Chapter 45
In the spring of his third year of teaching, Marcus applied for a part-time Master's programme in Educational Leadership at the University of the West Indies. He had been thinking about it for two years not because he wanted to leave the classroom, but because he was beginning to see the edges of what a single classroom teacher could do, and he wanted to understand what was beyond those edges.
He told Mrs. Baptiste, who had been expecting it.
'You'll be head of department within two years, with or without the Master's,' she said. 'But yes. Go.'
He told his mother on a Sunday.
She set down her sewing needle and looked at him for a moment.
'More studying,' she said.
'Part-time. I'll still teach full time.'
'Are you sure?'
'I'm sure,' he said.
She nodded. Then: 'What does Nia think?'
'She says do it,' he said. 'She says it's the right time.'
His mother picked up her needle. 'She's right,' she said. 'When Nia says something is right, you should listen.'
He started the programme in September. It met two evenings a week and Saturdays, and required substantial independent research and a dissertation at the end. He had, in some ways, underestimated the load the combination of full-time teaching and serious academic study was not unlike the combination of full-time living and full-time thinking that had always characterized his life, but it was more externally demanding.
He managed it by becoming even more efficient with his time. He graded papers on Saturday mornings before the evening lecture. He read on the bus. He dictated journal entries while running.
Nia made space for it without being asked coming home to find him at his desk and putting food beside him without interrupting, recognizing the quality of concentration he was in and respecting it the way he respected hers at the drafting table.
The programme was intellectually serious in ways that energized him. He was studying with twelve other people teachers and school administrators and one district education officer and the seminar discussions were the best conversations he had had since the Friday writing group, combining theory with the hard practical knowledge of people who had been in classrooms for years.
His research was on teacher retention in under-resourced schools: why teachers left, what made them stay, what leadership practices created environments in which committed teachers could sustain their commitment over time rather than burning out in three years.
He wrote about himself, carefully, as a case study.
His supervisor read the first draft and said: 'The personal material is the strongest part. Use more of it.'
He used more of it.
He graduated with Distinction two years later.