The English Teachers

RFDG: And why English teaching in particular?

SO: Because I knew ESL was a career path. I’m also passionate about the language in general, even though I have an Italian degree I didn’t feel confident about the fact I wasn’t a native speaker. On reflection, I was taught by non-native speakers for several years and in several subjects that I didn’t think were particularly good at the time. At least, that was how I thought at the time. I’ve seen colleagues here who are fantastic teachers who aren’t native speakers and that’s changed my perception.

RFDG: Why are you so passionate about languages?

SO: Looking back, my dad grew up in Switzerland and I would go to France with him a lot. We had family friends there and he’d speak French. I didn’t understand much at the time. So, I think firstly it was a practical thing about being part of the conversation and wanting to understand what was going on and from then working at school on it.

Then moving up to A-level there was the literature, which I liked and seemed more interesting. I found at university that helped me improve my writing and my awareness of my own language because you have to think about your language and you don’t often do that as a native speaker.

RFDG: Did you decide to come to Moscow immediately after CELTA?

SO: Pretty much. It was something I was going to do. I tried to get into politics back home, but I didn’t really get into it and the band I was in broke up – which was sad because there was a lot of potential there. I saw it as an opportunity to go out and do things since I had nothing tying me to the UK.

RFDG: Why Moscow specifically?

SO: Firstly, I’ve always been interested in Russian history. We studied it at school and it excited me. There was a school trip, but I didn’t go because the trip basically entailed walking around in the snow for eight hours. We had done that in Poland before and I got pretty ill since I don’t do so well being out in the cold.

And then at university we studied Marxism and Russian History, so coming to Russia to see the former Soviet Union really appealed to me.

Practically, it seemed like one of the biggest markets. I didn’t want to go to China because it seemed too far away really whereas, in spite of what most people think about Russia as being scary, it always struck me as quite similar to the rest of Europe. And having come here, it doesn’t feel much different from being in Germany, for example.

RFDG: If you hadn’t come to Moscow, where would you have gone?

SO: Probably Italy or France, but it seems like it’s hard to find work there. I’d probably have looked at China, but it wouldn’t have been my first choice. So, Western or Eastern Europe. There’s an International House in Ukraine.

RFDG: Would you still choose to be an English teacher, or would you choose anything else?

SO: I’ve looked into teaching English Literature back home. I don’t see myself doing anything else, really. I do enjoy teaching. I sometimes see myself in politics, but I think I’m basically too opinionated. I mean, in some parties you can say whatever you like about the opposition, but you have to think that every policy in your own party is wonderful and you can’t criticise that. And I think you can make more of a difference in teaching. I’ve met some great politicians, but I think you have to suck up to a lot of people and I don’t think I can do that.

*

Aline C (AC)

Setting the scene: We are in one of the bedrooms of a log cabin in the summer camp in Vladimir. It’s the middle of the day and it’s cooler and more comfortable here. Despite the relaxed setting, Aline sits up as straight as her black hair. She speaks slowly and carefully in her relaxed Latin American accent. Her eyes are large like her smile. A warm person on an equally warm day.

AC: I was born in Brazil and I studied Engineering but I never worked as an engineer. I decided I wanted to change careers and I took the CELTA in 2017. I decided I should be somewhere else and I ended up here in Moscow.

RFDG: What prompted the change?

AC: I really didn’t like what I was working and learning with in engineering. I started studying English when I was young and I have to thank my mother for that. She always motivated me to take the certificates so I already had something that would help me get a job in English teaching, at least in Brazil. I figured I could start with that and I actually ended up really liking it.

RFDG: You could have chosen hundreds of countries and cities. Why did you pick Russia and Moscow?

AC: I wanted to work for International House because I got to know their material during the CELTA and I saw Russia was hiring on their website and they would help with the visa. It was the opportunity I needed.

RFDG: Was it always going to be Moscow?

AC: I also applied for Mexico but Moscow answered first. By the time they replied I was already in the process of getting the visa and the adventure had begun.

RFDG: Do you think your life would have been different if you’d chosen Mexico instead?

AC: Definitely. I can’t think how different, but I am probably three days away from home and six time zones away, so communicating with my family would have been easier and it would get to me sometimes. And when it comes to the cultural aspect, I think if I were in a Latin American country it would have been easier to adapt and communicate with people.

RFDG: Are you still glad you came?

AC: Yes, I feel like I’ve been growing a lot. It’s the first time I’ve lived on my own and every time I have some kind of difficulty, trying to solve it has been great. Not only like teaching, but also in learning how to deal with problems in a language that I can’t speak.

RFDG: And has that been easy?

