The Bard in “Much Ado About Nothing” penned, “My love is thine to teach. Teach it but how, and thou shalt see how apt it is to learn. Any hard lesson that may do thee good”.
Getting herself reassured with the archetypal and pivotal words of the greatest English sonneteer of all time, Nadeesha Harshani, tenderly known as “Nadee” among her peers, in retrospect, indulged herself in a blissful nostalgia over the recollection of her humble beginning as a young teacher and an educator.
Since she was a child, Nadee has been passionate about learning languages, where Japanese language was her most sought-after.
Among a countless number of classifications, given on the element of language learning, Nadee says that language is like a road map that shows the traits of a culture where it makes you convinced of where its people come and where they are going in the future. Born as the eldest of a family of two female siblings, Nadee rollicked and relished in an exuberantly lively and amusing childhood during which she, herself in her own modest ways, sharpened her potential of becoming an educator in due course.
Role-play
She ardently recalls the memories of her first-hand teaching experience with her own two siblings. “I often used to role-play my class teacher during our play time in my large home garden of which I have wistful and nostalgic memories where I used to dress in a saree of my mom, taking a heap of files and books, along with a cane, explaining a lesson on the Japanese language, given to my sisters for their homework. Such amusing encounters inspired me hugely in becoming the educator that I am right now”.
Following her secondary education, Nadee was selected to pursue her tertiary education at the University of Kelaniya, from where she obtained her bachelor’s degree. Nadee often believes in and deduces education as her forte.
A sound education creates a durable platform, and the same further paves the way for a window of opportunities. In that light, the sphere of language learning makes its learners able, edible, viable and sustainable candidates in their future endeavours.
Having been inclined and exhilarated by a thought process of such a calibre, she gives birth to her brainchild Regent Language School in Negombo - the first language school in the Island that teaches 16 foreign languages.
Great teacher
Einstein remarked “it is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge”.
Nadee bears testimony to such a scholarly narrative of a great scientist. Meanwhile, the writer is reminded of a quite similar classification that is noticed in an ancient Japanese proverb where it is declared, “better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day with a great teacher”.
As a teacher, educator as well as an entrepreneur in the domain of language education, more than the element of yielding boons, Nadee is far more bound by the moral and ethical perspective of the young students whose potential in any good endeavour is overwhelming.”
Compared with the good old days, the present-day world context is highly globalised with novel and sophisticated technologies frequently being developed, whereas the young people in particular are often inspired to go for breakthroughs at different stages where they don’t hesitate to make decisive decisions. In that light, they look for avenues in learning languages more than ever before,” she comments.
Nadee, as an educator, points out that not only learning a language but also teaching the same can perhaps be an exigent, challenging and exasperating experience where the sense of motivation becomes a sine-qua-non phenomenon.
While repeatedly recalling her account on the aspect of her own education that made her an able and capable educator, she stresses on the need of having qualified teachers who deliver their best to the students who rely on them.
Opportunities
She opines that unlike in the good old days, nowadays, there are ample and plenty of opportunities made available for the younger generation to get qualified themselves in diverse subject disciplines. Apart from being an educator, Nadee is simultaneously an entrepreneur who has an intrinsic passion and desire for charitable causes. Nadee observes that merely upholding an idea that you are in a position of having a positive and far-reaching influence with the change of somebody’s life for its betterment itself is cogent and eloquent.
There remains a school of thought that upholds an idea that the students are relatively impressionable and receptive blank slate, a tabula rasa unto which the teachers and educators, provided that they are professional, diplomatic, smart as well as above all, they do have a proper wariness and solicitude are productively and adequately able to etch and imprint their knowledge and passion.
Nadee, clad in an attire, matching jacket and skirt, accessorised by string of pearls, with a brooch pinned to her left lapel, having a silvery hair hanging down to her shoulders and with an old Swiss kinetic wrist watch, while completing the entire formal appearance with a sparkly turquoise stilettos concluded in declaring that learning is utterly a treasure that will often follow its owner elsewhere.