Donovan Rattray, a teacher in Clarendon, says working with at-risk adolescents at a high school in St. Catherine sparked his enthusiasm for teaching. As the 2023 Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) champion educator, he attributed his success to this dedication.
Having around 115,000 members from more than 128 countries, ASCD is a global community dedicated to the pursuit of excellence in learning, teaching, and leadership. A wide range of professionals are included in ASCD, including advocates, teachers, principals, and superintendents. The ACDC seeks to honor teachers who do very well in regular classroom settings as well as outside of them.
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Rattray revealed that, upon reviewing the prize requirements, he began to doubt his own fitness, claiming that the honor was beyond his reach. But a glimmer of optimism appeared a month later, and that’s what made him decide to apply.
“I decided to take a shot at it, and created a video promoting my years of experience, teaching styles, and community involvement,” he told the Gleaner a popular local newspaper.
Regarding the honor, Rattray was ecstatic and described it as a major motivator to keep trying to have a positive influence on kids’ lives.
Speaking about his 23 years in the field, Rattray stated that he discovered a strong sense of purpose in mentoring and empowering inner-city adolescents via education after seeing the difficulties they encountered. His dedication to creating a good influence was strengthened by the dynamic nature of working with inner-city adolescents, who frequently face restricted chances and socio-economic problems. He said that education is a revolutionary instrument that can empower communities and break down boundaries, not just a career.
“After completing teachers’ college, I landed a job at an inner-city high school in St Catherine. I decided teaching was the best fit for me, and I fell in love with teaching, and that’s why I’m still here. Inner-city high schools are very challenging. They don’t have the kind of students like some of the traditional high schools, so, as a teacher, I had to go to outside my comfort zone, and outside the box in order to reach my students, which means I had to dig deep into my creative repertoire to see how best I could bring them up to standard,” Rattray told the newspaper.
At Glenmuir High in Clarendon, Rattray presently teaches geography. He used to work as a social studies, geography, and history teacher at Spanish Town High in St. Catherine.
When asked about his most fulfilling teaching experience, Rattray responded, “It’s the gratitude and admiration students express for you and seeing them grow and develop into what you want them to be. For example, I have a student working at the meteorological center, and just the other day a parent expressed gratitude to me, because her son cited me as an inspiration for him wanting to go into the field of meteorology.’’
Rattray stated that he is motivated by the following motto and that he will keep doing his very best to serve the educational sector, “Life is a challenge, live up to the challenge, and nothing can defeat you.”
