RF Duncan-Goodwillie - The English Teachers

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.

*

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.

*

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.