AC: No. The first time I went to the supermarket I bought kefir instead of milk because I didn’t know how to say milk in Russian. I learned how to say milk after that. Also, when I had to go to the optician and get new glasses it was very difficult. And talking to people. It’s difficult to meet people outside of work.

RFDG: Do you think most teachers you work with encounter the same problems?

AC: Talking about where I am based, the only other non-Russian teacher has the same issues and it’s why we got so close in such a short time. Not only are we from the same country, we have the same difficulties and it’s been nice to have someone to speak to about that.

RFDG: Why is help with a visa so important?

AC: I’m quite impulsive and when I decided to leave I wanted something fast. I thought, if I can have help with this experience maybe one day I can go to another country where they would be willing to help, not only because they should but because they like my CV.

*

Nico Benger (NB)

Setting the scene: It’s a dusty afternoon in late spring at Chistye Prudy in the heart of Moscow. Nico and I have stepped into one of the rooms of a language school located close to the top floor. The glare of the sun bounces off one of the tables and occasionally into my eyes as it moves across the sky.

Nico has a coffee and I have a plastic cup filled with water next to me as my phone records our interview. He’s older than I am but he speaks with an exuberance to rival any teenager and produces such a volume of words that when I was typing I struggled to keep up. It’s good, though, as it gives us a lot to work with and I don’t hear North American accents very often so it’s great practice.

NB: I was born in France. My father is Canadian and my mother is French. I moved to Canada when I was seven or eight. I grew up on the west coast in a village. It was a tiny island of about 1,000 people. I couldn’t wait to get out of there but I got a bit stuck. I had a restaurant there which was quite successful and kept me there for years. I should have left sooner than I did.

RFDG: How did you get into teaching from there?

NB: Well, we ran the restaurant in the summer. Because it was in the north there weren’t tourists in the winter and we were able to shut down for long periods and I had the opportunity to travel. One of the first places I went to was Japan. This was back in the 90s. You didn’t need a degree, a CELTA or anything. You could walk in and get a job teaching and that was what I did. I ended up in Japan, teaching as a way to make money. The first time I did it was a couple of months before going back to Canada. While I was there I met guys doing TEFL and they were making good money and I realised it was something to get into. It took a while but that was the start of it.

At some point I went back to university and started a degree. I did it over a decade because I’d already started teaching and I went to China. I was there for a year and got a TEFL. I was also in and out of Japan for a few years. After China I went to Kazakhstan and did my CELTA in Almaty. I got the job even before my CELTA so I could do it with my own classes. It was a dream situation. International House provided the accommodation while I was there doing my CELTA.

Then I went to Indonesia. It was a long process. I also went back to Canada in that time to finish my degree. Like I say, it was over a decade so I took my time.

RFDG: So, after your degree you came to Moscow?

NB: No. Actually, I’ve been teaching so long I can’t quite remember the details (laughs). We were making a lot of money with the restaurant and I was back and forth a lot. It’s quite complicated.

If I go back to when I was in Almaty, there was a really nice group of guys there. One of them was Canadian and he was a little bit – well people said he was a bit bi-polar – and he was the first one to mention Russia to me. I had always been interested in Russia. When I was born, Russia was still part of the Soviet Union and it was always a place of fascination for lots of different reasons. Canada and Russia have hockey in common and the political system was interesting to me. The history was also interesting. It was very rich. So, I was always interested and he had been there and told me to go to any of the cities on the Volga, like Samara and Kazan.

I didn’t go at that point, though. I went to Indonesia and then back to Canada. Then finally I decided to go to Russia and I went to Kazan. I spent two years there and it was really good. At that time – it was around 2012 – it was like going to the province. We were some of the first foreigners teaching there. It was where I met Edward Crabtree and he told me about BKC in Moscow.

At that time there were about six or seven of us there. It was really nice. A very cosy place and we had a lot of fun. Many of the Russians hadn’t seen foreigners at that point and we got a great welcome wherever we went. They were very hospitable. We lived on a shoestring and there were plenty of places to hangout. Kazan was so small at that point. I lived near the Kremlin there. I was in the local newspaper because I could cycle in winter.

RFDG: And then you went to Moscow?

NB: Ha! No. Then I went back to Canada. Long story short, I went back and stayed for a year and hated it. I couldn’t stand it. We had a great season that year. I paid off all my student loans and the business collapsed. That’s when I went to Jakarta for two years. The first year was really good but the second wasn’t and Edward – who was working in Russia at the time – introduced me to BKC and that’s how I ended up here. Kind of a long story, I know.

RFDG: You said people were welcoming. Was that a surprise?

