Education is a privilege everyone is entitled to no matter ethnicity, financial position, social standing or religious orientation.
Joseph Tatum has benefitted from the programme |
Through education, average men and women, young and old, have become great in some facet of their being.
For some, greatness comes in the form of wealth, for others achievements, politics, sports, business or simply never accepting what seems to be the norm.
In the words of Nelson Mandela: ‘Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that a son of a mineworker can become the head of the mine, that a child of farm workers can become the president.’
Positive and encouraging words from one of the greatest learned men of our time whose quest for knowledge and education took him from imprisonment to the pinnacle of South African politics – the presidency. Nothing is impossible through education, as Barack Obama also has demonstrated.
To this cause, 23 representatives from top boarding schools, from Grades 6 to 12 in the United States, will be visiting Grand Cayman today as part of the ‘Caribbean School Fair’, an event organised by Michael ‘Bedi’ Walker, Educational Consultant and former Associate Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid at Cheshire Academy, Cheshire, Connecticut, and coach Winston Chung from Academy Sports Club.
While coaching football in his Jamaica homeland in 1985, Bedi Walker was introduced to the boarding school ‘environment’ and envisioned a means of providing a better education for his players.
The boarding school system in the United States was a perfect fit. Through sports and academics, he has successfully steered over 100 young, bright Caribbean students in the right direction.
In 2001, Walker was appointed Associate Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid at Holderness School in Plymouth, New Hampshire.
It was during that year that he was introduced to Chung’s impressive and very successful Academy After-School
Being an old acquaintance of Chung and his family from their early days in Jamaica, Walker included the Cayman Islands in his list of destinations as a possible recruitment point for boarding schools, along with Jamaica and the Bahamas.
Since that initial visit in the early 2000s, the partnership has blossomed and every year or so, the Caribbean School Fair ‘tour bus’ visits Grand Cayman in search of possible boarding school recruits.
It was also in 2001, that Bedi Walker recruited his first Caymanian student athlete in Ariel Tatum for Holderness School.
A protégé of Chung’s and a product of the Academy’s After-School Programme, the pressure of being one of the first Caymanians to attend a boarding school in the United States rested squarely on the young man’s shoulders.
Not one known to shy away from responsibility, both on and off the football field, Ariel quickly settled into his new surroundings and the rest, as they say, is history.
Completing boarding school in 2003, Ariel was awarded a four-year athletic scholarship to attend Wheaton College in Massachusetts, from which he graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Economics in 2007.
Ariel became the unofficial poster boy for the Caymanian version of the Caribbean School Fair and since then, student athletes primarily from the Academy Sports Club and other clubs, including Michael and Mikhail Turner, Wade Evans, Andre Gooden, Trevor Gibbs, Joseph Tatum, Craig Bodden and Tevon Levine, were given the opportunity to further their education at various boarding schools and colleges throughout the United States.
Following in Ariel’s footsteps, the Turner boys graduated from Hotchkiss School in Connecticut and are currently attending Davidson College in North Carolina.
Wade Evans also graduated from Hotchkiss School and now attends Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts.
Andre Gooden graduated from Cheshire Academy in Connecticut and is presently attending Lyn University in Florida.
Trevor Gibbs, another graduate from Hotchkiss School, and Joseph Tatum, who attended St. George’s School in Rhode Island, are now attending Hiram College in Ohio.
Craig Bodden is enrolled at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut and Tevon Levine graduated from Cheshire Academy and is attending Ohio Wesleyan University in Ohio, all on athletic scholarships.
The terms ‘boarding school’ and ‘college prep school’ are not intended to conjure up fear in the minds of normal working-class parents who view these schools as economically impossible for their children to attend.
Granted, the boarding school system is virtually an unknown and unfamiliar concept in the Cayman Islands and it is not for everyone, but until parents take the initiative, visit with these representatives today, and see exactly what these highly rated schools are offering, they will never know what could have been.
For this reason, the Academy and George Town Sports Clubs encourage parents to take part in the Caribbean School Fair at the Family Life Centre and discover the opportunities that are available.
Just ask, Ariel, Wade, Machael, Mikhail, Trevor, Joseph, Craig or Tevon. Their parents visited the Caribbean School Fair and the rest is history.
For further information on the Caribbean School Fair and the schools attending, please contact coach Winston Chung at 327-8515.
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