QUDSIA HUSSAN

Qudsia Hussan, born and raised in the Chicagoland area, is the daughter of Indian immigrants. Her desire to pass on her heritage language of Urdu to her children inspired her to begin organizing Urdu classes and storytimes for the community in 2014 and eventually led to the creation of Chicago Urdu Academy in 2020. She completed a Master's degree in Urdu Language Pedagogy from Kean University in 2021.

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Qudsia, like many children of immigrants, grew up speaking exclusively Urdu at home. Her mother wanted her children to have a deeper connection to the language, so she also taught Qudsia and her siblings to read and write the language. This was the only formal Urdu education Qudsia had until many years later. During Qudsia’s senior year of high school, CPSA began offering Urdu classes, from which she benefited greatly. By the time Qudsia entered college, she was proficient enough in Urdu to place out of her college language requirements, which otherwise would have taken two academic years to complete. After graduating in 2004 with a Math major and a Teaching certificate, Qudsia taught middle school Mathematics for the next several years, completing a Master’s degree in Education during that time as well. 

During these years, aside from continuing to speak Urdu with her parents and with community elders at social gatherings, Qudsia gave very little thought to Urdu. Aside from summer trips to India to visit relatives, her Indian, Urdu-speaking identity was not something that she actively thought about. 

That all changed when Qudsia’s firstborn arrived in 2009. She and her husband were committed to speaking exclusively in Urdu to their son so he would grow up speaking the language.  But as many parents of her generation know, this was easier said than done.  Qudsia and her husband spoke in English to each other and almost everyone else they interacted with.  By the time their second son was born in 2012, they didn’t even try to speak to him in Urdu; English had become the language of their household. 

The loss of her heritage language (and her kids’ inability to communicate in Urdu with her parents!) saddened Qudsia, so she decided that she wanted to teach her children Urdu before it was too late. In 2014, she and her original Urdu teacher, her mom, decided to hold Urdu classes at home. 

Since 2014, Qudsia has organized a variety of Urdu classes, clubs, and storytimes for her own children and kids in the community. These efforts showed her that she could benefit from further formal training as well, so she began a masters program in Urdu Language Pedagogy in the fall of 2018. Qudsia completed her coursework online over the next two years while homeschooling her three children. 

In the fall of 2020, Qudsia began teaching Urdu via Zoom to a handful of students across the country. Currently she teaches 3-13 year olds and plans to expand her class offerings in the future. In late 2020, Qudsia established the Chicago Urdu Academy, the first organization in the Chicagoland area to offer formal Urdu classes from a trained teacher.