NB: No. Back then, 10 years ago, it was rare to see foreigners. For the locals it was a novelty and I had a good relationship with the shop keepers. At that time there was a central market and I would go to the same vendors all the time. I knew all my neighbours in my building. It was great.

RFDG: Do you think the proliferation of ELT qualifications has been detrimental?

NB: No, it’s been good. I remember some of the nut jobs who were teaching back then. They had no idea what they were doing and neither did I. When I was in Jakarta I saw the same thing. They were pulling kids off the street to teach as long as they were Caucasian. And they were unqualified or had some qualification, but it wasn’t good. Having said that, in Indonesia the level of teaching in the public schools is super low so you can’t expect too much. In Asia it’s different to Russia. In Russia they demand a lot more. If you go and teach in Asia – depending on where you are – the expectations are different.

In Japan it was more of a social club. They weren’t there to study grammar or get down to business. It’s something to do.

In Indonesia – especially for the rich Indonesians or the Chinese there – they do it but they aren’t serious and it’s kind of expected of them.

When I started teaching I’d never studied grammar and had no clue. I was looking at these tenses and wondering what they were and skipping over it. One time when I was teaching in Surabay and there was a new teacher in the teacher’s room. He was looking at what he was teaching for the day and called out, “What’s the present simple?“He hadn’t a clue how to do it. I swear to God.

It was good for the industry that CELTA came along. It gave everyone a base to start from and gave people information about form and function and skills. I don’t want to say it professionalised the industry, but it gave it some kind of standard that was very necessary. And good on them. Those first pioneers of the industry – the Brits who kind of started it all – I tip my hat to them, but I’m glad Cambridge got involved and gave it some legitimacy.

RFDG: How long have you been in Moscow?

NB: About three years. It’s the longest I’ve been anywhere.

RFDG: Why have you stayed so long?

NB: I really like the city. It’s great. I wish I’d been here in the 90s and the 2000s. I missed the anarchy of it. But even now there’s a lot to offer. There’s a lot of culture whether you’re into sports or going to museums or ballet. Whatever you are into, Moscow has it and it’s affordable. Everything is subsidised. Even on a teacher’s salary. I was making more money in Asia, but my standard of living is probably higher here because everything is subsidised. One of the reasons I have stuck around is the quality of life.

There are some things I miss, like riding my bicycle. I used to cycle everywhere. You can’t do it in Moscow, it’s too spread out. I’m running around the city a lot. On the other hand they have a phenomenal metro system. I have a scooter when I get off the metro.

RFDG: And you’ve spent the whole time with the school you are with now?

NB: Yeah, I have. To be honest with you, I’ve looked at other situations. For example, the private kindergartens but I realised that’s not for me. Some of them aren’t even in Moscow and the travel time is like an hour and a half each way. I like teaching kindergarten, but I don’t know if I want to do it all day. Some kindergarten teachers are doing eight to twelve hours a day with that age group. I remember one of the directors talking to me about it being stressful and one of the teachers was shaking one of the kids. And I remembered how frustrating it can be.

The way we do it here, it’s only an hour and a half maximum, but they wanted ten hours a day, day in and day out. I realised that no amount of money is going to make me want to do that. I like the variety of what we do here. That’s what counts for me. I know I could be making more money teaching at private schools, but I don’t know if I want to teach middle-class kids. I’m happy doing what we’re doing. I teach adults, kids, exam classes, business English…

I looked at other language schools and I was a senior teacher at one of them, but it’s not really teaching. It’s more like delivering a product. Here we have a certain amount of freedom as long as there are no complaints. You can prepare and deliver your own classes and supplement or not as you see fit. It’s up to the teacher. In other schools it’s not what they do. They deliver prepared materials from the corporation. They say they get paid more, but by the time they pay for accommodation and other things I don’t think they make that much more.

Right now, I’m OK with where I am.

*

Elena Kalkova (EK)

Setting the scene: It’s late summer in Rhode Island. I’ve spent the week visiting the local parks of Providence, the state capital, along with a million other places Lena wants me to see before I travel back to the UK after an interesting summer in America and England. We sit on Lena’s couch in a sleepy suburb of the city while the crickets chirp outside.

The husky puppy she and her husband have bought is nosing around for attention, not quite understanding the two humans are trying to concentrate on talking about teaching. Lena looks every bit the picture of health, backed up by an artistic mentality to complement the Russian manner of speech. In some ways I am sad about the occasion as Lena is the last teacher I will interview for this project.

EK: I was born in Tver in Russia and I did middle and high school there. Then I studied languages in my hometown. I started teaching when I was 18 when I was a first-year student and when I graduated I moved to Moscow.

