The English Teachers - RF Duncan-Goodwillie

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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

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