Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

The Siparia East Sec­ondary Form Three stu­dent who was seen in a vi­ral video on so­cial me­dia ver­bal­ly abus­ing a teacher, says she’s sor­ry for her ac­tions and has learnt her les­son.

“The sus­pen­sion was like yeah, I de­serve it, I should have re­act­ed bet­ter. I un­der­stand that part, I think about it in a school, I won’t make the same mis­take again,” she said.

How­ev­er, Tre­vieann Ray­mond, 16, says she did not see the ex­pul­sion com­ing, es­pe­cial­ly since she apol­o­gised for her be­hav­iour.

The teen said she was nev­er sus­pend­ed be­fore but ad­mit­ted she was called to the of­fice for dis­cus­sions about her be­hav­iour pre­vi­ous­ly.

On Thurs­day, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said the ex­pul­sion was a mea­sure of last re­sort, af­ter all ef­forts at re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of the stu­dent with­in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem failed to re­sult in pos­i­tive be­hav­iour­al changes.

“When she read it out to me, I can’t re­call do­ing none of these things, as far as I know, that my record was clean...when I thought my sus­pen­sion was end­ing Mon­day, the Tues­day I get a call that say doh come back here and the Wednes­day ex­pelled,” Ray­mond ex­plained.

Her moth­er, Cher­ryann Ray­mond, said she was al­so blind­sided by the ex­pul­sion and is now wor­ried about her daugh­ter’s fu­ture.

“When I went in the school now, I tell my­self my daugh­ter get sus­pend­ed for her pun­ish­ment for her be­hav­iour, which I say okay, I will ac­cept it, she will learn from it. But when you come back to the school the sec­ond time, is like I get a six for a nine. I felt dis­pleased and hurt know­ing that they did not come out in the open and say what was go­ing to take place,” Cher­ryann Ray­mond ex­plained.

Fol­low­ing the ex­pul­sion, how­ev­er, her daugh­ter has come up with a plan to en­sure her time away from in­sti­tu­tion­alised school­ing does not af­fect her learn­ing and fu­ture.

“Well, they say I was ex­pelled, they did not say I couldn’t write CXC, so I could go like lessons at least for three sub­jects for the while, that is Maths, Eng­lish and Hu­man and So­cial Bi­ol­o­gy (HSB), so I could still get in­to nurs­ing school with any oth­er two sub­jects,” she said.

The child said nurs­ing is her cho­sen field be­cause she loves help­ing peo­ple.

She ad­mit­ted, how­ev­er, that her fam­i­ly needs help, both psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly and fi­nan­cial­ly.

“I want to fin­ish school...well we need coun­selling and fi­nan­cial sup­port and that is okay,” she said.

Her moth­er re­vealed that they have had a tough life and while she has tried her best to do every­thing on her own, now was the time to ask for help. Not con­don­ing her daugh­ter’s be­hav­iour, the moth­er re­vealed that there may have been ex­ter­nal is­sues that caused the teen’s out­burst in the class­room.

“So I know what stress­ing out my daugh­ter, peo­ple just talk­ing and they doh know what stress this fam­i­ly pass­ing through,” the moth­er said.

But she said she’s tried to sup­port her chil­dren’s dreams as much as she can, even with the cir­cum­stances, and wants her daugh­ter to one day ful­fil her dream of be­com­ing a nurse.

“We need the help to sup­port and to send my child in school. I know she has the ef­fort of learn­ing she books, she reach­ing far in life in her school work and I see she has the ef­fort. She al­ways say­ing ‘mum­my, dad­dy gone but I want to make you proud, I want to be a nurse when I get big and I will build my own house and I go take you and take care of you. I said okay daugh­ter, show me your wish­es,” she said.

Speak­ing fol­low­ing the min­istry’s de­ci­sion on Thurs­day, Dr Gads­by-Dol­ly said re­fer­ral let­ters were sent to Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices, the Min­istry of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vices, and the Com­mu­ni­ty Po­lice so they can help the stu­dent and her fam­i­ly.

How­ev­er, both Cher­ryann and Tre­vieann said yes­ter­day they have not heard any­thing from any of the men­tioned agen­cies.

Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day reached out to Min­is­ter of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice Fos­ter Cum­mings, who con­firmed his min­istry re­ceived the re­fer­ral let­ter, which, he said, is now get­ting ur­gent at­ten­tion. Cum­mings said they will reach out to the fam­i­ly soon.

Al­so con­tact­ed, Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Don­na Cox said a so­cial work­er has al­ready been as­signed to the case. Cox said they reached out to the fam­i­ly and a meet­ing was sched­uled for Tues­day.