The English Teachers

Daniel Saraiva San Pedro (DSSP)

Setting the scene: Daniel comes across as incredibly friendly and encouraging. He is actually from Brazil despite having a slightly North American accent. But as our conversation progresses it’s clear he is very much not American. He’s very much the professional teacher and also very much the “busy teacher” (as was I on this particular day) and our interview took place at a brisk pace before our lessons.

DSSP: I started teaching in Brazil in March 2012. It wasn’t because I wanted to be an English teacher. It just kind of happened. I wanted to go back to studying English, so I went back to the English school I was at when I was a child. They did a placement test with me and at the end of the test they said they didn’t have any courses for me, but they needed English teachers and asked if I would be interested. I agreed because I was between jobs at the time and I needed the money. I went through the process of the test and orientation, and at the end we taught lessons. They were observed and they would choose teachers from the group of candidates.

RFDG: What did you want to be originally?

DSSP: My major is in Biology and I worked a little in the field, but it just happened that I wasn’t working for a while and it was hard. In Brazil, being a biologist you either have to be a teacher or a researcher. It’s hard to make enough money and you have to choose a specific area. I wasn’t sure that’s what I wanted and I started college when I was 17 and left at 21. It was a big decision then.

RFDG: Why Moscow?

DSSP: I taught in Brazil for five years without any certificates or diploma and I felt I needed to get some knowledge and theory. So, I decided to do the CELTA in Boston, in the USA, in 2014. I also started thinking about working abroad. The CELTA helps you do that. I finished CELTA and went back to Brazil. When I went back I was very enthused after that CELTA. I wanted to go abroad, but when I got back to my old job I kind of lost my enthusiasm and went back to the same old routine.

Then in 2016, again in that period of teaching English, I also stopped teaching for a while because I wasn’t sure. Then I went back again and I thought I had to make up my mind and did I want to be an English teacher and progress in this career or change? I just decided to invest in this. I thought I should use my CELTA and looked for jobs aboard. I looked for jobs in Europe but I didn’t have a European passport. I even got some interviews, but as soon as they found out I was Brazilian they said there was nothing they could do.

I also decided to work for IH. I was applying for IH schools. I saw BKC in Moscow and they provided the visa and everything went so smoothly. I thought I would give it a try, but it took six months from applying and thinking if it was the best decision.

RFDG: What influenced your decision to focus on ELT?

DSSP: I got advice from some wise people, but also I was happy with what I was doing despite some hard times. Deep down it went naturally that way. I think most important decisions should be made this way. They shouldn’t be manufactured. You need to feel it and let things flow.

*

Heather Belgorodtseva (HB)

Setting the scene: In terms of disposition, Heather is the primary school teacher every student and parent would like to have. Cheerful but firm, enthusiastic in presentation but reasonable in ideas. Her jovial English tone carries across the room and down the hallway, even although I am sitting right in front of her in an otherwise empty room. It isn’t a problem. I quickly find myself caught up in the fun.

Heather’s interview also taught me a valuable lesson about technology. Halfway through, I got a phone call from a certain British car insurance firm (which shall remain nameless!) which paused the recording application I was using. I only realised this at the end of the interview. Mercifully, both Heather and myself have very good memories and managed to reconstruct the script. If there are other budding authors reading this, perhaps this incident is something to keep in mind. If there are any insurance sales people reading, please find other jobs and never call me again!

She pauses for a long time after I ask my first question.

HB: Sorry, I’m just trying to summarise 20 years. I first came to Moscow in 1996 and discovered I quite liked teaching and quite liked Moscow. I ended up going home and doing a CELTA equivalent. I came back to work for BKC-IH in 98. Then around 2004 I went back to the UK which is where I’m from and worked as a TEFL teacher and teacher trainer. I came back here in 2015, mainly because I married a Russian and we’re kind of stuck between two countries no matter what we do.

RFDG: What did you like about teaching?

HB: I like explaining things to people. English is quite interesting and I discovered grammar. Woo! I quite like grammar, actually. There are rules and that’s quite fun, and I’m quite good at it which is a motivating factor.

RFDG: Was it a surprise to discover you liked teaching grammar?

