Deepti Sashidhar, The TDSIG Michael Berman Scholarship Winner 2014
This year’s scholarship winner is Deepti Sashidhar, from India.
Deepti works at the Government First Grade College for Women in Ramanagar and is a member of the Bangalore University English Teacher’s Association. After a brief stint as a teacher, she started working as a teacher trainer and some years later, went back to working as a teacher. This cycle of teaching, sharing your experience with others, learning from others and then getting back to teaching sums up, she says, her teaching philosophy. When she talked to us about her teaching environment, the issues she encountered in it, she responded with the following:
“Here were a set of students for whom English was categorically ‘the most difficult subject’. I had to introduce them to an ‘English’ that was not a mere subject to pass in the examination, but a language like any other, used to express thoughts, feelings and to communicate ideas. I strove hard for two years trying to make them listen to English and also managed to get them to speak a few formulaic expressions. The struggle was also due to the fact that like a typical government college in India, this college too lacked basic infrastructure and the resources to do any kind of activity. This was a developmental stage in my career as I had not only to find resources to teach but also ensure that learning happened.”
Deepti also said that she is excited about the IATEFL Conference because she has “known and admired as its members” for some time. “I listen to people with similar experiences, am amazed at people succeeding under more trying and difficult circumstances and grow with a number of other like-minded professionals passionate about their work.”
Massive congratulations to you Deepti on winning the scholarship! We are proud and excited to have a teacher like you as part of the TDSIG.
Further information about the scholarship:
The Michael Berman Scholarship is funded by the IATEFL Teacher Development Special Interest Group, in memory of Michael Berman, an ELT writer, presenter and storyteller, who regularly contributed his stories and teaching ideas to TD SIG Newsletter until his premature death in 2013.
Michael Berman’s published work includes The Power of Metaphor by Crown House, The Nature of Shamanism and the Shamanic Storyby Cambridge Scholars Publishing, as well as Shamanic Journeys through the Caucasus and Shamanic Journeys Shamanic Stories by O-Books. Journeys outside Time can be obtained from Pendraig Publishing, and Tales of Power from Lear Books, A Bridge to the Other Side: Death in the Folk Tradition and Georgia through Earth, Fire, Air and Water were published by Moon Books in 2012, andSacred Mountains by Mandrake in 2013. ELT publications include A Multiple Intelligences Road to an ELT Classroom, In a Faraway Land (a resource book for teachers on storytelling), On Business and for Pleasure (a self-study workbook), and English Language Teaching Matters, written with Mojca Belak and Wayne Rimmer. For more information please visit www.Thestoryteller.org.uk