AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

Re­porter

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

She may be called “sis­ter,” but with­in the hal­lowed halls of Holy Name Con­vent in Port-of-Spain, Sis­ter Re­nee Hall plays a role that tran­scends the class­room– she’s a moth­er.

For 25 years, Sis­ter Re­nee has ded­i­cat­ed her life to ed­u­ca­tion. Her jour­ney be­gan at just 21 years old, when she was giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to teach His­to­ry and Re­li­gious Ed­u­ca­tion.

“I got the job, I came and I’ve learned the place and learned the cul­ture. I just com­plete­ly gave my­self to ed­u­ca­tion,” Sis­ter Re­nee told WE.

Yet for her, some­thing else seemed to be miss­ing.

“I se­ri­ous­ly be­gan to dis­cern, you know, what would be my vo­ca­tion in life? Should I get mar­ried? Should I re­main sin­gle? Should I be­come re­li­gious?”

Af­ter at­tend­ing World Youth Day in Ger­many and un­der­go­ing a pe­ri­od of deep in­tro­spec­tion, she took her first vows. As she de­vot­ed her­self to both faith and the class­room, Sis­ter Re­nee soon re­alised her call­ing reached be­yond text­books and prayers.

She was nur­tur­ing the lives of her stu­dents, whom she af­fec­tion­ate­ly calls her “beau­ties.”

The first shift in her per­spec­tive came in 2005, when two of her stu­dents died in sep­a­rate in­ci­dents.

“I said to my­self, ‘Oh my gosh, these chil­dren.’ You know, they’re pre­cious. I shouldn’t take them for grant­ed. You know. I have to care for them and nur­ture them and en­sure that they feel a sense of be­long­ing.”

In an­oth­er in­stance, up­on be­com­ing a Dean, she was con­front­ed with a re­al­i­ty that test­ed her re­solve as a ma­ter­nal fig­ure.

“One of my girls got preg­nant at the be­gin­ning of Up­per Six or there­abouts, and it was a very dif­fi­cult time for her. I de­cid­ed that, you know, I would sup­port her. We kept her at school for the en­tire preg­nan­cy, and I’m go­ing with her to the doc­tor, buy­ing the vi­t­a­mins, chang­ing the shirts as her stom­ach grew,” she shared.

“Dur­ing that en­tire time, my thing was, okay, it’s a Catholic school, and she needs the sup­port. All these years lat­er, that child is now a teenag­er. And she’s so pre­cious. I’m so glad that I made that de­ci­sion to sup­port her in the way that I did. I had to.”

When asked for an up­date on that young girl, Sis­ter Re­nee ex­cit­ed­ly said, “Oh! I spoke to her just last night. She went on, did her de­gree. She has a very, very good job. I’ve kept track of the daugh­ter all through pri­ma­ry school, sec­ondary school, very suc­cess­ful.”

It was these mo­ments that made Sis­ter Re­nee re­alise her ma­ter­nal call­ing was an in­evitable part of her life, ex­tend­ing far be­yond grad­u­a­tion day.

“I have at least four past peo­ple who think I’m their moth­er. One is now 37 and I had her from the age of 13. I have seen her go to uni­ver­si­ty. I knew when she was preg­nant, I was at the ba­by show­er when a child was born. She got mar­ried over the hol­i­day, couldn’t make the wed­ding, and she video called me from the from the room where she was get­ting ready to show me her dress.”

Sis­ter Re­nee even joked that it be­came her “job” to find a pri­ma­ry school for an­oth­er stu­dent’s son— a task she nev­er imag­ined she’d per­form, hav­ing no bi­o­log­i­cal chil­dren of her own.

Over the years, many for­mer stu­dents hope to send their own daugh­ters to Holy Name Con­vent, hop­ing to en­counter the teach­ings and love of Sis­ter Re­nee.

“Last week for grad­u­a­tion, a young woman whom I taught in form four as a form teacher, her daugh­ter grad­u­at­ed Up­per Six. So we took a pic­ture to­geth­er, and I said, ‘My first child bring­ing her child.’ I tease and say, ‘I’m too young to be a grand­moth­er. Call me aun­tie.’ But the truth is that it’s very heart­en­ing to see.”

Now the new­ly in­stalled prin­ci­pal of Holy Name Con­vent, Sis­ter Re­nee still in­sists on teach­ing up­per-lev­el class­es to stay con­nect­ed to her “beau­ties.”

Her im­pact is ev­i­dent in the words of her stu­dents, both past and present.

“Sis­ter Re­nee is a la­dy of worth. She in­flu­ences me to be kind, dis­ci­plined, be a true la­dy, how to car­ry your­self…know your­self in gen­er­al and be the best la­dy you can pos­si­bly be,” said stu­dent Krsty­na Konasiewicz.

Art teacher Shan­non An­drews, her­self a for­mer stu­dent, said that to this day, she still car­ries the teach­ings of Sis­ter Re­nee, guid­ing her in her role.

“I feel her walk­ing in her re­li­gious life is a great ex­am­ple to these young women, which en­cour­ages them to want to spend time in the chapel with God. She walks around pray­ing her rosary of­ten­times, and that’s an ex­am­ple to re­mind us that in dif­fi­cult times, in good times, to lean on God,” An­drews said.

When asked if women with­out bi­o­log­i­cal chil­dren are un­der­val­ued, Sis­ter Re­nee sug­gest­ed that this may not be so, not­ing that such women lend a unique strength to the Caribbean fam­i­ly sys­tem.

“There’s that sense of ma­tri­fo­cal fam­i­ly, where there are moth­ers who may not have male sup­port, so they de­pend on this vil­lage, you know, of women, whether it be their best friends, their Sis­ters.”

And what is the ab­solute best part about be­ing a “moth­er” to hun­dreds of girls? Sis­ter Re­nee an­swered with her sig­na­ture touch of wit.

“There’s a free­dom in it. I say, ‘I could give you back to your moth­er’.”