HB: Yes. My family are teachers. Two of my grandparents on both sides of the family are teachers, my cousins teach and my dad ended up teaching. It’s sort of a tradition, so I said I would never teach. I ended up teaching by accident. I was teaching temporarily at first and found I actually quite liked it.

RFDG: So, there are some things you just can’t escape?

HB: Exactly!

She laughs at the futility of it all.

RFDG: What made you want to come to Moscow and why did you like it?

HB: I came to Moscow after I finished university. It was sort of my gap year, although it was after university and not before. I chose Moscow because it wasn’t hot. I had a choice between India and Moscow for various reasons and I thought, “I don’t like hot weather so I’d better go to Moscow.” And I did.

RFDG: So, the weather first and after that?

HB: Well, I’m a History graduate. Not 20th century history, so to be honest Russian Studies weren’t my thing. But Moscow in the 90s was quite an interesting place.

RFDG: Was it dangerous or scary?

She looks nonchalantly into the middle distance while she searches her memories before thoughtfully saying…

HB: A bomb did go off once at the end of the street when I was teaching. That was interesting. I didn’t realise it was a bomb at first. This was back when the mafia were blowing up each other’s cars on a regular basis. There was this big CRUMP and sirens and glass noises. I was like, “Oh… anyway page 22, present perfect…” and then I got outside and found out. They also blew up a hotel with a small bomb. It wasn’t dangerous for me. I didn’t do anything particularly exciting when I was here.

RFDG: But there were things happening?

HB: I guess so, but there is trouble wherever you are. We were here during the apartment bombing in Moscow which was pretty grim because you never knew what was going to get blown up next. There was also the hostage taking while I was here and I had students connected to that which was very upsetting. Things were happening relatively regularly with the terrorist issues and the mafia in the 90s. But I grew up when the Troubles were happening and I was at university in Manchester when one of the bombs went off there. When I moved back to Britain that was when the underground bombs went off and I was in London when that happened.

RFDG: So, it’s always in the background?

HB: Well, yes in a big city.

RFDG: If you compare now to then, would you say it’s safer and more stable now?

HB: It’s changed a lot, actually. We were out of the country for quite a bit and came back because my husband has family here. We would come back for the occasional summer, especially after the kids were born, but because we weren’t living here we didn’t really hear or pay much attention to some of the things that had changed. But when I came back to live here I realised it really did look like a completely different city: clean, efficient, working kind of place… just before the sanctions hit.

RFDG: Obviously the sanctions are causing issues, but are they significant enough to be noticeable for teachers to notice?

HB: It’s difficult to say because I wasn’t really here. I came just after they started, so the drop in the rouble had already happened. For me, what I started with was the same as now so I haven’t got much to compare it to, apart from 10 years ago which really was very different. I was here in the ’98 crash when the rouble really did crash and every day there was a new price.

RFDG: You said initially you didn’t want to be a teacher. What did you want to be?

HB: I don’t think I’d got that far. I studied History at university, so you can tell I had no idea what I really wanted to do with my life.

She laughs at herself light-heartedly.

Because you don’t really study History unless you want to be a History teacher. Really, you can’t do much with it apart from be a History teacher or a museum worker or something. The idea is that it’s one of these general degrees, so I don’t actually think I’d got very far in terms of what I wanted to do apart from study History. But my problem with continuing that was that I don’t speak any languages.

*

Christopher James Leckenby (CJL)

Setting the scene: We move around a lot between one room and another as we start our interview, just before the bulk of the staff come into work. It’s midway through the academic year in Moscow and everyone wants to get things done. Chris is of this mindset, but he takes his time to speak about things. His careful deliberation while thinking, talking and working is something I’ve seen in many Canadians I’ve met. The same goes for the strong opinions the tall Canadian is ready to voice.

CJL: I’ve been working here in Moscow since October 2014. Prior to that I had some work experience in northern Canada and TA-ing at university. Apart from completing CELTA and another teaching course, that’s the extent of my exposure to education as a field or as a career. I specialised in Political Science when I was in university. I was initially hoping that would be my career field and I’m still hoping it will be. It was what I was initially aiming for when I was doing my studies. Teaching was something I sort of fell into as a result of changing circumstances.

