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then finished my undergrad in China before going to England and doing my Masters in London. I went back to China for another two years to teach English. I didn’t enjoy it but I met my husband there. We stayed in Toronto for another year or two before coming to Moscow and I’ve been here for at least two years.

      RFDG: Why did you become a teacher?

      CZS: It might sound clichéd, but I watched a video of me in kindergarten when I was five and when my teacher asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up I said, “I want to be a teacher!” It wasn’t something specific, it just happened and I suppose it’s meant to be.

      RFDG: Why did you decide to come to work in Moscow?

      CZS: Initially, my brother-in-law worked in the American Embassy and moved here with his family. They came here and told us great things and my husband and I were looking for a place to work and live together. So, I applied for this job, it worked out and we came here to Moscow.

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

      CZS: The States or probably in China, but I always wanted to leave there.

      RFDG: How was teaching in China different to teaching in Moscow?

      CZS: It was awful! The part I hated the most was how there was no sense of professional development, which is what I love about this job right now. I just felt there was no growth in me and I enjoy seeing myself learning different things and becoming a different person. There was none of that so I hated it.

      *

      Anastasia Kolcheva (AK)

      Setting the scene: The school is a long way from the Kantemirovskaya metro station, but it does have a certain charm, much like the rest of Moscow, as it struggles to warm up in the early spring time. Ana and I have taken refuge in a classroom decorated with posters produced by students and the school administration. She gives off a relaxed, friendly vibe and I quickly recover my sense of calm after my long walk from the metro station.

      AK: I was born in Moscow and I’ve lived here all my life. I graduated from two universities, a humanities one and a linguistic one, and I’ve been working as a teacher for almost 17 years. Before I worked in a state university in Moscow.

      RFDG: Why did you decide to become a teacher?

      AK: I think it runs in the family because my grandfather and my mother were teachers. He was a History teacher.

      RFDG: Why did you focus on English?

      She smiles with the memory.

      AK: I was lucky. I had a perfect teacher at university. I hated English at school but university changed everything.

      RFDG: What was so bad about it when you were younger?

      AK: The teacher. She was humiliating people. She wasn’t a nice person. It wasn’t the language, it was a personal thing.

      RFDG: Is that a common thing amongst teachers in some schools?

      AK: In Russia? Yeah, definitely. My students say if they like the teacher then they like the subject and they go on with their studies.

      RFDG: Was Moscow a natural choice from being born here?

      AK: Yes.

      RFDG: If you hadn’t been a teacher what would you have done?

      AK: A lawyer. I got the training at high school, but then I had this great English teacher. I originally settled on law, but meeting that teacher changed my life.

      *

      Luis Clavijo (LC)

      Setting the scene: Some interviewees hated the idea of being interviewed at their workplace. Luis insisted on a coffee shop with a special kind of friendly resolve Spanish speakers are so good at conveying. We sit next to a window overlooking a busy mid-afternoon Tverskaya Street with the sun catching Luis’s well-groomed hair.

      We are not alone. Despite having a population in the millions, it’s still possible to “bump into” people you know in Moscow and a colleague has plonked herself down with us while waiting for a Cambridge Exam Re-Certification. It is not looked kindly on to reveal the identity of examiners, so we will refer to her simply as Elizabeth in her contributions.

      LC: How far back should I go?

      I laugh – we only have 60 minutes and Luis has a lot to say.

      RFDG: Try to be brief and give me a general picture!

      LC: Oh God! OK, about 25 years ago I needed a little bit of pocket money so I decided to go into teaching and I’ve been doing it ever since. I fell in love with it about a year and a half into it. I started buying books about professional development and CELTA related stuff, and methodology and different techniques.

      I was living in South America and I couldn’t get any CELTA training or any kind of training there. I had to wait for a long, long time before I got my CELTA in 2003 and I kept doing the same things only a little better.

      RFDG: Is that why you came to Moscow? To do your CELTA?

      LC: No, I came to Moscow in 2004/5 the first time because it was my first international job and I wanted to test myself with speakers of a language that wasn’t Spanish.

      RFDG: You could have gone anywhere, why here?

      LC: I applied for three or four different posts and Moscow was definitely the most interesting. I got a job in Turkey and another one in the Czech Republic before they joined the EU. But then the school didn’t sound as promising as Moscow. I remember telling my colleague I was very excited about and proud of being a teacher in the school I was going to work in. She looked at me and asked, “What the hell are you talking about!?” That was back in 2004. She didn’t share my enthusiasm. She knew how the school worked.

      RFDG: What’s so interesting about Moscow?

      LC: The other schools were IH and one of the things I fell in love with before I did my CELTA was the history of CELTA and how the whole certification came about. I went to the British Council, which was based in Bolivia, and got this beautiful folder that explained all of that. It was IH which was involved with it and I thought one day I’d like to teach for them. That was back in 1998 and I got my wish granted in 2004.

      I came here for a year and then I left. I went back to South America for about eight or nine years and came back here. I figured where else would I be able to do my DELTA and work at the same time. And it was a place I knew about in terms of how to survive the weather, the culture, the many differences that come with a different location.

      *

      Gary Krautkramer (GK) and Polina Pivovarova (PP)

      Setting the scene: In school I never thought about the teachers having lives or wives or husbands. So often we only see one side of people and have to remind ourselves of the fact that they do have lives outside of work. The smiling young Russian-American couple sitting opposite me are a welcome reminder that teachers can and do find love. On the surface, they look very different. Gary with his dark hair and sharp features. Polina with her lighter hair and softer features. When they get talking, though, both speak with equal passion.

      GK: I studied Linguistics and Sociology at university. I wanted

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