Ms. Basak

Hi everyone! I am so looking forward to the year ahead as I know that we can make the most of it together. I am so, so excited to be teaching English III and English IV! I know these classes will bring opportunities for meaningful, creative, and inspiring discussions. While English may not always come naturally to many, I can promise you that no one is bad at it. With a little effort, collaboration, and practice, I know you all will be beautiful writers, readers, and storytellers. The beautiful thing about English is that there is no real way to be wrong and it's important to me that you know that--life goes on! Reading and writing are as much about what you feel and what you need to say as they are about grammar, mechanics, and technical qualities. I hope that as you learn in my course, you learn more than just skills but a comprehensive way of looking at the world that allows you to become a motivated and empathetic citizen of our global community! I also look forward to learning from you, my students, as you all are in a way similar to an open book. Each one of you has a story to tell and I can't wait to share these wonderful experiences with you! 

Some favorite literary lines: 

“I know at least that my love lives somewhere in the distant and possible future: I have hope” -Cracking India by Bapsi Sidhwa

“It was a summer of great rumblings in the belly of the earth, of atomic flatulence and geopolitical indigestion, consequences of the consumption of sectarian chickpeas by our famished and increasingly incontinent subcontinent” -Moth Smoke by Mohsin Hamid

“It is this that sets apart the thousand million people who inhabit the subcontinent from the rest of the world—not language, not food, not music—it is the special quality of loneliness that grows out of the fear of the war between oneself and one’s image in the mirror”-Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh 

“He saw himself and his fathers crowding round their ancestral shrine waiting in vain for worship and sacrifice and finding nothing but ashes of bygone days, and his children praying to the white man’s god [...] Living fire begets cold, impotent ash” -Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe 

“There is no progression in time, no beginning and no end. Only a middle that is infinitely repeated, that remains in an eternal inescapable present”-David's Story by Zoë Wicomb

"Standing at the edge of that playground, I watched little spots of amber and auburn become less of what Africa dreamed of and more of what Europe thought we ought to be. Standing at the edge of that playground I saw tiny pieces of America, born on African soil. I saw a dark-skinned people refusing to be associated with the red soil, the mud huts and the glistening stone beads that they once loved" -Coconut by Kopano Matlwa