Ingrid Dillion | “Seeing my students excel” motivates Lasco Teacher of the Year from Old Harbour High

This constant battle to empower the next generation of skilled minds in her field has been the cornerstone of a successful journey as an educator for the diminutive and affable Dillion who fittingly won the Lasco Teacher of the Year award for Region Six in the Ministry of Education.

Her most recent success to date, sees Dillion joining colleague Antwain Williams, French teacher at the CSEC level, as this year’s recipients from this region. The duo joins Principal Lynton Weir as the only educators from Old Harbour High to receive such honour from the annual prestigious event. Weir won the 2019 Lasco Principal of the Year.

Having spent 11 years teaching at her Alma Mater Vere Technical before taking her skills to the Turks and Caicos and then returning to Jamaica, Dillion said her students, as well as her deep uncompromising Christian faith and mother Hazel Dillion, have been the driving force behind her work.

As one with a quiet and gracious persona it didn't come as a surprise when Dillion paid homage to her peers despite the significance of her achievement.

“I really don't see myself as being the teacher of the year because there are other teachers out there who basically deserve it. But I just give God thanks that I was recognized,” she said in an interview with Old Harbour News.

Quite often Dillion is greeted with surprise as her field is dominated by men. These days she is seen as an inspiration to young girls, having broken the proverbial glass ceiling.

“I know of other females before me just that you haven’t seen them or heard about them,” she said. “I just seem to be a little bit out there. Not that I have put myself out there, the good Lord has done that.”

After 26 years in which she also taught technical drawing “seeing my students excel”, remains Dillion’s greatest motivation.

“When they come back and said ‘Miss, I thank you for what you have done’,” it ignites a fire from deep within her she adds.

For the past few years Dillion has been producing students in the top-10 in Jamaica. Students like engineer Marcel Brown of Vere Technical and former Old Harbour High duo Omelia Smith, currently at Caribbean Maritime University (CMU) and Kimani Young, who is furthering his studies at the University of Technology (UTech), readily comes to mind from a long accomplished list.

“Ain’t God good!” she said attributing her work of the Supreme Being. It’s a victory she revels in it seems, as she was among those students who didn’t receive a passing grade when she sat Common Entrance more than 30 years ago. Now she has seemingly found the formula that brings the best out of her students who have excelled above their peers at top traditional secondary institutions. Perhaps she knows exactly the missing link to get the best out of ‘ordinary students’. She was in their position once and had to take the long route from Marlie Mount Primary to Horizon Park All-Age and then Vere Technical High schools.

“So I guess God said ‘a grammar school is not for you, I’m sending you where I want to send you…’ and I think He has directed every aspect of my life… So I give Him all the honour and all the glory,” she beamed with pride.

The rapid evolution of new technologies has seen the subject morphed from just being electrical installation to what is known today as electrical electronics technology.

Surprisingly though, Dillion’s first love was clothing and textile and once harboured thoughts of being a fashion designer during her teenage years. But her teachers at Vere saw another special gift in her in the electrical engineering field.

“It has chosen for me,” she said with an air of satisfaction.

The coronavirus pandemic has been a challenge for everyone, not least for Dillion and her students.

“Some of the practical can be done online which are the electronics. We have work benches that we use online, but the installation portion… there is not a simulation for that, so it’s much harder,” she explained.

“My biggest challenge is that they don’t like to write. So they don’t like to write up the lab. So they might [have] done the practical but to write up they are not doing that.”

Dillion is also a sign language expert and while her immediate future sees her continuing to embrace the challenge of her students, she hopes to one day make a major breakthrough for the deaf community.

“My students challenge me. I think that’s my biggest challenge. My hope is to teach a hearing impaired student electrical. That’s my dream,” she said. 

She’s yet to meet such a child with an expressed interest to master the subject, she admitted, but pointed out that deaf students are trained in woodwork or carpentry.

Perhaps the government or a private institution can utilised Dillion’s skillsets which may very well propel her to become a pioneer not only for Jamaica but for the region for the hearing impaired.