At 17 a desire to teach English soon turned into the beginnings of a school
Helping them shine: Yohanka (centre back) with her young students at an award ceremony
“If you are passionate about what you are doing, you absolutely don’t work, you just enjoy every moment,” Yohanka Jayasuriya reflects. As the Yohanka School of Speech, Drama & Performing Arts in Kandy celebrates 25 years, she takes us down memory lane.
Soon after she finished her Ordinary Level exams, Yohanka put her school uniform aside and thought “what am I going to do next?” She wanted to become an air hostess, but didn’t get her parents’ consent. She wasn’t going to attend university either, due to the ragging situation and the fact that the country had just come out of the JVP insurgency.
“Then I said ‘Mama, let me see what I can sort out for myself’.” Her mother owned a pioneering dressmaking school in Kandy at the time, and Yohanka asked her help spread word that she had started English classes. This was the beginning of it all.
“She got me one of her student’s daughters to start classes with,” Yohanka recalls. The girl’s mother wished Yohanka good luck since her daughter couldn’t speak a word of English.
To Yohanka’s surprise, after about three to four months, the girl started talking and came out of her shell. “I sent her for one of the speech and drama exams and she got 100 out of 100.”The girl’s parents were amazed.
It was word-of-mouth after that, and soonYohanka had more than 25 to 30 students. She got herself a small table in a corner of her mother’s dressmaking school and got on with her work.
Yohanka Jayasuriya
“But then I thought this is not good enough, I can’t just teach general English. I have to get myself qualified first.” So she started learning Speech and Drama under Varuni Jayasekara in Colombo. Within a year, she had completed her associate degree in Speech and Drama. “By that time my friends were sitting their A’Level exams and I had completed my degree,” she says.
Today, Yohanka is the proud holder of six degrees including from the Trinity College London and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts (LAMDA). She also has degrees in child psychology and early childhood education.
Her school has since produced more than 3000 children who have gone through both the London and local exams and over one hundred teachers in the field of speech and drama, some running their own classes and others running their own schools.
A particularly memorable moment, albeit a most challenging one Yohanka remembers was “The Musical Theatre” presented by many schools in Kandy, and put together by the Rotary Club of Kandy and Yohanka’s school. The money they raised went to the Kandy Cancer Home.
Yohanka is involved in numerous social service projects and creative efforts. One which brought her much joy was when her poem, ‘Sri Lanka through the eyes of a poet’was bought by the Sri Lanka Tourism Bureau to promote Sri Lankan tourism to foreign visitors and dignitaries. “It really makes me happy and I feel proud that I have contributed something to my country even in a very small way.”
Her belief is that our purpose in life to help others. With her friend and partner Rajini Bastians, she helped form ‘Kandy Mums’ to help small scale women entrepreneurs in the Central Province start up their own business. “Why we call it Kandy Mums is to help the wives and specially the mums who are at home,” she says.
Yohanka is also a voluntary worker at the Sri Lanka Prisons where she teaches English to the juvenile offenders sitting their GCE O/Levels. She describes this experience as a sad one though. And because of the numerous prison transfers that take place, sometimes she is also left with a new batch of students at her next visit.
“ I do a lot of work with them, not merely education but I also give moral support and guidance,” she says.
Running a school for the past 25 years is certainly no easy task, let alone running it by herself. Yohanka says she found herself struggling if she fell sick and also once she had her own children. There were times where she’d just wanted to give up. The answer was hiring her carefully selected, highly trained staff.
“I also have a wonderful husband who I have been married to for about 20 years now. He supports me in everything I do,” she adds with a smile.
“Persistence, perseverance and the right attitude are keys to victory. That is what has brought me to where I am today,” she says. What also keeps her going is seeing someone she’s helped come up in life. “When they tell me ‘you made a huge impact in my life. I am like this today because of you,’ that is more than enough for me.”
These days, Yohanka fondly tells us that her nine-year-old daughter follows her to school. She sits in her corner and watches, saying “Mama, I want to do what you are doing.” To which the reply is “yes sweetheart, but first you have to get yourself qualified’. She doesn’t know that I started when I was just 17, with no qualifications at all!”