Teachers at Success Laventille Secondary School spent over two hours yesterday, relating their frustration of having to be more than teachers to many of the students in the school.
During the meeting in the staffroom some teachers became emotional as they recounted incidents of violence and trauma affecting students.
Some said they were not equipped to deal with some situations which did not relate to their jobs.
The school organised the meeting involving religious leaders, police, community activists and the MP for Laventille East/Morvant in the wake of the murder of student Joel Huggins.
Minister in the Ministry of Education, Dr Lovell Francis, later joined the meeting after media reports erroneously suggested teachers were walking off the job.
MP Adrian Leonce as well as other stakeholders, including members of the Community Support Programme, the Inter-Agency Task Force’s Hearts and Minds Programme and other officials attached to the Ministry of Education also attended.
The teachers reached their pinnacle following Saturday’s killing of a Form Five student.
According to police reports the 15-year-old was shot dead at his home at Almond Court, Morvant, shortly before 10 am on Saturday.
Police said they have no motive for the killing and believed the teen was shot dead because he was in the company of another man for whom the killer came looking.
Yesterday the teachers and the other officials spent the first half of the school day and into the lunch period in the staffroom expressing their feelings.
“They were just crying and saying they fed up of burying students and having to tell children to stay in school and get an education but the ones who doing that being killed so even saying that not helping,” one insider said.
In a telephone interview with the T&T Guardian, Leonce confirmed the atmosphere in the meeting, adding many teachers complained of being overworked with not only teaching but being social workers for their students, some of for whom they bought clothes and other items.
Leonce said the teachers were in need of assistance and Huggins’ killing was the proverbial straw on the camel’s back.
“Some of the teachers say they have to deal with children whose parents were killed in front of them and they are not trained to deal with that.
“Some of the them asked for more support and in some cases they wanted personal development so that they could deal properly with the issues some of the children come to school with. There was a lot of frustration going on and the atmosphere was emotional,” Leonce said.
He added the meeting was “fruitful” in that more than lip service was paid to the plight but there were assurances that greater effort would be made to address the concerns of the teachers.
An insider added that most of the teachers wore black yesterday. Some of the other issues the teachers have to deal with include incest, warfare between rival gangs in the community, with some of the children bringing the war into the school, and teenaged pregnancy.
“Right now teachers said they tired going funerals and right now they just preparing for another funeral,” the insider said.
Prior to Huggin’s murder, two students from the school were killed this year on their way home.
In January, Denilson Smith, 17, and Mark Richards, 15, were pulled out of a taxi and executed along Picton Road.
Last year 16-year-old student Jernice Francis was stabbed to death at Bowen Trace, Snake Valley, Laventille.
In November 2014, 17-year-old Salim Dalzell was murdered in front the school just after he left.
Then Education Minister Dr Tim Gopeesingh promised increased security at the school along with counseling for the teachers and students.