In the third week of a new teaching job here, I was approached by the office administrator, who informed me of an island-wide reading competition for students in grades four and five. The best oral readers from all of the primary schools in Antigua were invited to a series of ‘read-offs’ where students would be given a portion of some unforeseen text, allowed 30 seconds to read it to themselves and then read it aloud for a panel of judges who award points for pronunciation, attention to punctuation, dialogue, expression and rate of delivery. The best oral readers are to succeed through local semi-finals, advance to the island wide finals and then travel to Dominica to compete against the best readers from all of the English speaking Caribbean.
With the help of last year’s grade four teacher, I was able to identify the best fifth grade reader to enter the contest. Forms were filled out and the next day we were informed that the entire class would be invited by the Ministry of Education to attend the competition and root for our classmate and a bus would be provided at no cost. What could be better than an unplanned field trip! The class was very excited. After a flurry of permission slips and a quick practice session with E, we were ready to head to the ‘House of Culture’ for Friday’s competition.
On Friday morning, we had a wonderful assembly at school to observe the World Day of Peace and soon after were called to the front office to board the bus to the House of Culture. When my group of 16 excited fifth graders in full white and blue uniforms entered the bus, we were greeted by children in brown and beige plaid uniforms from the Buckley’s Primary School. When we arrived at the House of Culture, we were informed that the competition was postponed because there was no current- the power was out- and we would be contacted when the event would be rescheduled. No worries, this is Antigua and back on the bus we piled and finished off the day in ordinary fashion.
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