Mr Caave K. Stoutt is our Young Professional for the week. He is a music teacher at the Althea Scatliffe Primary School and the owner of the 3rd Dimension band. Photo: VINO

There is nothing that brings him more joy than hearing his students call him daddy. Photo: VINO

Mr Caave K. Stoutt learned to play the miniature guitar, the ukulele, at just the tender age of four. Photo: Vino

When he is not teaching music in the classroom, Mr Stoutt is out providing entertainment on a gig somewhere with his band 3rd Dimension. Photo: Provided/facebook

Mr Caave K. Stoutt loves being in the background during stage shows. He finds comfort on the keyboard and hopes to one day be on stage with some of the most popular singers worldwide. Photo: Provided/facebook

This week we feature young professional Mr Caave K. Stoutt, a music teacher at the Althea Scatliffe Primary School. It’s just over four years that he has been with this school but said it has been worth every last minute. “There is so much more room for development but we are getting there, that’s life, it is a progressive process.” 

Being into music as a profession was never what he had hoped for as a young man growing up despite the fact that he had been around music to the level of playing various instruments from the age of four. His father was an ardent musician and the skill was passed on. Our Young professional still has fond memories of being the little one in the school band going everyhere playing the ukulele/miniature guitar. “I remember those days like it was yesterday. Every time the school band had to play at anything, even at school, I was in the group playing the ukulele,” he recollected with a smile.

“I did piano lessons by the time I reached the age of seven or eight, in high school picked up the saxophone and a lot of other different instruments,” he also recalled. Mr Stoutt followed this up with Music Education and Music Theory at the Jacksonville University (JU) in Florida, USA.

His passion growing up was to work in the field of architecture. “Today things have advanced technologically when it comes to doing architectural drawings. In my days we did drawings by hands and if I am to go to that now it would require me going through the ranks to bring myself up to speed with the level of advancement. I know that there is some level of physical hand drawing still being done but the way things are being done today is much more different than in my days.”

Mr Stoutt was also afforded an opportunity to work at the Public Works Department of the Virgin Islands where he had a strong desire to return on completing his school life. “Actually I was hoping to have a scholarship that would have allowed me to further my studies along that line but because I was young and impatient that opportunity slipped my grips.”

Reflecting on his early years and taking keen note of how the journey of life may provide more than one road which may guide one’s destiny, Mr Stoutt talked about the “switch factor” which stepped in and resulted in him being a committed teacher impacting the lives of the younger generation instead of what he initially wanted to become.

He emphasised on how impatient he had become as he had completed school and was expecting a promised call to work in the Public Works Department. “I waited so long that I became very impatient. I had given up because they were taking so long to call me. I was so frustrated that my parents advised me to send out applications to other entities.”

That advice he did take and had sent out more than twenty applications but only received one positive reply. “But the one that responded is responsible for me being where I am today,” Stoutt said. It was Barclays Bank (now First Caribbean) that offered that first opportunity of entering the professional world of work as a counter clerk. He worked there for four years before eventually moving on.

What was intriguing about that experience was that as he had set foot on the stairs leading into Barclays Bank he was approached by someone with a letter. “The day I set foot on that step to go into Barclays Bank, I got a hand delivered letter from the Public Works, saying Mr Stoutt thank you for your patience ….. we would like you come in on Wednesday and report to work. I just stuck with what I was doing, I tossed that letter over my shoulder straight in the garbage and I went into Barclays Bank and worked for four years.”

He doesn’t consider what he did that day as throwing away his dreams of becoming a professional architect but rather he saw it as destiny taking its course. “You are going to end up were you are meant to be in this life. I am just saying, I was on one road but I ended up choosing another road. In another dimension I might have ended up at Public Works, in another dimension I would have shown some more patience and be that but what I am saying is that sometimes you have so many turns in life. I ended up with an option and I chose.”

While at this stage he does not engage in any level of architectural work, he still has a love for it but his music and his little boy Caleb have taken control of his world.

Besides teaching at the Althea Scatliffe Primary School, Mr Stoutt has his own band “3^rd Dimension” which absorbs the social aspects of his life. While he does not literally go liming, clubbing or such likes, he feels that he hasn’t or is not missing anything. “My recreation and entertainment is giving persons recreation and entertainment. I have all the fun watching people enjoy me providing them with a worthwhile satisfying entertainment.”

Mr Stoutt sees himself within the next ten years still as a music teacher going through the ranks, maybe moving on to secondary division. He is also confident that his band will grow to the extent of it being on world tours to Europe, China and the USA. While he would be the mastermind of the development of his band, he would rather be in the background while out on gigs. “I would want to be in the likes of Michael Jackson, not a Michael in the front row but as his main keyboard player. I do not necessarily want the front row spotlight thing. Give me the keyboard player role in the background.”

In summing up an interesting conversation, our young professional opted not to give advice to youths but rather to their parents. “I know that we are facing an economical downturn and many of you have to be running between two and three jobs but I plead with you to make spending some quality time with your children a ‘MUST’ job. If it’s just to say do you have homework today? Turn off the TV now and go pick up your book. Ask them how did you pass your day? What happened at school? These things go a very far way. I look into their little eyes every day and see that there are things affecting them. I am a teacher but can do so much but no more, the main part of their lives has to be fashioned by the parents and they need it so much I feel for them. And that's my advise, it’s not directed to the kids but their parents, which will in turn benefit the kids directly,” said the talented, caring and concerned young professional, Mr Caave K. Stoutt.