Jamaica teacher turns walls into board to teach students without internet amid COVID-19

With schools closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, a teacher in Jamaica strived through the challenges risking gunshots from gang warfare and enduring the scorching Caribbean heat to teach her students by using community blackboards that she painted on the walls of inner-city Kingston. Taneka Mckoy Phipps, a teacher at Union Gardens Infant School in St. Andrew imparted lessons to children donned face masks and socially distanced in lines by jotting down their lessons on community house walls, as she conducted classes on the streets. In a UNICEF Jamaica footage that went viral on Twitter and earned her immense respect, the enthusiastic teacher said that with schools closed for months, she felt compelled to “start” somewhere for the kids.

Meanwhile, lauding her efforts, Prime Minister of Jamaica, Andrew Holness wrote, “I was quite moved by the UNICEF video that featured Mrs. Taneka Mckoy Phipps, a teacher at Union Gardens Infant School in St. Andrew, who has been leading a team of educators into inner-city communities to impart lessons daily.”Many others on Twitter hailed the hard work that Taneka Mckoy Phipps put into educating the kids. As she drafted the lessons on makeshift wallboards, children either took the pictures or made notes, they later, were reported passing by Mckoy’s home to submit or pick up their homework. 

The 39-year old that sought assistance from her husband to paint nine blackboards across the walls said in the footage that she told her husband, “If we don’t meet them and bring them (to learn), the family would have lost this opportunity that lies within these inner-city community children.” She added, “I said I have to do something.” Not only did the Jamaican teacher design blackboards impart education but she would wake before dawn and travel across the muddy lanes and potholed streets to conduct classes for the school kids, along with her 23-year-old daughter that taught almost 120 children that have had no option of school amid the pandemic. 

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Donations and supplies pour in

As her initiative went viral, the teacher received donations and supplies as people kept her zeal going for the kids in the community to receive literacy. “For some, teaching is a calling, and she exemplifies this,” UNICEF’S Rebecca Tortello, education specialist at the Jamaica branch of United Nations children’s agency said.“We are liaising with the government to see if, and how best, her innovative and practical process can be scaled up.”

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