cooperating teacher for observers and student teachers, a high school assistant principal, and an
adjunct assistant professor at Hofstra University.—Alan Singer
I was born in Barbados in 1958. At that time Barbados was part of the British West Indies. To-
day, it is an independent country with a population of about 260,000 people. I lived in Barba-
dos until I was 19, when I immigrated to the United States and settled with family members in
Brooklyn, New York. The neighborhood where I lived was largely West Indian.
While I was a child in Barbados, my father was a minister. Because of his vocation, my
family moved every 2 to 3 years. My mother was as religious as my father. Schooling was im-
portant to my parents, but as a young child I was never interested in learning. I loved playing
outside, building things, doing all sort of different things. I was not bad. I just did not want to
do school work. As a result, I was always being punished.
The public schools we attended as children were very, very crowded, so it was easy not
to do the work. They did not have enough books to go around. Just the teacher and the
board. The common entrance exam at age 10 or 11 determined your life. If you passed the
first two parts, you moved on. If you did not pass, you stayed in elementary school until age
- My older brothers and sister scored high on the exams and went to the top public high
schools. Because of my poor performance on the common entrance exams, I would have
been denied admission to these programs, so my mother decided I would attend a private
school.
In Barbados, teaching meant lecturing to the class, and students who did not pay atten-
tion faced physical punishment. The teacher told you a story and you wrote everything
down. If you did not do well on tests, you got lashes. If you did not do the homework, you got
lashes. In the early grades, I occasionally got lashes. However, in high school I was a better
student and was always at the top of my class.
My father died when I was 9 years old and this was a major turning point in my life. We
moved closer to the city and I joined the Boy Scouts. I gained a lot of confidence in myself
from my experience in the Boy Scouts: marching at parades, recruiting other boys, and tak-
ing responsibility This helped me in school. I began to pay attention. By the time I finished
high school, I was the top performer in my school on the Cambridge University O’Level ex-
aminations.
My mother moved to the United States in 1973, but I stayed behind in Barbados with my
four brothers and two sisters. There is a tradition in the Caribbean that an older sibling
takes care of the younger children because parents are often forced to migrate to find work.
When I came to the United States, I worked in a coat factory. The factory was started by
two Polish Jewish brothers. They were survivors of the World War II concentration camps.
Half of the people who worked at the factory were Holocaust survivors and most of the oth-
ers were Dominicans or Puerto Ricans.
I worked at the factory for about 9 months until I got laid off; then, I started school at
Hunter College in the City University of New York. At that time, I thought of my stay in the
United States as temporary, so I wanted to study something I could use when I returned to
Barbados. Because I was considering a career in law, I majored in both Political Science and
Communications, and minored in history.
When I graduated from college, I got a job at the public library and entered the New York
University School of Education’s doctoral program in communications. But life takes funny
bounces. My mother knew someone who worked at the New York City Board of Education,
and she was able to get me a teaching position. Because of my background in communica-
tions, I was assigned to teach at Edward R. Murrow High School, a special theme magnet
school. When I started at Murrow, I had no educational credentials. I decided to kill two
88 CHAPTER 3