Читать книгу The English Teachers - RF Duncan-Goodwillie - Страница 22

Setting the scene: I meet Edward at a school in bustling Chistye Prudy as the afternoon traffic and pedestrians go about their business. By contrast, inside it’s a quiet day with only a few students coming in for classes and placement tests. We don’t get our choice of rooms and we’re sitting in a smallish classroom with a high and narrow window looking out onto the courtyard below. There’s not much sunlight on this side of the building and the air is cool. A welcome break from the erratic central heating.

EC: I studied Literature at university. I had aspirations to be a lecturer but found that difficult. I was working in jobs like security, but I took an education certificate and slowly started getting some supply work in Further Education Colleges. Then I got a job at an International Sixth Form. I was working in Leicester at the time.

I was teaching what they called foundation English to West Africans and some Chinese students who wanted to get into university in England. It wasn’t TEFL; they were meant to already be fluent English speakers. Unfortunately, the school collapsed due to economic problems and I was without a job after two years. I thought it would be my future, but it suddenly fell from under me.

Then I did supply teaching which was absolute hell, but I tried to persevere. And then I got a job at a semi-rural school which I thought would be quite nice, but it wasn’t. The discipline issues and the hostility from the pupils were beyond belief. It was meant to be long term but I only stayed for two months.

RFDG: Was teaching there similar to being a supply teacher elsewhere?

EC: I got it through being a supply teacher. The idea was if I could hack it then I would stay on, but I couldn’t and I didn’t.

RFDG: What kind of discipline problems were there?

EC: It was just war. For example, someone putting a condom in my pocket and saying, “Look in your pocket.” Another time someone tried to headbutt me.

RFDG: Didn’t you get any support from the head teacher?

EC: They were trying but they had their own issues. I was supposed to know how to deal with that kind of thing, but all I had was an adult education certificate. They tried to help but not as much as they could. I was more or less told I’d probably get ill or I could leave. So, then I was without a job and had no ties; I’d just studied there. Maybe going through a bit of a mid-life crisis. Then I came across a website that was offering a bit of volunteer teaching and volunteer work in different locations.

The background to this is my family is a travelling family. My brothers travel a lot and my sister lives in Sweden. I hadn’t travelled a lot until that time, so I kind of had a bit of chip on my shoulder about it. I’m not a traveller – even now.

Anyway, I saw the website and one of the countries was Moldova. At the time no-one else in my family had gone there and no-one else could beat me on that one, so I applied for volunteer teaching there. It was a two-month contract which seemed like a long time to be away. It was a massive leap. I’d only been in a plane about four times before that and then to go somewhere that no-one else had and not know what was at the other end of it.

RFDG: Wasn’t that a bit terrifying?

EC: It was. I remember lying in bed at night thinking, “What have I done!?” But it shows how desperate I was for change. So, I did it. I went to the capital. They call it the white city. I was stationed in a Russian school and staying with a Russian family, so I got the Russian angle on everything. Through them I understood that Moldovan Russians are not happy that the Soviet Union collapsed and they feel they have been left high and dry. They feel Russian. They are kind of miserable people and they respond by trying to be more Russian than Russians.

RFDG: How does that manifest itself?

EC: By being very touchy. For example, I wanted to give a talk about the poet John Osborne, which I did in the end. But it mentioned the invasion of Hungary and they said I couldn’t say that because Russia didn’t invade Hungary, it was invited by the Hungarians. There were all kinds of things you could and couldn’t say. Much more than in Russia.

So, I was introduced to Russian culture that way. I was quite amazed because I didn’t think it was possible to live abroad. I didn’t realise it was something I could do. It was a test of whether I could do it and I concluded that I could, much to my own surprise. I was kind of intrigued by Russia. The alphabet is completely different, the language is too, but on the other hand it’s not as different as Japanese or Chinese. It’s different but the same at the same time and that intrigued me.

I had an epiphany when I was sitting and waiting to teach in one of the rooms. They gave me this soup and I was eating it and looking across at the Russian alphabet poster on the wall and figuring it out. It was pretty much the same order of letters and I was enjoying the soup and I thought I could cope with it.

Anyway, I finished in Moldova and went back to Britain skint, but with lots of stories and quite buoyed up by the whole thing. To cut a long story short, I did a summer school and met a guy there who was like a mentor. He was teaching in Italy. Prior to this I didn’t know the TEFL industry existed. I knew there were people teaching in China, but I didn’t realise this whole big thing existed.

He introduced me to the idea that you could take a TEFL certificate and work abroad. He was kind of my model that this was possible. So I did my CELTA with Saxon Court in London and I looked about the job market and saw an advert for jobs in the Ukraine. I was thinking about Eastern Europe after Moldova and I applied for that and got an email asking me to come for an interview which was in Norfolk for some reason.

I went and the gentleman was very eccentric. It turned out he was a head-hunter and wasn’t offering a particular job. He said there was a post in West Siberia and he helped me through the application process. I got the job and in 2007 I went to this oil town in West Siberia and taught there for a year and a half. It was a good introduction to Russian Russia. There was no expat community. There were no concessions to anything Western or European.

Then I went back to Britain for a while, but there weren’t many jobs so I went for a job in Kazan for four years at a small school before moving on to where I am now.

RFDG: I know Moscow wasn’t your first choice, but what drew you here?

EC: I just wanted to work in Russia. I applied to St Petersburg, too. I actually didn’t really want to work in Moscow, but I’ve since come to like it here. I used to think it was too big and probably too expensive. Maybe too Westernised as well. But I’ve come to like it more. Kazan is my favourite city, but there’s more going on in Moscow.

RFDG: Why did you decide to go into teaching in the first place?

EC: My dad is an Art lecturer. It’s kind of in the blood since my mum is a primary school teacher – and a nurse as well – and I had an interest in my actual subject which is English literature. I was interested in conveying that. I never saw myself as an ordinary teacher. My original idea was to work in adult education or as a lecturer, but then you take what work there is and follow from there.

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