Page 10 - Memorial Book Thilaga Mylvaganam

Career as a Teacher and Mentor

Amma’s teaching career began as a relief teacher at St Scholastica Convent
Kandy when she was only 17 years of age. Despite marriage intervening in
1949 she qualified at Teacher Training College Maharagama in 1951. During
the anti-Tamil riots of 1958, my parents lost their home and possessions
and escaped only with their lives. Amma relocated to Jaffna with four
children aged 5 and under. Her struggles ended a few months later when
they moved to Mary’s Road Bambalapitiya. Thus, started the second phase
of her married life in Colombo.

Though deeply affected by these changes, through sheer resilience and
support from Appa and her family, Amma went back to teaching in 1959,
spent a couple of years at St Peter’s College Colombo and then at Royal
Junior School Colombo for just over 20 years during which the school saw a
resurgence in its standard of education and developed as a centre of
excellence in the arts and culture. Amma taught English as a second
language in addition to teaching other subjects in Tamil as class teacher for
the Tamil medium. For a long period, she taught English as a second
language for the Tamil classes in the entire junior school and was also
requested to teach Sinhalese classes when there was a shortage of
teachers.

On her retirement from teaching in 1980, K.S. Palihakkara, Director of
Education wrote, “During those years when the teaching of English was
rather neglected, students who went through her hands always felt proud
of the contribution she had made for them in the high standards they had
achieved. She holds a First-Class English Trained Teachers Certificate but
that is an inadequate criterion for judging her knowledge, capabilities and
competence as an outstanding teacher. She has one of the rare
combinations of fluency in English, Sinhalese and Tamil and is also imbued
with an ideal of social service”.

Life in Australia

Following the racial riots in Sri Lanka in 1983 our family was sponsored by
Appa’s previous employer, the Australian High Commissioner in Colombo,
for migration to Australia. Amma resented being “uprooted” from her

Late Mrs. Tilakavati Mylvaganam 9