‘This is the reason why He’s keeping me here’

AS THE time wound down to 2 p.m. yesterday for the announcement of secondary level school placements and results from the grade six Primary Exit Profile (PEP) examinations for 2023, Tanya Lowden, a spinal cancer warrior and parent, found herself nervous and anxious.

Nervous and anxious to hear what could also be considered her child’s fate, because of the high school where her educational path will largely be shaped in the next seven years.

Also, with Jamaicans ranking secondary schools based on preference and PEP percentage pass rates, she wanted her daughter, Courtney Greaves, to pass for the best ranked secondary level school in the Corporate Area, which Campion College has been well known for.

At 2 p.m., the results came in for Jessie Ripoll Primary School in Kingston where Lowden’s daughter, Greaves, is a student. And when Greaves’ results were shared, the ill, wheelchair-mobile woman was speechless, yet elated.

“Amen!” was the first word Lowden uttered.

Lowden said God knew the desire of the heart of her faithful, hardworking daughter and although cancer makes her unable to walk, she is happy to be alive to witness the victory being announced, as she was earlier this year when Greaves was awarded the top performer in the Global Poetry Foundation competition.

For that competition, Greaves also walked away as the first person to win seven awards in a given year for the competition.

“I cried. I am overjoyed! Speechless, but excited! First, I give God thanks for letting me be here and to be able to see this, and this is the reason why He’s keeping me here,” said Lowden.

Tears of joy

Greaves, on the other hand, cried when she was told that she was indeed placed at the school of her first choice, Campion College.

“I am very overwhelmed. I knew in my heart that I would make it. I put my faith in Jesus and he has helped me,” the Christian girl told The Gleaner.

She added that the feeling of joy was what made tears flow down her face after she was told that she was placed at Campion College.

Now that one of her dreams has come true and she has tasted the fruit of her labour, Greaves, who is head girl of Jessie Ripoll Primary, commits to working even harder at her schoolwork.

“I want to become a paediatrician and to become a paediatrician I will have to work hard and study a lot, so what I’m going to do? I’m going to put all of my focus into my [school] work,” she said.

With her mother still being ill and trying to remain upbeat, Greaves said that drive pushes her to want to achieve excellence.

“Though my mother may be in a wheelchair, she is the strongest person I know. She’s always there for me. She’s always behind me and there to support me. She spoke it into being that I would be going to Campion College, and I am going there now,” she said.

For Lowden, she has put cancer behind her.

“I don’t put it on my mind, even when I’m feeling the results. The wanting to just get up and then it’s when I fall back on the ground that I realise that not yet. God don’t mek that happen [as] yet, but you know when you get that joy,” she said.

O’Neil Stephens, principal, Jessie Ripoll Primary School, was also elated about Greaves’s victory through sitting PEP and that she was placed in her school of choice.

He told The Gleaner that for this year, 96 per cent of the students from Jessie Ripoll Primary were placed in top-performing traditional high schools, for which he is elated.

“Most of our students, because of the proximity to Wolmer’s and Campion, they would be more familiar with Wolmer’s, so they put for their first choice, Wolmer’s Boys’ or Girls [School] ... We have probably 80 students who were placed at Wolmer’s Boys or Girls, and when you look at their scores, their scores are basically the same as those at Campion [College], but they prefer Wolmer’s than Campion,” he said.