A first-person account by Darien G. Henry, with an introduction by Rachel Berger

When Hurricane Melissa tore through Jamaica in October 2025 as a Category 5 storm, schools were damaged, communities were displaced and educational leaders were forced to act quickly. For Darien Henry, the crisis became a defining moment—one shaped in part by his Temple University education.

For more than 25 years, Temple University’s College of Education and Human Development has partnered with Church Teachers’ College in Mandeville, Jamaica, to offer academic degree programs. The partnership began in 1999 under then-Dean Trevor Sewell, whose Jamaican heritage and deep commitment to his home country sparked a lasting collaboration.

It started with the delivery of the bachelor of science in elementary and early childhood education and later expanded to include a master of education and a doctorate in educational leadership. Since 2014, more than 100 students have earned advanced degrees in Jamaica through the partnership.

The educational leadership programs prepare students to become transformative leaders in a variety of educational settings and roles. They are designed to help students gain both new ways to think about education in Jamaica and to develop a robust global perspective.

Faculty program coordinator and research professor Judith Stull says students come from across Jamaica. While the degree itself may be a personal goal, “it goes beyond the person to improve the community and the island’s growth and development.” She notes that the research conducted by Jamaican students has global impact.

The programs were designed to cultivate transformative leaders. Hurricane Melissa tested that leadership in ways no one could have imagined.

This is one leader’s story of perseverance.

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How my doctoral journey shaped my leadership in times of crisis

By: Darien G. Henry, EDU ’24

I did not begin my career intending to lead a Jamaican community college, much less to guide it through a national crisis or to attempt the turnaround of a struggling secondary school. Long before Hurricane Melissa tore across Jamaica, however, I had been paying very close attention to how institutions—schools in particular—behave when pressure exposes their seams.

At the age of 17, newly graduated from Ferncourt High School in St. Ann, I walked into IRIE FM in Ocho Rios convinced that my booming baritone would be credential enough for a dream job in radio. It was not. In fact, I was dismissed almost instantly. Laughed at mockingly. Told to return to school. Sent away with the casual finality institutions sometimes reserve for those young and ambitious.

It was the summer of 1995. I was stung, disappointed and unsure of what came next. I sat outside the St. Ann-based radio station, on a small red leather chair, trying to appear far more composed than I felt. The hours seemed to move slowly. Sometime later, I noticed a gentleman stepping out of his car. He was tall, pleasant-faced and walked with a slight limp that made his stride deliberate rather than hurried.

He approached me, extended a quiet authority and asked who I was. I introduced myself and he did the same. His name was Bob Clarke, and his voice was steady, almost fatherly in its warmth. He listened without interruption as I spoke. Then he did something that felt small at the time, though it would stay with me for years. He said he liked how I sounded. Bright. Courageous.

It was a simple affirmation. But sometimes a few words, offered at the right moment, can tilt the trajectory of a life.

The late Walter “Bob” Clarke, a pioneering disc jockey and radio presenter of his generation.

That invitation altered the trajectory of my life.

Within a year, I became the youngest Jamaican journalist to win a national journalism award. The novelty mattered less for me than what it affirmed—that I belonged in the room and to be seen and heard. I was assigned to the politics and education beats, covering institutions under strain and leaders required to make consequential decisions in full public view. It was there that I learned, early and decisively, that crises do not arrive on schedule. They emerge unevenly and unexpectedly, often ahead of readiness, and in doing so, unwittingly reveal far more than they conceal.

I gravitated toward education reporting from very early and soon began requesting those assignments. I pursued policy disputes, long-form features, and stories that demanded patience and context. I attended every education seminar and workshop about education I could, read policy papers with the discipline of someone trying to understand systems rather than moments and even studied the national budgets line by line, searching for what they disclosed and what they obscured about education priorities. I spoke often with principals and teachers, listening not only to individual accounts, but for varying patterns beneath them.

My confidence gradually grew. Not the performative kind, but the quieter assurance that grew from sustained attention and the patience to stay with a question long enough for it to yield meaning.

Education never truly let me go after that.

In 1996, I covered my first Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA) Annual Conference. The issues were urgent and unresolved—student outcomes, teaching quality, leadership accountability, wages and issues between the government of the day and the association. I arrived as a reporter, but I listened as someone trying to understand how systems strain under expectation. I moved among educators and union leaders, absorbing what was said publicly and what surfaced only in corridors and side conversations.

A few years later, I reported on the inauguration of Nadine Molloy as JTA. Her main address, delivered on the eve of a new school year, was emotionally charged and unapologetic. Her declaration echoed even long after the applause faded: “No retreat. No surrender.” The phrase stayed with me, not the least because it mirrored something my late father, George Henry, would say quietly, without ceremony, but always with conviction. She became a lifelong mentor.

