The English Teachers. RF Duncan-Goodwillie
Is there a significant difference between Ukrainian and Russian education in your opinion?
VK: Well, I have experience with three systems actually. There’s also American – I graduated from high school there – and Russian college education. Russian college education is better in my opinion because it was more hands on and there was less Philological stuff that no-one can use in real life.
RFDG: What about between lower levels of education, like primary school and kindergarten?
VK: I don’t know. My son is in kindergarten and the system has been changing for several years. I know Moscow schools are quite different from other schools in Russia. Moscow schools tend to be better, especially if they are specialised like Math schools. There are Lyceums affiliated with the medical university here. It’s considered to be the best in Russia. Lots of kids want to get into these types of schools because they open a lot of doors.
RFDG: Why did you choose Moscow if you’re Ukrainian?
VK: I’m not actually Ukrainian. I grew up in Crimea as part of the Russian minority there. My parents come from Russia, but the reason I moved here was that I got married.
RFDG: And that was the only reason?
VK: Basically, yes. My husband has a business here so it wasn’t an option for him to move and I was doing my MA here at the time. It was the right choice.
RFDG: If you hadn’t become a teacher what would you have done?
VK: I had a dream of becoming a doctor, but my parents sent me to a language school from the start because it was the proper thing for a girl to study.
I can’t help but raise an eyebrow on hearing this.
VK: Really! I mean it. I used to be very bad at languages and had lots of problems with it when I was a kid. I was so much better at Math and Programming. They came very easily to me. It was like my second nature and I even won some Programming competitions. But my parents decided, because I was a girl, languages were a good career path. I went to the US for a year, came back here for the school leaving exams and then there was nothing else to do but enter a linguistic university.
RFDG: It sounds like you enjoy what you do anyway.
VK: I do. I’m not doing it because I have to do it. It’s not a means of survival. I had the choice of becoming a housewife, for example, but it’s not for me.
RFDG: Too boring?
She nods vigorously.
VK: Too boring.
*
Olga Shushunova (OS)
Setting the scene: It’s early afternoon in Tver, a city to the north of Moscow. I took a train to come here, but it seems like I also took a time machine. The buildings have a more Soviet style, at least to my eye. I’m told that a long time ago Tver and Moscow fought to be the capital of Russia. It seems Tver lost that fight, but won a quieter character than Moscow.
The people here are friendly and very helpful. The night before meeting Olga, I managed to get lost in the centre and bumped into a crowd of English-speaking youngsters who set me right. Olga displays that same friendliness as we sit in a cafe on one of the main streets with a dusty boulevard. Her friendliness is matched by an air of experience and self-assuredness as we get talking.
OS: I started teaching about 13 years ago. I started as a private tutor, but now everything before the private school I started working for, I don’t even consider as serious. I look back at that time and think, “Oh my God, what was I doing!?”
So, I started teaching in one of the private schools in Tver. I thought I was using the communicative approach* and it was probably close, but every time I thought I was doing something wrong because I never saw anything different from grammar-translation**. After several students dropped out of my group I thought it was because of me and I realised I was doing something wrong. Luckily, I had a kind of mentor then who told me there was a CELTA course. I had no idea what that was. It was 2008.
*Note: the communicative approach to language teaching involves students communicating real meaning to successfully learn (as opposed to completing mindless tasks). Outside of this description, it is hard to definite without courting controversy.
**Note: grammar-translation is probably the method of teaching most people are familiar with. It involves a focus on grammatical rules and translation from one language to another.
I applied for the course. It was in Moscow at BKC and when I finally did the course it changed my whole understanding of teaching. I was very happy. When I looked at my tutors I wanted to become a CELTA trainer like them.
When I came back I realised it wasn’t as simple as that. I was trying to use what I learned but I realised it didn’t work as well as we did it in CELTA group. The environment was different and students have different expectations. And nothing works 100%.
I worked at several schools and realised they were businesses and were run by people who were more into management and making money. This gave me and my partner the idea to open our own school. This was how we founded our private language centre. At first there were four teachers, three of them co-founders and one who was just employed.
After about every three years there is some stagnation if you don’t develop professionally and let’s say after three years you start feeling this and you start thinking it’s not for you or it’s boring.
You can see a pattern here. So, three years after CELTA I co-founded a school. After that – again about three years – my next step was DELTA. Now I think I was completely unprepared for that and after DELTA again I starting thinking how I could progress further and that was my training to be a CELTA trainer.
It was hard to get into because I’m not with IH and every time I tried to contact them they said they didn’t do it commercially. It was all in-house. And then – almost accidentally – I was having the same conversation with the administrators and my old CELTA tutor overheard us and said, “Oh woah! You want to become a CELTA trainer!?” She somehow promoted this idea to run a course. I just didn’t want to give up and I wrote emails regularly asking if they remembered they were thinking about it.
I realise it’s a real problem for people not working for IH. I was lucky I had some help. I don’t know why but they considered it and having me freelance. I think I was lucky because one of my DELTA course colleagues sent me an email a few months ago asking how I became a trainer because she was having the same problem.
RFDG: And now here you are. Are there any more steps?
OS: Not yet. It’s only two to three years so there’s no stagnation yet. Right now I like that I can combine different domains. There’s lots of management of the company, academic management, lots of training – I train teachers in Tver and Moscow – and I’m a full-time teacher when I’m not doing training.
I love it. I think if I had to do only one thing I’d get bored. Juggling all these responsibilities is challenging but really enjoyable and it’s my personal belief that you can’t be a good trainer if you don’t teach on a regular basis. How can you feel it? How can you teach different techniques when you don’t use them or you forgot the last time you taught real people?
RFDG: Is that balance sustainable?
OS: Somewhat. In the summer it’s more training because I’m in Moscow and it’s a dead season for teaching. So, if you look throughout the year it’s