The English Teachers

RFDG: You did CELTA in Prague. Why did you come to Russia?

JS: When I finished in Prague I was looking for a job, but it was difficult to find work. Prague is in the European Union and has a reputation for being beautiful with lots of cheap tasty food and alcohol, so you find a lot of British teachers there already. Also, the demand for English isn’t as high because they speak English quite well there. I came to Moscow because my school in Prague was an International House school. I went on the IH* website and found that IH-Moscow was offering jobs for newly-qualified teachers and training at the same time which interested me.

*Note: IH stands for International House World Organisation, a large network of English Language schools.

RFDG: Why not China or South America where there are also opportunities?

JS: I wanted to go somewhere far away from home, but not too far away and the Czech Republic and Russia aren’t a million miles away from each other in terms of culture. I enjoyed my time in the Czech Republic and I found their humour very funny, so I thought I’d fit in well in Moscow. I suppose if I hadn’t met Russian people in my course maybe I wouldn’t have considered it.

RFDG: If you could change now, would you continue being a teacher?

JS: I’d definitely stay in education. I like being a teacher. Of course, there are some small things I would change. For instance, some of the classes I get can be trouble, but at the moment I think being a teacher is what I want to be.

*

Ninha (N)

Setting the scene: Ninha is not her real name, but she is very real and frank in her tone and expression. Little can be given away in terms of appearance and accent, but it is clear she has a focus on young people and inspiring them to learn, along with the knowledge and experience to make that a reality. We speak in hushed tones in a quiet room set aside for us as the morning winter chill of Moscow slightly ices the windows from the outside.

N: I’m from Poland and I’ve been a teacher for 17 plus years. I’ve always wanted to be a teacher. I’m one of those boring people! I studied History first and as soon as I graduated I moved to another university to study English?

RFDG: Why do you think you always wanted to get into teaching?

N: I have no idea. I just always wanted to be a teacher. When I was younger and people asked what I wanted to be, I said, “I want to be a woman!”

She laughs slightly at the memory.

After a brief spell of wanting to be a doctor and a ballerina – being five had a role to play in that, I guess – I just wanted to be a teacher.

RFDG: Why did you choose Moscow?

N: I had been to other places already and I wanted to come here. Actually, Moscow was my first choice, but then there was a job opening in Spain so I went there and then when a job was available I moved again. Russian was my first foreign language ever, so it was interesting.

RFDG: It seems like a logical choice.

N: Well, I went west and south, so only north or east was left.

RFDG: And there’s not much north of Poland.

N: Yeah, and I started learning Russian when I was 10 years old. I liked it and the culture was here. The whole idea of them being the enemy never interested me.

RFDG: What does Russian culture mean to you?

N: It doesn’t mean much because mine and this one are quite similar in many ways. So for me, I guess I would say there were a lot of new things elsewhere. Of course, I read all the great literature, etc. but I mainly just wanted to see what it was like here.

RFDG: And how would you describe here?

N: It’s amazing. I love this city. I’ve been to a few other places, but this place is unique. There are many beautiful parts of the city and people are cool. There are many people from my life who were surprised. All those ideas people have about what Russia is like; when they come here they say it’s cool.

*

ID

Setting the scene: It’s Friday in Moscow, which normally takes the edge off the fact that it’s winter. As we sit in a long room, part of a large if non-descript business centre near the Kremlin, the atmosphere is somewhat tense. ID is her pseudonym. She is dressed seriously to discuss a serious subject. I soon find out what that is, but not in this opening conversation.

ID: I graduated from a specialised English school in Moscow. Not a private one, just public. It had a stronger curriculum in English. Then I graduated from university with a degree in International Relations and American Studies. While I was there I started teaching part-time. This was my first introduction to teaching and I was trained at the school where I started working.

RFDG: So, it was a natural progression?

ID: Yeah.

RFDG: Why did you choose to teach here in Moscow?

ID: I’m a Muscovite. This is my mother city, my hometown. I’m not willing to relocate. This is basically half-conscious, half-subconscious choice. This is where my family is, this is where my husband is, so I’m comfortable here.

RFDG: Have you ever considered other alternatives?

ID: Yes, I did actually. The problem is that International Relations is a field that it’s hard to get a job without connections, at least in Russia. I struggled to find a job in my field, so I was considering different options and after facing a closed door in many directions I decided to just stay with what I was actually good at. I was pushed toward teaching I would say.

*

Nadezhda Boguk (NB)

Setting the scene: I haven’t quite been able to explain to myself how or why, but even without talking to her in great depth beforehand, I could tell that Nadezhda is a teacher. She sits in a chair in a classroom near the main office with an air of wisdom and calm, speaking in a way that tells me she knows exactly what she wants to say and exactly what she is talking about.

NB: I come from Barnaul which is a city in Siberia. I graduated from school then went to university and studied for five years. It was the linguistics faculty. That’s when I realised the best thing I was taught was to speak English and to teach English. And that’s how I ended up in this career. As for Moscow, it was an opportunity to do a postgraduate study. That’s why I quit my job in Barnaul and moved to Moscow. I worked at a university. Then I decided to take a little break and after taking the CELTA course I started to work for BKC*.

*Note: BKC is a large chain of language schools in Moscow and is a franchise of International House.

RFDG: Did you do CELTA with BKC?

NB: Yes. It was in June 2018.

RFDG: When you were working at the linguistics faculty did you feel that teaching was the only option for you, or was it an active choice on your part?

NB: It was a choice, I would say. Before starting working, I was applying for different jobs, like being a secretary and I was trying different options, but I felt the most comfortable with this career.

RFDG: What influenced you to make this choice? Is it something that you’ve always wanted to do, or were there different things that happened?

NB: It started with the language first because when I was in 9th grade and it was time to think about what to do next, what majors to take in high school, I came up with my favourite subject and that was English. Then I thought about the place where English would be taught best in our city.

There were university courses, like Economics plus English, but I wasn’t very interested in Economics and International Affairs. So, the best linguistic option was the Pedagogical University. I went there to study English not teaching, but teaching was like the application of this knowledge. The way we were taught and how things were explained, and the practice we had during the course, even though I had the extra courses in translation and interpreting, I still thought teaching was more comfortable for me.

RFDG: You mentioned before you chose Moscow because there was an option for postgraduate studies as well. Were there any other reasons, or was this one opportunity that was the best?

NB: It was the only opportunity because they offered a place to live and in Moscow finding a place to live is a problem.

RFDG: Why Moscow in particular? Were there no other places in Russia that had this option?