ABSTRACT
From the moment my Indonesian teacher fi rst stepped into my classroom I was in awe of her. I was growing up in a monolingual, monocultural English-speaking family in the northern part of Sydney, Australia, and until I met her, I never knew the magic of being able to make meaning in another language. She taught me intriguing new ways to look at the world. I had a good grasp on my English by junior high school, and now I was learning to know others’ ways through other languages: on one level, the ways of the peoples of Indonesia, but on another, I refl ect now, the ways of thinking, doing and being of the growing diversity of people in my district in the 1970s. With her guidance, I learned to ask questions about language per se. I often look back to the time I spent in class with my fi rst language teacher, to the generation of teachers before me, and I look forward too, to refl ect on my own development as a language teacher and language teacher educator and the generations who have come after me. Looking back and looking forward, systematically, I believe, can be a productive exercise.
