Читать книгу The English Teachers - RF Duncan-Goodwillie - Страница 42

Setting the scene: It’s late summer in Rhode Island. I’ve spent the week visiting the local parks of Providence, the state capital, along with a million other places Lena wants me to see before I travel back to the UK after an interesting summer in America and England. We sit on Lena’s couch in a sleepy suburb of the city while the crickets chirp outside.

The husky puppy she and her husband have bought is nosing around for attention, not quite understanding the two humans are trying to concentrate on talking about teaching. Lena looks every bit the picture of health, backed up by an artistic mentality to complement the Russian manner of speech. In some ways I am sad about the occasion as Lena is the last teacher I will interview for this project.

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.