RFDG: If it’s not too personal, what was the change in circumstances that made you change to teaching?

CJL: When I was in university, I had certain ways of doing things. Ways I would tackle work, ways I would prioritise, ways I would manage my time. They were sufficient when I was in high school and they allowed me to do very well. They worked for a little while in university, but as I started moving up through the years and the work got heavier and more intensive they weren’t really cutting it anymore.

Consequently, I ran into a bit of a wall where I wasn’t able to do it anymore, so there was work that didn’t get done because I couldn’t finish it and that was quite a big blow to me – a big blow to my ego. It was a blow psychologically because school was really my whole life at that point. I didn’t really have anything outside of school that I invested a lot of time and effort in. So, when things started going wrong it was really, really destabilising and I didn’t really properly recover from that. I think I underestimated just how serious it would be.

So, by the time I finally finished my undergrad I thought, “You know what, I need to move in a different direction for a little bit and try a different field and a different life.” You know, get some new experiences doing something else, so hopefully I could kind of hit the reset button and salvage what had been, in some ways, a disappointing couple of years.

RFDG: That makes sense, but most people would not move to a completely different country like Russia. What made you choose Moscow?

CJL: Moscow is somewhere I’ve wanted to live and visit since I was about 12 years old. It was number one on my bucket list for years. It was sort of two birds with one stone, in a way. When it became clear I was not quite ready for grad school and that I needed to take some time away from academia, I thought, “Well, I need to do something.” I was doing volunteer work and I had side jobs and projects. That was OK for a short time, but I needed to do something more substantial.

Teaching abroad was sort of an easy option because it was something I knew other people had done. I knew it was a possibility and I could combine that with my love of travel and my desire to learn foreign languages. Once I started thinking along those lines, Russia was the obvious first choice. It was a place I’d always wanted to visit and I’d promised myself when I was younger that I would eventually make it here once the chance presented itself. So, that’s what I started aiming for.

RFDG: What other places were on the bucket list?

CJL: This sounds crazy now and I’m disappointed with the way it worked out, but the first interview I had was with a very small school in Venezuela. I was offered a job there and I accepted. I was in the process of preparing to go. I hadn’t signed a document and I hadn’t done any packing, but I had in principle agreed to go and work there for a few months. I was really looking forward to that because I did a lot of studying on Venezuela when I was in university.

This was before I did CELTA. When I wrote to Moscow, I heard back from the Recruitment department of the school there to say they couldn’t take me on without a CELTA. So, I had to look in some other directions for some sort of other options while I waited to line up CELTA.

Venezuela was actually my first choice and then when stuff started happening in Venezuela I had to pull the plug on that. I looked at a job in Peru which was high up on the list. I wanted to go to Brazil as well, but I was not able to find a school there that was willing to interview me or take on the costs of bringing me down. Colombia was on the list. I guess most of Latin America because it was a place I was very interested in and the requirements were a little bit lower than some of the posts in places like Europe.

RFDG: I would think most people would have selected those places first because they’re closer and warmer. So, was it just the fact that it was easier to get into Russia, or something else?

CJL: You mean most people would have selected Latin America first?

RFDG: Yes. They would have gone there.

CJL: Actually, I’m not so sure that’s true. I studied Spanish in university, so there was a lot of cultural stuff that was introduced via my Spanish courses about Latin America. It’s not as close as you might think. To fly from my home to Peru or Argentina takes as long as it would to fly to Russia. It would be about an 11-hour flight, so it’s not that much closer. The time difference doesn’t change very much, so in that sense it’s a little bit more familiar, but geographically it’s not closer.

The money you make in Latin America, at least in many postings, is not that great, partly because of the economic instability in a lot of these countries. I think that turns a lot of people off. That wasn’t so important to me at the time and I was willing to overlook that. I think it was a combination of things. The fact that the opportunities were slightly less organised. They didn’t offer quite as much. They were usually smaller schools that couldn’t offer contracts for a terribly long period of time. You know, they weren’t terribly lucrative. Some of them seemed to me a little bit… not shady, but just not so great. The combination of all of that and the fact that Russia had always been number one sort of pushed me in the other direction.

