Unleash the Scream- Female Voices Crying from the Classroom: Representing the stories of Four Trinbagonian Female Primary Schoolteachers

In a world where the teacher’s voice is often ignored, this study focuses on the narratives of four Trinbagonian female primary school teachers. Using an interpretive (qualitative) epistemological perspective, I employ a life history methodology with narratives and poetry inquiries as part of the data collection, analysis and representation process. I use the theoretical lenses of feminism and postcolonialism to deconstruct the narratives. Through the lenses of feminism, the narratives reveal how the teachers’ identities, philosophies and pedagogies were shaped by feminine influences. Through the lenses of postcolonialism, they disclose how colonial factors are connected to the attitudes and behaviours in our post- colonial educational spaces. As the researcher, who was once herself a primary school teacher, I suggest that teachers can de-colonise their educational spaces through Freire’s (1973;1985) concept of ‘conscientisation’; that is, becoming aware that they have the power to transform their own lives, and those of their pupils/students. They can achieve such transformation by understanding the role that their colonial, historical past played in the development of present educational policies and practices. They should also comprehend how broader forces such as globalisation and other international interferences factor into the agencies that seek to keep them silent. I also submit that self-transformation must advance to philosophical and pedagogical changes and a willingness to break from a colonial stranglehold that makes them outwardly reticent while they scream inwardly.