RF Duncan-Goodwillie - The English Teachers

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.

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?”

*

JS: I work at a language school in Moscow. People can probably work out where.

RFDG: Why did you choose this one?

JS: It’s where I started and I’ve developed here. Every year I get more and more responsibility and I feel like I’m part of the project. I also work at a summer camp and that’s my main project. I’ve a wide variety of things that I do and I still feel like I’m developing here.

RFDG: How long have you been here?

JS: Six years.

RFDG: But you didn’t initially become involved in having greater responsibility.

JS: No. That’s happened in the last two or three years.

RFDG: What influenced that?

JS: When I started my career I don’t think I was particularly good. It took me a long time to develop. I took plenty of courses when I started but I needed that experience. I guess I’m the kind of person who needs a bit of time to adapt, but once I do I think I do a pretty good job. The increase in responsibility came slowly and it suited me. I feel fine about it.

RFDG: Why do you keep working where you do?