A teacher at the Cas­cade School for the Deaf is T&T’s Teacher of the Year.

The ho­n­our was be­stowed on Ek­ka McFee by the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) for go­ing be­yond the call of du­ty to “en­sure the es­teem as­cribed to the pro­fes­sion” is up­held.

Speak­ing about her achieve­ment, McFee said her love for teach­ing start­ed when she was a stu­dent at Mu­cu­rapo Ju­nior Sec­ondary School. She was in­spired by one teacher, Mrs Porter, whom she saw as an ex­am­ple of what a great teacher should be.

She start­ed her ca­reer at the Cas­cade School for the Deaf 18 years ago with no ex­pe­ri­ence in sign lan­guage. Al­though she ini­tial­ly won­dered why she was placed at the school, it took her on­ly one day to de­cide it was where she want­ed to be.

McFee told Guardian Me­dia that teach­ing her dif­fer­ent­ly-abled stu­dents is chal­leng­ing not be­cause they can­not hear, but be­cause they are op­er­at­ing with­in an ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem that acts on the as­sump­tion that Eng­lish is their first lan­guage. This, she said, is not so. As a re­sult, her stu­dents grav­i­tate to­wards Math­e­mat­ics more than Eng­lish and Com­pre­hen­sion.

She said her aim is to see her stu­dents blos­som and move from feel­ing at a dis­ad­van­tage to a place of hope.

“My stu­dents may not top the 100 in SEA, or may not gain an award at CXC lev­el, but be­ing able to get them to that place where they can con­tribute to so­ci­ety in a pos­i­tive way, that is my goal,” a beam­ing McFee said.

“What sep­a­rates one from the oth­er is how com­mit­ted we are, how much we put in­to it, how do we go be­yond the call. We may have to take scripts, we may have to take a child home, we may have to call a par­ent over and over. We may have to vis­it a child’s home, we may have to pro­vide lunch for a child, or din­ner.”

She re­called an ex­pe­ri­ence some years ago when she had a Stan­dard Five class and felt her stu­dents need­ed ex­tra lessons on Sat­ur­days.

“I had two stu­dents in my class who were liv­ing pret­ty far. They would have stayed in the dor­mi­to­ry. One was liv­ing Blan­chisseuse and the oth­er was liv­ing Moru­ga. Their par­ents would usu­al­ly take them home on a Fri­day af­ter­noon be­cause the dor­mi­to­ry pro­vides for them from Mon­day to Fri­day,” she said.

“I felt my stu­dents need­ed to get those ex­tra lessons on a Sat­ur­day and I took my stu­dents home. I asked for the par­ents’ per­mis­sion and on a Fri­day af­ter­noon those two girls would come home with me and stay over.

“I gave up my bed. At that time I was sin­gle. I al­lowed them to stay over so they would be able to come to the lessons on a Sat­ur­day and get that ex­tra help that they need­ed.

“That’s what re­al­ly sep­a­rates one teacher from an­oth­er, how far we are will­ing to go to see our stu­dents suc­ceed.”

McFee said al­though teach­ers face dai­ly chal­lenges, she en­cour­ages them to con­tin­ue to mo­ti­vate their stu­dents.

“It’s re­al­ly just about putting out hearts in­to it. It all comes down to love,” she said.