My first individual student, Nastya

Because I am a native English speaker I was in high demand immediately in Russia. The school I work for very kindly only set me up with individual students for a few months. They call me a "polisher", I polish English skills and generally work with speaking skills.

After having proven my credentials, my TEFLOnline certificate, I was asked to put together a lesson plan. I had many of those already created for my TEFLOnline course, so I just re-adjusted one of them for this upcoming business student. I had to do this in 4 hours so I was VERY happy I already had many templates created from my online classes.

The head coordinator went into a classroom with me and I went over what I would do for a class and she was rough on me, but I'm glad she was. She told me it was not nearly enough material and that I needed to give an introduction to each part, explaining WHY I was teaching it. "You need to make your students excited about the course!" This was invaluable advice.

My first student was Anastacia, a 27 year-old business student from Kazakhstan. I now know that this was my most beastly assignment because no-one takes classes that last for two and a half hours, except Nastya. And not by her choice, it was set up by her work.

The most important thing in the first lesson is to find out why the student(s) is(are) taking English. If they're taking it reluctantly it's a completely different experience from those that are eager and have paid themselves.

Okay, so Nastya does not want to be there. She obviously doesn't want homework. Two and a half hours is monstrous in teaching English because how do I hold her attention for so long? (One and a half hours is the limit, as far as I'm concerned. After that students just start yawning and making mistakes.)

The negatives: Nastya would rather be home with her boyfriend. She's not really interested in learning English. She hates reading and never does it. Our classes are crazy long. Nastya hates to speak and has told me repeatedly that she doesn't care about her surroundings so much, she's just happy to have money to feed her extended family, and she is extremely indecisive. Her accent is extreme!

The positives: She knows more English than any of the Russian students I've ever had. When she writes me emails (I make my students write me emails), you would never know she wasn't a native speaker. She's very responsible and doesn't jack me around (this is important, believe me). She has a better grasp on English grammar than I do (as far as rules--we native speakers don't really learn the rules, we just speak what we hear).

The solution: For me, it was easy. I live in Russia. I speak terrible Russian. I am very used to being an idiot. With Nastya, I initially spoke a lot! I told her about all the times I was mortified by my poor Russian skills and we laughed about that. She could see quickly that I'm not a hard-nosed teacher and it's perfectly okay to be wrong in another language. In fact, it's better to speak stupidly because you'll learn faster.

Very early on I saw that she was someone comforted by structure so I structured our lessons. The first ten minutes we talk about things that have happened since we last met (I see her Mondays and Thursdays). The next hour and twenty minutes we dive into the Business book her work has purchased. The last hour we go over a social skill book higher than her business level book (business skills are generally below social skills) and after that we talk about upcoming plans.

Nowadays, I can't get her to stop talking. How wonderful! This is exactly what I wanted. And now she's not being so self-conscious and not closing down her "th" sounds.

We only have two more lessons. She asked me on Thursday, "Will we have a test?"

"Do you want a test?"

"No!"

"Okay, no test. It's not necessary."

I only use tests in classes, because some students never speak up and because I think they want to know how they're doing. For individual students I never use tests because HI! I know you pretty well and I have already corrected the things you were doing wrong.

Yes, there is the whole "getting into the building" rigmarole that is extremely tiring and sometimes frightening (Where is your passport?!) with business students. Then the "oxrana" (security) get to know you and are very pleasant afterwards.

Russians, overall, are extremely kind people and will go out of their way to help you every time. It's part of their culture, to help. Be appreciative and you're okay.

So why did I spend that $750 to get a TEFLOnline certificate?

Because I kept prolonging my class, it cost me a pretty penny. And, as I said in the previous post, it wasn't really necessary to have a TEFL certificate to get hired as an English teacher in Saint Petersburg.

It wasn't really necessary to the school, but it was to me. I would never have had the fortitude to walk into a classroom (or business meeting room, or student's home) if I didn't feel confident. The TEFL course made me feel very confident, and the reason was because it was really hard.

I had a great teacher, Dean Psaras, whom I would love to give a big shout out to. He was ROUGH! I hated him at one point, because he was so hard on me. My lessons came into him so sporadically and I was so all over the place (literally) but he always made me focus. He was a demanding jerk, but very fair (in hindsight).

My homework from the class has served me well in real-life classrooms. I use my homework all the time.

Ugh, this totally looks like an online advertisement, but it's not. I got no monetary breaks from my course and no one has paid me to post about it.

I can't express enough how much I love teaching English in Russia. I am kind of a broken record. It's not an easy job. It's quite taxing and difficult. I spend more time than I probably should preparing lessons, but I really care about my students.

Okay, I had to get this portion out of the way so I can actually start posting about what teaching in a foreign country is really like.

Teaching English in Russia

I will start from the beginning. I finished my TEFL Online course. It took me six months longer than it should have because I was trying to live in Russia at the time. (I had cashed out my retirement early and just moved. This is not possible for most people, I realize, but living in Saint Petersburg is nearly 10X less expensive than living in San Francisco, where I had been living previously.) Before becoming a teacher, I could only get a commercial visa, which meant: every six months, I had to be out of Russia for 90 days.

Of course, if you arrive in Russia at 23:59 on a certain day then you have been in Russia the entire day, so 90 days actually meant closer to 110. Last year I traveled to 23 countries, following the deals, being out of Russia. I spent the summer in a lonely cabin in Finland, which I hope never to have to do again.
The wonderful thing is travel to Europe from Saint Petersburg is crazy cheap and only a couple of hours, mostly. It's not like traveling to Europe from America. And I am not allergic to really crappy hotels (or cabins), so that always helps. I also have no problem eating anything cheap so it was easy for me.
BUT trying to keep up with my online studies when I was in a Polish (where the heck is it?) dive motel or in the Czech Republic in a (fantastic! to me) brutally Soviet-style hovel--with no internet--was really difficult. I pressed on where I could. In cafes, a lot of the time.

So I finished my TEFL Online course. Now what? I can read Russian fairly well, but I can't write it. I understand spoken Russian extremely well, but I can only speak it rudimentarily. Finding a job was overwhelming to me.

A friend here in Saint Petersburg sent me a link to a school "desperately in need" of native American English speakers. Their website stated they would only consider people with college degrees. I don't have one. I thought it futile but I called and was asked to come in the next day. I did.

I had all my papers in order, my certificate for having completed the Master's course along with Business and Children's EFL, plus the Grammar course. With an "A", I was quite pleased.

"A TEFL Certificate is preferred but not necessary. If you speak English natively, we want you," I was told. I started teaching the next day. What?!