It was Saturday morning in the quiet rural sea side district of Rio Bueno, just on the northernmost Trelawny side of the border with St Ann, at the primary school with the town’s name.
Audrey Barrett entered the school yard for yet another time. The yard was clean and well kept. Flowers don’t grow well on the seaside grounds but the walls of the buildings compensate with bright colours, patriotic symbols and educational material.
It was Saturday and Mrs Barett had done her duties as principal for the week but she was there in her usual routine of being with the students preparing to sit their GSAT. She had no doubt about the competence of the assigned teacher who was working with the 11 students for the GSAT later in the month, but Mrs Barrett was there at the small school, as she had done for weeks. She was with them, Saturdays and Sunday afternoons just to clear up any issues and complement learning of the past week and to give the students the added confidence that they could do well for themselves and make their parents proud.
It’s Mrs Barrett’s way of lifting the school where, decades ago she was herself a student. If there is a Woman of Trelawny, and an accomplished one too, this is she, because for most of her life, despite going out to study and having other opportunities she has been back to Trelawny every time. Throughout her life, she has lived as a community person, valuing volunteerism and giving of herself. It is in her DNA, captured from both her parents.
“I grew up in a family where volunteerism was always high. My father was a justice of the peace (JP) and like the village lawyer for all those years. My mother is a member of the Calabar Assembles of Holiness church which started in our living room.”
Her father was chairman of the Board of Rio Bueno Primary. Now she is in charge of the school within hundreds of yards where she was born.
Born to mother Floris and father Joseph Headlam, tailor and track maintenance worker with the Kaiser Bauxite Company, who relocated from St Andrew to Calabar, near Rio Bueno, Audrey was one of eight children for the couple. Rio Bueno Infant and Primary, the very school she has shaped into an in-demand institution among the small populations of surrounding communities, shaped her.
As a young girl, her first motivation wasn’t to be a teacher at all. It was to be a health education social worker. The model and motivator was a health education officer who visited the school often while Audrey Headlam was a student there. Audrey Barrett remembers the woman’s name to this day– Cherry Campbell.. “She was young, vibrant and attractive. I was fascinated by that and thought of becoming a health educator.”
She decided to follow that career path, even going to the Ministry of Health in Kingston to find out how to study to become one. There they referred her to teaching.
Her family was close and everything to her. Audrey was the youngest of four girls and her bigger sisters were her mentors. She told them of her career thoughts and reality and finally she agreed to go to St Josephs Teachers’ College in Kingston and studied Early Childhood Education. The fascination for social work was gone and she plunged herself into her courses so much so that in her final year, she became College Senior Student (the equivalent of College head girl or president).
With her Diploma, it was back to Trelawny for Audrey Headlam, teaching first at Granville Primary then for seven years at Falmouth All Age in the parish capital.
But then social work came… after all. Feeling an urge to impact lives in a manner different from teaching, Mrs Barrett left the classroom and went to the Victim Support Unit in 2000.
It brought her into close, professional contact with several issues that she had seen from a different angle in the classroom. She saw, up close, mal functioning families and wanted to get even greater thinking and understanding of the issues.
She enrolled in the International University of the Caribbean and completed a Bachelors degree in Guidance Counselling, in 2010. Her time at Victim Support, from 2000 to 2012 gave her a good understanding about crime and its manifestation.
Still involved in community work she met the also very active Royland Barrett, custos of Trelawny, through their shared interest in volunteerism and social work. As a result of their volunteerism and social work they met on several occasions at events in and around Falmouth. This brought them into a friendship that transitioned through courtship into marriage in 2003.
Asked about whether the duties as custos’ wife were onerous she said: “I didn’t consider myself as having “duties.” I accompanied my husband to some functions. There were times when we entertained guests. This I did not out of a sense of duty but as the wife of a man who loved to entertain; and I deeply enjoy entertaining too.” Her speaking engagements that had started long before they met also continued .
“I do not believe the tasks were onerous. They didn’t vary much from what I had been doing. They might just have come a little more frequently but still manageable,” she said. She describes it as a very interesting period of service. “It made me understand the true worth of giving back. I was really close to the people. Volunteerism was always big for Roy and for me too,” she said.
“The most testing part was dealing with my husband’s illness.” From that their love and life was to suffer pain. Just before their marriage Mr Barrett was diagnosed as having end stage renal failure. He died in 2010.
Living with her two children from a previous marriage and being the wife of a busy Roylan Barrett, businessman, community supporter and custos, her work and family life had pulled her away from her community involvement. “Above everything else I’m also a Christian,” she said. This gave her responsibilities at the historic William Knibb Baptist Church in Falmouth where she is a lay preacher
As far back as 1999 she had helped put together a community football group in Rio Bueno and one of the groups supporters had called on her to come back and help. Then her past principal at Rio Bueno contacted her asking that she come back to help out with the community. Mrs Barrett remembers that it was that very weekend she saw an ad seeking to fill a vacancy for principal at Rio Bueno Primary.
It wasn’t a sexy job. The school reportedly had been marked for closure as attendance was down and attainment levels were low. Community people were moving their children away.
Never daunted by a challenge Mrs Barrett applied, got the job and went into the challenges of the school in January 2013, determined to make the best of it.
Now, three years on, the principal says the parents are very supportive, she brings them into the life of the school and even has a “Parents’ Place” for meetings and consultations. “They send their children to school, are very supportive and cooperative and ensure the school is kept well,” Mrs Barrett said. However, Mrs Barrett wants more: “I want them (parents) to make the sacrifices, to apply the discipline to help move the children to sustained levels of success.” She has made it her mission to correct and improve parents’ understanding of education and their role as facilitators.
It’s very demanding work and she was glad that her daughters were grown and not requiring as much time as they may have earlier on in life. Her two daughters are now at university.
“I pity those principals who have young children and have to take care of them and run a school,” she said.
She speaks admiringly of the work of her late husband. “He insisted on knowing the history of the parish,” said Mrs Barrett. “He felt Trelawny could be reconstructed to regain some of its former glory. I believe that too.”
Mrs Barrett has turned to working to improve the offering to children, conscious that all will not do well at the academics. She has started a table tennis programme with less than an ideal board and is on the verge of getting a swimming instructor to work with some of the children, in developing what she calls a “sports side to the school.”
In the wider community she is engaged in developing sports too, through the recently established Rio Bueno United Sports Council, aimed at helping to guide youth development. She is conscious that some talented and bright young people are leaving high school without much to do.
She has come full circle to Calabar where she was born. Following the death of her father in October 2014, she is back with her mother. Mrs Barrett doesn’t have a lot of time but loves reading and crocheting. She is still thinking of how she can serve the Rotary Club of Falmouth of which she was a charter member and president in 2007. But for now school and immediate community draw her energy