RFDG: Why did you go into teaching?

EK: Oh, that’s going to be a long story.

I went to middle and high school, and at the same time I was studying Art. Basically, in the morning it was regular high school and in the afternoon it was art high school. Then my dad passed away and someone told me – I don’t remember who – that Art is not a job and that I wasn’t going to make enough money and that it’s basically a bad job to have in Russia.

I also studied to be a web designer and a 3d designer at the same time and I got a summer job with a design company. Everyone there was an IT guy or a programmer and I got scared. I was like, “I’m not going to be an artist and I can’t be a designer because I have to be a guy and I have to be basically a programmer.”

I didn’t know where to go for a major and I could speak English pretty well, so I picked languages. I didn’t want to be a teacher at first. I thought I would be an interpreter. I don’t remember how it started, but I think some people I knew who were my teachers when I was learning offered me a part-time job. I thought it would be temporary and I started with them and they loved it.

RFDG: And then you went from Tver to Moscow. Why there?

EK: I lived in Moscow when I was a third-year student and it was kind of a natural transition. I graduated and Tver was a small town. People usually moved to bigger cities like Moscow or St Petersburg and I moved to Moscow.

RFDG: Would your life be very different if you hadn’t become a teacher?

EK: No. Because I think I’d still be doing what I ended up doing now.

RFDG: Would it be fair to say that for you teaching was a way to get to where you wanted?

EK: I think it was. I still want to teach but it’ll be a different subject and a different form.

*

Now we have met our interviewees and know a lot more about their backgrounds and how they got into the jobs they hold or held.

As I mentioned at the start of the chapter, English Teachers come from all walks of life and from all around the world. It seems difficult to discern any universal patterns from their answers to my questions.

That being said, it would be very lazy to just leave the commentary here and go straight into the next chapter. Instead, I invite readers to consider firstly how they would answer the questions asked of the interviewees.

If someone asked you to describe your background, what would be the things you would want to talk about the most? What would you want people to know about you?

Similarly, what would you want to tell people about how you came to be where you are today? This is regardless of whether you work in education or not. Was it a happy accident? Was it a back-up plan? What did you have to do to be where you are? If something happens by accident, does that make it less or more valuable than something planned?

Several teachers interviewed spoke about teaching not being their first choice, but eventually coming to enjoy it. Have you ever felt held back by your initial fear or disdain for a position? Did you conquer those ill-feelings and come to enjoy what you do? Or did you turn to something more comfortable? Why did you do that? If you had a second chance, would you do it again?

By contrast, other interviewees spoke about the role of family traditions of teaching, encouragement to go into the profession, or described a strange sense of destiny as reasons why they got into it. Would the pressure/support of family and friends give you the strength to go for it? Or would you resist? Is it important to follow the dreams of childhood or to wake up and find something “grown-up” to do? Can family traditions be broken? Or should they?

Since all of the interviewees now work in education, regardless of their reasons, is it possible that some people are just born to teach regardless of how they finally arrive at that point?

There are no correct answers to these questions but the answers people give might say a lot about them, even to themselves.

Of course, you can’t dwell on the past forever and so we look to the present to investigate what contexts our interviewees find or have found themselves in.

3

“Where are you now?” – Teaching Contexts

Most experienced language teachers know context is everything when it comes to teaching what things mean. The context of a word determines its meaning and appropriacy, among other aspects. The same is true of the context in which we teach. To an outsider it might all look the same, but in different places, different ways of teaching are practised, attempted, even enforced. By knowing more about different teaching contexts, the challenges they pose and opportunities they afford, we can see how they affect our beliefs, perceptions and ideas… and perhaps how we can affect them.

I started this part of the interview by asking all the participants to describe where they worked and left it open for them to answer. Some of them spoke directly about their schools first. Others chose instead to talk about the countries they worked in (or had worked in) to provide more information before starting to speak about where they worked.

When it came to discussing workplaces, I had a general pattern to the questions, rather than a specific set of categories to divide answers into. It was important for participants to describe their workplaces free of any bias in the question. I wanted to know more about the positive and negative aspects of where they worked, aiming to highlight the various pros and cons of working in different environments. I hoped this would give a complete picture of various EFL working environments.

Some participants’ answers were connected closely with what they said earlier in their interviews when talking about their backgrounds. Rather than waste time repeating myself, or trying in vain to disconnect what they said from its context, I opened this section of the interview with a different question. You will see this where I start with a question as opposed to participants answering the question “Can you describe where you work?”

*

John Shaw (JS)