Nacha

This is the story of a woman from Chile who was determined to become a teacher at an early age. She majored in education at the University of Chile and won scholarships to Smith College and Harvard to continue her studies for a doctorate, but then she fell in love and married an American with an international career. Wherever they lived abroad, she found ways to pursue her own career while raising a family, often creating her own job when none was available. She established and led a bilingual language institute for immigrant children and introduced early-education programs in day-care centres while living in the U.S. In Nicaragua, she used Peace Corps volunteers to open schools for children displaced by a devastating earthquake. Her reputation as a successful principal of the American High School in Karachi, Pakistan, was perhaps responsible for her being offered similar jobs in Bolivia, Mongolia, and elsewhere, but she preferred to work with local children. She finally found her ideal job in Bangladesh, developing early-education programs for children in remote rural villages.