*

Nataliya Pronina (NP)

Setting the scene: It’s a sizeable room on a Friday morning in Moscow and the teachers attending the Certificate in Advanced Methodology Course have all left apart from one. Her name is Nataliya and we sit facing each other with a projector dangling overhead. All of us (the projector included) are cooling down after a busy week, although Nataliya doesn’t seem affected at all by the workload. She speaks happily, even about the less-than-thrilling parts of her job.

NP: I’m from the Moscow region, born and raised. I haven’t been teaching a lot, actually. After university I did some private teaching 1-2-1*. It was about five years ago I started. I began teaching groups in English schools three years ago after my maternity leave. In university I wasn’t taught to be a teacher. It was either translator or English teacher. I tried translating and understood it wasn’t my thing, so then I turned to teaching and I really enjoyed it. Since I started teaching at the school I’m working in now, I did TEFL then CELTA. After a break I tried different techniques and now I’m doing CAM.

*Note: 1-2-1 teaching describes a situation where there is one teacher and one student.

RFDG: Why a school outside Moscow?

NP: There are difficulties with traffic. I can’t really come to Moscow city to teach. It would be two hours both ways and I have a family. I can’t move anywhere so I’m pretty happy where I work.

*

Lisa Shichkova (LS)

Setting the scene: Lisa is almost the same age as me but appears to be in possession of a wisdom that far exceeds her years. She is quiet and her words are carefully considered. She’s very much in control of what she says and does in this interview, speaking with a confidence and clarity that makes talking with her a very pleasant experience. She’s wearing dungarees and has a tattoo on her arm showing the mischievous side of her personality.

LS: I’ve been teaching for about eight years. I have a degree in International Tourist Management. Five years ago I did CELTA and I have all four TKT modules. I completed a course in teaching Very Young Learners* and I’ve worked in Tver, St Petersburg and Moscow.

*Note: Very Young Learners (VYL) are students aged less than 5—6 years old.

RFDG: Why did you go into teaching?

LS: That was just a matter of luck. When I graduated from university I realised the profession I chose was absolutely boring and I couldn’t do anything useful for society and for the world with it.

RFDG: What had you chosen?

LS: It was International Tourist Management. I didn’t even want to try and get a job in this sphere, but I was really interested in working with people. I spent a year working as an HR manager at an HR agency which was absolutely boring. It was so weird because the only thing I had to do was lie. Lie and smile which wasn’t a pleasant thing to do. During that time I was having 1-2-1 classes with a teacher and I’d been studying English for about 15 years. One day I was so disappointed with my profession that I came to my class and told my teacher how awful everything was.

And he offered me a job.

He asked if I wanted to try and if I could deal with teaching. I started with primary school kids mostly. It was quite risky since I didn’t have a degree in psychology or linguistics, or working with kids. So, everything I did at the very beginning was experimenting and being honest with myself. If it was terrible I had to talk to myself about why it was terrible.

After a couple of months I realised it was something I loved doing and I still love it no matter how tough the job is in general. I had my last day at this school quite recently and when I said goodbye to my students and saw their reaction, I realised I was still doing something useful… and that I was a terrible person who was leaving them.

She laughs.

RFDG: Why did you choose to come to Moscow?

LS: It just turned out that I had to. I never wanted to live here. I prefer St Petersburg. In Russia it’s like a saying that we have two kinds of people: people who love Moscow and people who love St Petersburg. I’m more a St Petersburg kind of person.

RFDG: In what sense?

LS: Well, it’s not that crowded and the city itself is beautiful. Moscow is not. I’m sorry to have to say that but it’s not. The atmosphere in Moscow is about money and hard work, and trying to achieve all these goals that people want to have like having a high position, getting promoted all the time and so on. But St Petersburg is more about inspiration and a sense of freedom. I was never money-oriented.

I spent four months working in St Petersburg and I met my boyfriend. He was working in Moscow at the time and we spent a year in a long-distance relationship which was so tough and finally we decided we had to move to Moscow. Even though I’ve spent three years here, I still hate this city!