia and Chile on schol­ar­ship pro­grammes and has tak­en stu­dents on nu­mer­ous school trips to Venezuela, Cu­ba, Cos­ta Ri­ca, and Pana­ma.

She has been a Span­ish teacher for 19 years and the Head of the Mod­ern Lan­guages De­part­ment for the past 11 years at AS­JA Girls. She was al­so an ed­i­tor for the CSEC Span­ish Se­ries at Aleph Ed­u­ca­tors Pub­lish­ing Com­pa­ny.

In 2021, her on­line Form 5 class asked her to put her Pow­er­Points on the six oral top­ics with about 50 ques­tions each and lots of an­swers in a book (which were time-con­sum­ing for them to write down) so that they could start study­ing them from Form 1.

She said that’s when the idea for the book was sparked. She did not get around to it un­til her on­line Form 5 class asked the same thing in 2022. “They said there were no CSEC Span­ish oral books to study from,” she added.

“That sur­prised me, and I ac­tu­al­ly did vis­it the book­stores to check, and there re­al­ly were none. I then re­alised that this was a much-need­ed re­source, as it would not on­ly ben­e­fit the stu­dents by hav­ing all the oral ques­tions and an­swer notes in one book but al­so the Span­ish teach­ers as well.

“These are notes I have com­piled over my years of teach­ing, and I know that they work.”

“For the past four years, over 90 per cent of my on­line Form 5 stu­dents at­tained a Grade A in the speak­ing pro­file us­ing these notes from my Pow­er­Points to prac­tice speak­ing.”

Prof Khan ex­pe­ri­enced a new learn­ing curve when be­com­ing an au­thor, as she had to do quite a bit of re­search, which led her to self-pub­lish.

“I re­alised that I had al­ready done most of what a pub­lish­er would do,” she said. “I had typed, for­mat­ted, de­signed my cov­er, had a col­league ed­it and proof­read, and all the oth­er tech­ni­cal de­tails. It was a chal­lenge, but I to­tal­ly en­joyed it! My stu­dents ac­tu­al­ly vot­ed on the cov­er when I had four de­signs and couldn’t de­cide.”

Short­ly af­ter pub­lish­ing the Span­ish oral book, she start­ed to re­ceive mes­sages on her so­cial me­dia and calls for the French ver­sion.

“The book­stores said par­ents kept ask­ing for it,” she said. “At first, I dis­missed the idea as I don’t teach French. But last year, dur­ing the 2023 CSEC ex­ams, my Span­ish stu­dents, who were al­so study­ing French, told me that they were us­ing my Span­ish orals book to guide them and pre­pare for their French orals, and that I need­ed to help the French stu­dents al­so. It was at that point that I start­ed to con­sid­er it and to look for a trans­la­tor.

“My goal with these books is to help stu­dents be­come bet­ter pre­pared for the ex­am, be­cause when they are pre­pared, they will feel con­fi­dent, and when they are con­fi­dent, they per­form bet­ter, and then they are suc­cess­ful, which is what we want.”

The re­sponse and pos­i­tive feed­back to her book have been re­mark­able from teach­ers and stu­dents, not just in T&T but across the re­gion. It’s all the re­ward she needs af­ter de­cid­ing to pur­sue what she loves as a ca­reer. “I was not sure about my ca­reer path even af­ter I grad­u­at­ed from uni­ver­si­ty, but I knew I loved lan­guages, trav­el­ling, and dis­cov­er­ing new cul­tures, she said.

“Af­ter I start­ed teach­ing at my al­ma mater, AS­JA Girls’ Col­lege San Fer­nan­do, I re­alised that I en­joyed teach­ing and help­ing stu­dents to love learn­ing Span­ish. It be­came my goal to make learn­ing Span­ish fun and easy for my stu­dents.

“As such, I was able to com­bine my pas­sion for teach­ing Span­ish and my love of trav­el­ling by tak­ing my stu­dents on nu­mer­ous trips to Span­ish-speak­ing coun­tries to mo­ti­vate and in­spire them to learn the lan­guage and cul­ture.”

Prof Khan ex­celled in Span­ish class­es at school and was in­spired by her re­search for her oral pre­sen­ta­tion for the A-Lev­el ex­am, which was on the Moor­ish in­flu­ence in Spain.

“I dis­cov­ered that the Span­ish lan­guage had many Ara­bic words and Ara­bic in­flu­ence and that the Span­ish cul­ture still had many Moor­ish in­flu­ences up till to­day in their food, mu­sic, build­ings, agri­cul­ture, ed­u­ca­tion, place names, and many more, all of which I found quite fas­ci­nat­ing,” she ex­plained.

“It is still on my buck­et list to vis­it Spain one day to ex­pe­ri­ence all of this rich his­to­ry.”

As she cel­e­brat­ed Eid af­ter the month-long fast for Ra­madan, she was re­ward­ed with the sat­is­fac­tion of know­ing that she con­tin­ues to have a pos­i­tive im­pact on her stu­dents.