After more than two decades in broadcast journalism and government communication, a familiar restlessness returned. I was no longer satisfied with describing success or failure. I wanted to understand—and help repair—the systems that produce both. Leadership, I was beginning to realize, does not permit distance.

Leaving media came at a cost personally. I gave up certainty, visibility and a craft I had mastered. I also had to unlearn a habit common to observers—critique without responsibility.

That shift drew me first back into disciplined study, this time for formal teacher training at The Mico University College. I juggled a full-time media job while absorbing evening classes, moving between the newsroom and production deadlines, lecture halls and group assignments, learning to see education not just as a story to be told, but as a craft to be practiced. From there, the path led naturally into classrooms and, eventually, into administration.

I later received formal training as a school inspector with the National Education Inspectorate and went on to inspect schools across the country, gaining an unfiltered view of how policy translates—and often fails to translate—into classroom reality. I completed formal preparation for the principalship through the National College for Educational Leadership and subsequently joined Excelsior Community College as a lecturer.

At the time, the government launched a suite of reforms and new agencies intended to push educational performance into higher gear. I wanted to be part of that work, not observing from the margins, but contributing from inside the system, where change is tested, resistance is real and leadership is ultimately made.

I served as grade supervisor at Ardenne High School, under Nadine. I also taught at Jamaica College, where students actively sought out my English Language and Communication Studies classes. They said they liked how the room felt alive with argument, anecdote and inquiry.

At one point, I was teaching a Communication Studies class of sixty-one boys when a vice principal, Mrs. Annette Blake-Williams, approached me quietly and asked if I would take one more student. I was honestly furious and refused bluntly. She said he understood, as the class was already bursting. She smiled and explained that a particularly bright student had petitioned the principal to be added specifically to my class. Reluctantly, I agreed. The following day, the student—Jahony—arrived and took his seat at the front of the large classroom. He was short in stature, neatly groomed and wore a slightly sheepish grin that suggested he knew exactly what he was about to do.

From the outset, he challenged me in the lessons. His questions were sharp and persistent, though never disrespectful. In an unexpected and inviting way, his presence strengthened the room. As he leaned forward, others followed. His confidence seemed to give the class permission to engage more boldly. What might have felt like a test became a turning point.

Years later, Jahony became a medical doctor with advanced training in dentistry. He still calls me his “dad.” In class, he challenged me relentlessly. That, I think, was the point.

In the summer of 2017, while on vacation and preparing to return to Excelsior as a full-time lecturer, I received a call from a high-ranking official at the Ministry of Education. I was asked whether I would be willing to step in temporarily at Cumberland High School in Portmore, St. Catherine, a school in need of stability while awaiting a substantive principal to be appointed.

I knew the school by reputation. It was often described as failing, weighed down by challenges in discipline, academic performance and climate. I was candid about my uncertainty. I sought advice from a longtime friend whose daughter had attended the school. She did not hesitate. “Go,” she said. “You can be the change.”

In August that year, I began my tenure as interim principal there, a four-month appointment many regarded as too fragile, too complex, for a relatively young leader. I understood the limits of the assignment, but I was determined that its brevity would not define its impact.

Cumberland was not a showcase. It was a test.

I began with the fundamentals, because nothing else holds without them. Literacy and numeracy came first. I drew heavily on my training as a school inspector, I worked from a clear understanding of how schools are meant to function when standards are taken seriously—not as aspiration, but as obligation. Accountability was tightened. Instructional leadership was clarified. Classroom walk-throughs and lesson observations became routine—not as surveillance, but as signals that teaching mattered. Assessment practices were overhauled, and data, long ignored or ornamental, finally began to guide decisions about how teachers taught and how students learned.

The work was contested openly. Resistance surfaced. Progress stalled, then advanced again. But gradually, coherence replaced chaos. In the June 2018 examination cycle, student performance rose sharply, with several subject areas recording 100% pass rates.

Cumberland was repositioned as a recognized Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Centre of Excellence, serving roughly one thousand students.

That experience taught me a lesson I have never forgotten—leadership credibility is not conferred by title. It is earned through consistent, ethical action, often in moments no one applauds.

When I applied to Temple University’s Doctor of Education program in Educational Leadership, I was already a principal. I was not seeking validation. I was seeking rigor. I wanted sharper tools, deeper theory and the discipline to examine leadership beyond instinct and experience.

Temple University, a respected public research institution in Philadelphia, has long been a leader in professional education. Its faculty combine scholarship with practical insight, and its standards are exacting. Through its collaboration with Church Teachers’ College, that same academic depth is accessible to educators in Jamaica.

