The Tribune

By FRONT PORCH

“As principal, my aim was to create an environ- ment conducive to learning, and to instill good moral, social, and spiritual values in the students.” – Judith P Thompson

FOLLOWING the attainment of majority rule and on the cusp of independence, The Bahamas required a revolution in education at every level. For generations, an unequal society failed to provide educational opportunity for the majority of the population.

In addition to the need for more schools throughout the archipelago, there was a need for scores of teachers and administrators to populate the primary, junior and secondary state schools. A new generation of educators arose, offering their talents and patriotism to help engender equality and social justice.

This generation joined stellar educators like DW Davis, Rodney Bain, Naomi Blatch, Timothy Gibson, Anatol Rodgers, Thelma Gibson, and other mentors who instilled in them a sense of possibility and excellence.                       

Judith Thompson nee Pratt was among this cadre of upcoming talent and excellence, who would go on to educate and to form tens of thousands of young people in a sovereign Bahamas. Last week, a grateful nation renamed Centreville Primary, where she served as head of school from 1968 to 1998, in her honour.

Judy Thompson, now 85, was born in 1939 to William and Vernell Pratt. She was born into a Bahamas suffering the indignities of colonialism and racial and gender inequality.

Along with many other Bahamians, she realised early the role of education in transforming individual lives and a nation. Along with her intellectual gifts, she possessed other instruments of hope including a loving and supportive family, and a steely religious faith that instilled in her the gifts of hope, love, and – tenacity.

She also possessed an air of innate dignity that she wore with humility and a gentle pride as a child of God, as a black woman, and as a Bahamian. This gracefulness was in evidence at the renaming ceremony where she was resplendent in her bearing as she beamed with gratitude to God and her former colleagues and students.

She teared as her grandson, Joel Sweeting, sang “The Goodness of God”, testifying to her enduring faith over eighth decades. It has been a long and exem- plary journey.

Her education began at age four at the Hen eld’s home on Mackey Street South. At five, she went to the Government Preparatory School. She completed Eastern Junior School, after which she finished her secondary education at Eastern Senior School under the direction of Donald Davis. She earned her Primary School Certificate in 1952 and her Junior School Certificate in 1953.

As was noted at the renaming, she knew that teaching was her vocation from an early age. While many young people today are engrossed in social media, a young Judy, at 15, became a Pupil Teacher on the recommendation of Mr Davis.

As the struggle for majority rule and equality gathered pace, she entered teacher training at the Bahamas Teacher’s College, where she earned her Teacher’s Certificate in 1956.

She was appointed as a trained teacher in 1957 at Eastern Preparatory School No Two. Her principal was Mrs Vernay Armbrister, who was a mentor, and under whose guidance her devotion to teaching flourished.

In 1968, a year after majority rule was attained she was appointed acting head teacher at Collins Avenue Infant School, later renamed Centreville Primary School. The appointment was a testament to her gifts and to the need for Bahamian talent to help lead a revolution in education.

A proverbial life-long learner, in 1980 she earned a Bachelor of Arts in Edu- cation, with Honours, from the College of Saint Benedict in Minnesota.

Successful school leadership requires a complex of gifts: the ability to inspire a team, vision, discipline, fundraising skills, innovation, tenacity, political acumen, patience, resourcefulness, and others. Mrs Thompson possessed these in abundance.

Moreover, she possessed one of the greatest gifts of an educator and mentor. She recognised cum discerned, and was able to mold the talents and skills of students and staff. She saw within them gifts they may have only perceived faintly. She nurtured their humanity and dignity.

She exemplified the Jesuit educational principle of cura personalis or “care for the development of the whole person”. Mrs Thompson mentored a number of prominent Bahamians, national leaders, and a generation of teachers and administrators.

The renaming was promoted by the alumni of the school, a number of whom were at the ceremony with their children, reveling in the occasion and taking photographs with Mrs Thompson.

Centreville Primary was a community, a sort of second home for her. Along with her staff, parents, alumni, and benefactors they trans- formed the school. She reorganised timetables to address shortages. She avidly raised funds for supplies and other material. She collected stamps from food stores to support school operations.

She was an inveterate letter writer, who sent countless notes of encouragement. She was insistent on teacher development. Described as meticulous to a fault at times, she had no time for slackness and laziness. Her standards were high and clear. Soft-spoken and demure at times, she has a constitution of steel.

During her 30 years as principal, ten additional classrooms and a new administrative block were constructed. A library and music room were set up, grades four through six were added, a Parent- Teacher Association was established, and various equipment was purchased.                       

In full praise of others, she noted in her biography: “Over the years, the exem- plary team of dedicated teachers, administrative and janitorial staff, and host of supportive parents, were vital to the school’s success”, whose motto remains, “Build Better – Aim High”.

As an educator, a citizen, a mother, a friend, a Christian, she is a bearer of the light. At the renaming she offered a master metaphor and vignette of hope. She recalled that when she first arrived at Centreville Primary there was a big rocky unsightly and dangerous hole in the ground.

She organised the finances and team to  ll in and pave the hole. Fittingly, it was on that very site last week, nearly half a century later, that the renaming ceremony took place. Hope may tend to spring eternal. However, it is not automatic. It demands constant renewal and action. It requires tenacity.

For 44 years, Mrs Thompson served as an educator. It is this depth and quality of constancy of which hope is born and renewed.

The Judith P Thompson Primary School in Centreville maintains the ethos and spirit of the citizen educator whose name adorns the highly regarded and successful primary school, which has an out- standing record of student achievement.

She is Mom-Mom to eight grandchildren and four great-grand-children. 

As she walked the campus after the ceremony and a luncheon, Mrs Thompson joyously remarked that she helped plant a number of the owers now blooming in the schoolyard. Yet another symbol of the need to nurture hope over generations.

One of the verses from “Great is Thy Faithfulness”, which was sung at the renaming, reminds us of that the God of mercy and love is faithful in every season:

“Summer and winter and springtime and harvest Sun, moon and stars in their courses above
Join with all nature in manifold witness
To Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love...” 

Great has been Judy Thompson’s faithfulness, in good and dif cult and times, ever exemplifying hope and light for her our Bahamas. In gratitude, may a new generation of students, educators, and citizens keep faith with exemplars, like her, a loving patriot and woman of faith and constancy. The renaming ceremony for the Judith P Thompson Primary School may be found online at YouTube.