At 19 years old, Jezzell Reid leapt at a chance to serve as a one-on-one shadow for a 16-year-old boy living with autism — an experience that would shape her career, broaden her perspective, and push her to advocate for systemic change in Jamaica’s special education ecosystem. Now 26, Reid works as an academic coach at Kingston Online Learning Centre while completing a journalism degree at the University of the West Indies, and after six years working as a shadow, she is amplifying a long-unheard call: the dedicated classroom and care aides who support students with special needs are drastically undervalued and underpaid, even as demand for their services skyrockets.
Reid first encountered the shadow role through Youth Reaching Youth, an outreach program run by Swallowfield Gospel Chapel in Kingston. The initiative supports young people who left high school without earning official external certification, helping them prepare for the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC), Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE), and trade credentials through the HEART/NSTA Trust. When the program shared that a local family was urgently searching for a shadow, Reid’s lifelong habit of community work with vulnerable youth made saying yes an easy decision.
“That’s the path the Lord led me on,” Reid shared in an interview with the Jamaica Observer. “I already work with troubled kids and teens in my community through my youth club, but I was guided to work with special needs children, and that journey changed everything.”
The experience gave Reid unprecedented insight into the daily experiences of neurodivergent people, challenging the stereotypes she had absorbed from popular media. “TV depicts them in such a narrow way, but when you actually get to build a relationship with them, you realize they’re some of the kindest, most genuine people you’ll ever meet,” she explained. “They just express love differently, and sometimes that feels overwhelming to people who don’t understand, but that’s just who they are.”
Because of their small age gap — Reid is just five years older than her first student — the pair built a bond like siblings, which made supporting him through the challenges of autism feel natural. Over the years, they shared laughter on field trips, captured memories in photos, debriefed daily activities, and navigated every obstacle that came their way. Reid pushed back against the common Jamaican stigma that frames neurodivergent behavior as simply unmotivated misbehavior, choosing instead to meet her student where he was, give him space to grow, and let his personality shine.
That approach delivered one of Reid’s proudest career moments: watching her student and his team take home a gold medal at the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission (JCDC) competition for a drumming performance. “He’s normally such a stoic kid, he rarely smiles openly, but there he was, grinning from ear to ear,” she recalled. “Knowing I got to be part of that journey, to play a small role in that success, that’s a feeling that will stay with me forever.”
While Reid’s own experience as a shadow was deeply rewarding, it also opened her eyes to the harsh realities many of her fellow aides face. Unlike her, many shadows rely on this work as their primary source of income, yet are paid far below a living wage, even as their responsibilities often extend far beyond the school classroom. Some shadows are required to stay with students after school until parents finish work, effectively acting as surrogate caregivers for hours beyond the standard school day — yet their efforts are rarely recognized or compensated fairly.
Reid’s call for reform aligns with a recent public petition that demands Jamaican government intervention to guarantee fair pay for school shadows. The petition outlines that despite increasing professional requirements for the role, many shadows currently earn less than the national minimum wage, which currently sits at $16,000 per 40-hour workweek and is set to rise to only $17,000 in July. Petitioners argue the current system is unjust, unsustainable, and violates both Jamaican labor laws and the government’s own commitment to educational equity.
Shadows are officially deployed through the Ministry of Education’s Special Education Unit, which provides specialized support for students aged 3 to 21 with a wide range of needs, including autism, hearing and visual impairments, learning and intellectual disabilities, emotional and behavioral disorders, and gifted learning needs. Data from past government statements confirms the depth of the gap: in 2024, then-Education Minister Fayval Williams noted there were roughly 500 shadows in the national education system, and improving compensation was a stated priority — but little progress has been delivered to date.
Past reporting highlights the disparities in shadow pay: a 2022 interview with then-Jamaica Independent Schools’ Association (JISA) President Dr. Andre Dyer found that parents who pay for shadows out of pocket spend between $30,000 and $90,000 per month, depending on the aide’s qualifications, while shadows at subsidized schools often earn as little as $15,000 per month, well below the living wage threshold.
For her final-year research project at the University of the West Indies, Reid conducted an original study on supply and demand for special education shadows in Jamaica, confirming a critical gap between the growing number of students who need one-on-one support and the number of people willing to take on the role. Reid argues that fair compensation is the most critical first step to closing this gap: it would not only ensure shadows can earn a reliable living wage, but also guarantee that more students who need support can actually access it.
“Every kid needs someone in their corner,” Reid emphasized. “A lot of the time, parents are working as hard as they can just to pay school fees, so the only consistent person a student has is their shadow, if they’re lucky enough to have one. There’s clear demand for this work, but demand alone doesn’t make people willing to take the job. Workers need to be paid a fair wage to show up and do this important work.”
Today, Reid continues her work supporting students as an academic coach at Kingston Online Learning Centre, which serves grades 1 to 12 through a U.S.-aligned curriculum, while carrying forward her advocacy to create a fairer, more inclusive education system for all Jamaican students and the workers who support them.