This article first appeared on the International TEFL Academy website as part of its series of alumni experiences teaching English around the world. Below are excerpts from my article along with a couple pictures. For the full article, which is about twice the length of what I highlighted in this post, please click here.
When it comes to the TEFL industry and teaching English in Russia, Moscow and Saint Petersburg are some of the world’s largest cities involved. A considerable amount of foreign language centers operate; billboards advertising learning English are easily spotted and large numbers of native English speakers can be found in both cities. In addition to the role language centers play, TEFL teachers can earn even more by privately tutoring students one-on-one or via Skype.
Currently, I work at Gorchakov Memorial School, which is a private boarding school for male students between grades 5-11. As of now, we have 30 students and two grades (sixth and ninth), but next year we’ll be expanding to teach three classes and roughly 45 students. Gorchakov may be a small school but it does its best to provide its students with the best education possible. The school models itself based off the old Tsarskoe Selo Lyseum, which was created during the time of the Romanovs and educated Russian greats like Alexander Pushkin, Russia’s national poet.
The mission of the school is to provide a liberal, well-rounded education spanning many subjects - science, humanities, artistic - while students live at the school. School weeks vary by length but they usually last between five and seven days depending on whether it’s a “long” weekend, which means students go home for the weekend, or a “short” weekend, which means students have classes on Saturday and a Sunday museum or theater excursion.
The English Department usually teaches 15 English classes a week along with two English clubs and a couple elective classes. I help out with each one of them. In some classes and clubs, I’m the main teacher running the lesson, but most of the time, I help the head English teacher with the logistics of the lesson. This includes, but isn’t limited to, writing tests and quizzes, creating worksheets and organizing interesting or challenging activities.
In addition to my classroom responsibilities, my other work requirements include conversing with the students at meals, going swimming with them at the pool, playing sports and doing morning exercise. My morning exercise regimen with the students is usually a ten-minute run, typically a kilometer in length, and 10 minutes of calisthenics. Suffice to say, it’s helped me lose a lot of the weight that I had put on at college.
I also have the privilege to attend other classes taught by the school’s faculty, so long as attending doesn’t conflict with my job responsibilities. My favorite classes to attend are history and geography, and while I struggle to understand everything that’s said since it’s all in Russian, I genuinely enjoy watching the lectures.
At times, teaching at the school has been challenging. One of the biggest challenges is simply working with the students. From personal experience growing up, I know how boys between ages 10 and 17 can be difficult to work with. It’s even harder when they can simply speak a different language that one isn’t particularly fluent in. But the students’ preferences for activities and topics of conversation can change week to week, which forces me to stay up to date on as many topics as possible, such as European soccer or types of music. It’s hard to do but if I develop this ability, it will be valuable for life down the road, either as a TEFL instructor teaching my own class or if I change careers to some other field of communication.
Another big challenge I’ve had to tackle is how to work with and teach advanced grammar such as third and mixed conditionals. As native speakers of English, we never learned in school the different rules of why English works the way it does. Instead, we just learned what was right and what was wrong. We instinctively know the rules but it’s a challenge to explain why.
This was a challenge that confronted me fairly early on at Gorchakov as the textbook for our ninth graders is B2 level. At first, as a native speaker, I could simply say what was correct and what wasn’t correct and when the students asked why, I was stumped. Being lost for words and unable to answer a simple question about grammar in front of students is a very good motivator to do one’s best to learn the rules of grammar front-and-back for any given lesson. Since I’m relatively new to teaching English with just a year of true classroom experience, I’ve been using my head teacher for feedback on how to organize lesson plans and teach English grammar rules with simple explanations. Despite some occasional road bumps, my method is working for me.
Author's Note: Since writing this article, my position and responsibilities have subtly changed. Most of my work tasks and goals are the same, but I know work somewhat differently as the needs of my students and the school shift depending on a student's grade level. For example, the topic of 7th grade English club changed from Theater in English to the History of England. Please stay tuned to my blog for further details as the school year progresses.
For the full article, please click here.
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