Oriort Keshishian: Our Armenian Teacher (Spring 07)

by Shahane Martirosyan

“I wanted to be on the stage: dance and act,” Anahid Keshishian said, “I soon realized that I was not going to do that. Teaching came very naturally, I suppose. It just happened to me.”

Growing up in Tehran, Iran, Keshishian admits to understanding that there were limits for females in her society. Hence, she devoted herself to the Armenian literature. She lived in Tehran well into her teenage years, and in 1969 her family immigrated to Echmiadzin, Armenia.
Keshishian describes her years in Armenia as an example of “culture shock.” She explains that everything for her was unfamiliar. Her family and her dressed and acted differently than the people in one of the smaller cities in Armenia.

After graduating high school, she began teaching as a substitute teacher.

“I didn’t think I would become a teacher because I did not have a good experience,” Keshishian said about her years teaching in Echmiadzin. “I think I was too young to be able to control a class with bad kids, boys especially. She eventually moved to Los Angeles and resumed teaching, but this time she enjoyed it.

Keshishian experienced culture shock when she emigrated from Armenia to the United States in the early 1980’s. Nevertheless, Glendale became her home.

In LA, teaching became Keshishian’s calling as she became one of the first teachers at a school set up by the Armenian Society of Los Angeles.

After teaching there for nearly seven years, Keshishian decided to start her own school, named after the man himself, Mashtoc. She ran the school for about 14 years averaging 500 students annually. The school did not only provide instruction in the Armenian language, it also taught Armenian culture and heritage.

Throughout her teaching career Keshishian published numerous magazines. One of her famous magazines was the Eighties.

“It was very popular, people would call it radical, but it wasn’t radical. It was very courageous,” Keshishian said about the Eighties, “It was an honest work of the society. I was a very sincere and condor speaker”

After closing her school, Keshishian taught at Glendale City College. She regrets quitting her job at GCC, admitting that if time permitted she would definitely continue working there.

“Students were very, very different from one another. Always the first-second day of the classes, students felt very strange sitting next to each other,” she said, “Just maybe a week or two weeks into classes, everyone would start connecting with each other, then they would start liking each other; then they would start loving each other.”

She went from diverse classes at GCC to a rather homogenous environment at UCLA when she began teaching Eastern Armenian.

Today, she is one of the most popular Armenian instructors at UCLA. She loves her work, yet refuses to call it a job.

“I don’t even consider it as a job, I never do,” said Keshishian, “If I did, I’d quit. It has to be natural. I hope my students can see that. They’re part of my being.”

Keshishian has connected with her UCLA students at a whole new level. She confesses that she calls each and every single one of her classes as her favorite and best class. She goes as far as comparing her relationship with her classes, a relationship between a mother and a child.

Her ability to bring a class together is not a secret. Keshishian does not take full credit for establishing these bonds. It is her good old friend Armenian literature that helps her in teaching the Armenian language.

“I think the first secret is how you analyze the literature and how you perceive it,” she explained, “And literature like any other form of art can inspire thinking.”

Aside from being an inspiration to many of her students, Anahid recently decided that she was going to ignore all her fears and boundaries that prevented her from acting and stage an autobiographical one woman show called There is and There Isn’t (Ka yev Cka).

The show, which was sold out every night, began running at the Luna Playhouse in Glendale from May 20. Keshishian considers this to be emotionally groundbreaking for herself. In her view, life is theatre.