A Thought

Philosophically, I am taking an ‘introvert path’ to locate myself in the affairs of things and it would be a while before I sounded conclusive on that. As a person I like to follow rules, and occasionally bend them if they solved a greater cause. And I think this is one of my porous traits that influence my overall pedagogical and literacy beliefs as well.
Academically, I have a strong grounding: M.A. in English Literature, M.A. in Teaching English as a Foreign Language, a computer Diploma and a K-12 licensure. But this identity is not an end in itself. In India, and in our Hindu culture, we learn to worship education as a form of a deity. As a wont, the worship is meant to inculcate the sense of shared identity with anyone who is in distress; and through the blessings of knowledge, the person worshipping the deity is to salvage the distressed conditions.
I hail from a middle-class, educated Indian family. I was a latch-key child but never hankered for parental love because I got it plentiful. In most Indian families, education takes the center stage and my family was no exception. My mother started her career as a professor in Economics in a very prestigious institution and my father worked in a private organization in an executive position.
My education began at home through listening to children’s stories, mythology, and history long before I could understand the differences among these fields. These stories, and some famous Bengali poetry and nonsense rhymes created a world of far away and fantasy for me. The single most motivating factor for me to learn to read and write quickly was the fact that my parents refused to tell me the stories I loved once I began to go to school. They maintained strictly that I should read them myself. Being a single, latch key child, I did not have much to do after I came back from school than read. Soon I became the favorite student of our school librarian, and sometimes she kept the books I wanted aside for me.
At first there were fairy tales from Enid Blyton and Bengali literature, and then there were historical fictions and detective stories which lead me to more serious literature both in Bengali and English.
As I was completing school there was lot of debate over what I should chose as a profession. My father strongly encouraged me to become an accountant like him, but I could not see myself adding and subtracting numbers maintain balance sheets for the rest of my life. My love for literature was so strong that I defied him and went on to get a BA in English Literature and then a Masters. I went on to teach school, and briefly college in India. I had always enjoyed reading and teaching literature but reading literary theories and applying them to these beautiful pieces sometimes killed the aesthetics of the work. Soon I became detached from literature as a discipline and looked for other avenues to follow professionally.
Being a teacher, I realized that I needed some formal training in teaching. Also, the aspect of language had started intriguing me. I thought I found my niche. Though English is widely learned and spoken in India, it remains a foreign language. While I was teaching in school, I started to wonder if there were strategies that would make foreign language teaching more effective for both students and teachers. Teaching language strategies have not yet emerged as a field in India. At that time I learned of the disciple of Teaching English as A Second Language in USA, and applied to study in the United States. I got here, and have been pursuing studies in linguistics since then.
I am indebted to my parents for encouraging me to read from such an early age, and to my grandparents for telling me those wonderful stories to kindle a lifelong interest in reading.