Importantly, for me, the program is fully accredited by the University Council of Jamaica, ensuring both international credibility and regional recognition. It is a partnership that brings global scholarship into local context, preparing leaders to navigate complexity with clarity and confidence.

One course in particular, Understanding Organizational Dynamics in Educational Settings, taught by Deitra Spence, reshaped how I lead. It forced me to confront a difficult truth: not all problems are technical, and authority is not always the most effective response simply because it is available.

That distinction became decisive when Hurricane Melissa struck Jamaica in October 2025.

As principal (president) of Montego Bay Community College, a role I entered four years earlier, I found myself leading through systemic disruption. Buildings were damaged. Connectivity failed. Staff and students were displaced. The academic calendar collapsed overnight.

In that moment, leadership stripped itself bare.

Rather than centralizing control, I focused on sense-making. What had truly failed? What remained functional? Where was risk real and where was it assumed? A small crisis leadership core was formed. Communication became frequent, brief and factual.

One lesson from Temple proved indispensable—silence in a crisis creates fear faster than bad news ever could.

Fourteen days after Hurricane Melissa struck and damaged our two campuses, we shifted from disbelief to disciplined action. The executive leadership team convened, assessed the structural damage across the Main and Frome Campuses, and formalized a two-phase Post-Hurricane Recovery, Cleanup and Phased Resumption Plan through a Special College Advisory to staff and students. That communication set out clear priorities: debris removal, deep cleaning and sanitization, restoration of access routes, safeguarding of institutional records, and a conditional return to limited in-person classes beginning December 1. It also embedded a deliberate strategy for targeted psychosocial support. We understood, perhaps more clearly than ever, that rebuilding walls without tending to wounded spirits would be shortsighted. Vice Principal for Student and Administrative Services, Mrs. Coleen Ricketts-Evans, was charged with convening Student Services to operationalize structured outreach and counselling frameworks for affected students , while parallel staff welfare initiatives were coordinated through Human Resources under the steady direction of Director Janet Clarke.

The management team remained steadfast, even as the scale of the destruction was sobering. Mrs. Ricketts-Evans, Dr. Sonja Madden, Vice Principal for Academic Services, Executive Administrator Mr. Charles Ramsay, Finance Director and Bursar, Mrs. Charmian Christie and her Deputy Mrs. Beverly McHayle, and Workforce Development Director Mrs. Curline Spence-Robinson worked in close coordination, each assuming defined responsibilities within the recovery architecture. Mr. Ramsay mobilized volunteers and ancillary staff for Phase One debris clearance, while restoration at the Frome Campus proceeded simultaneously under Campus Director Mr. Linwall McFarlane. Academic leaders across our five schools redesigned timetables and identified safe instructional spaces in the Lecture Theatre and Blocks D and G to accommodate a phased reopening. Finance stabilized essential operations despite unstable utilities. Workforce Development began preparing for a measured return of evening programmes. There was, to be honest, a shared heaviness in those early meetings. But there was also resolve among each member of the team.

On the ground, leadership was visible. In heavy rubber boots splashed with mud, thick gloves gripping the rough edges of freshly cut timber, and shoulders braced beneath the weight of debris from fallen trees, I worked tirelessly alongside the cleanup crew. The front section of the campus, once blocked by tangled branches and uprooted trunks, became the first theatre of restoration. Power saws cut through dense wood. Daylight was rationed as carefully as stored water. Electricity was uncertain. Yet access roads reopened. Offices were dried and sanitized. Records were secured. By December 1, in alignment with the phased plan, limited classes resumed. Students returned, some understandably daunted other displaced and staying with relatives, many still navigating personal loss, but encouraged by the unmistakable sign that the College had regained its pulse. In that season, crisis leadership was not abstract. It was structured planning, targeted psychosocial care, visible presence, and a committed team choosing resolve over despair.

Montego Bay Community College resumed academic operations weeks ahead of projections. The recovery was not flawless. It was deliberate.

Temple did not prepare me with a script. It prepared me with judgment.

Less than eight months earlier, on Mar. 1, 2025, I stood with four other Jamaican men as we graduated from Temple University’s educational leadership doctoral program. It was the largest group of male Jamaican educators to earn advanced leadership doctorates at one time.

The moment mattered, not for spectacle, but for what it represented.

Leadership capacity built intentionally, not accidentally.

From the newsroom to the eye of the storm, the settings have changed. The responsibility has deepened. The lesson remains.

Leadership is not revealed in calm moments. It shows itself when systems are put to the test.

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Temple’s collaboration with Church Teachers’ College continues to prepare leaders who strengthen schools, communities and nations. Learn more about the College of Education and Human Development’s Educational Leadership MEd and EdD programs—and the impact of this global partnership.