Intern in Russia: bonus part about Russian students

The education process is only as good as the people involved in it - which applies to both sides of the barricade. Even the best teacher won't make an indifferent boulder talk, a poor lecturer will barely shape the future Mendeleyev. What score have my students achieved on this scale?

As an alien in Russia I could absolutely rely on one thing - that everyone will try to take advantage of my 'foreign exclusiveness' to the maximum. My acquaintances will borrow money from me, for I'm a rich European. Other will want to discuss social matters of Russia and Europe. The owner of a concert venue will push me into interpretation during two Scottish bands' soundcheck. My employer will go telling all the potential students that I'm an English native speaker and by these means attract people to the expensive language courses. Furthermore - to already enrolled students they will offer conversation lessons with me. Would you like to have a lesson with Tomas? - Who is that, a cat? The result was that except my regular students I got a whole bunch of random ones, whose apparition was due to generally applied chaos hard to predict, which directly resulted in me becoming a master of improvisation. Not once a little pupil (or a group of little pupils) who was/were not present in the schedule showed up on the threshold of my classroom and who needed to be promptly screened, analysed and miraculously provided with the content of an English lesson. I have accepted this phenomena as the spice of life and have correctly evaluated the potential fight against it as Sisyphean. The students were not the one to blame for the shortcomings of the organization, even though they eventually fell victim to them; I tried to compensate the stated fact with an unorthodox approach in leading lessons and with a pinch of my undeniable exclusivity. Teaching Russian kids, youngsters and adults was rewarding before all thanks to their different, generally interesting life backgrounds and different motivations for learning English. 

Jaroslav, 8 years. During signle year he gradually lost both his father and mother, he is being raised by his grandparents. His grandma warned me that he tends to be inattentive; it was only a half a year ago when he suffered the shock. And so she came to the first classes with him, we were learning in a group of three. Later it turned out that Jarik is bright enough to have classes without presence of his grandmother, even though he occasionally had problems with writing - Latin script is not an automatic thing for a Russian third-grader, especially when he had to cope with a traumatic experience. Dictations are not his strongest suit even in cyrilic - I recommended his grandma to test him for autism at the school psychologist. When writing on blackboard I had to pay special attention to the way I write letters, the Latin script had to look the same as the children had been taught in school (I fail at capital M, I usually write it without the little curle at the top and thus it resembles Russian П, which is confusing even for adults). Regardless of what was said before Jarik is an incredibly adorable boy, who would anytime, out of pure child joy, start to blabber about what the teacher said to him at school that day or what new finding his grandma discovered during dinner. 

Svetlana, 9 years. Her mum sent her to classes with a foreigner on purpose - she said that she is too closed up at school and it was interaction with me that was supposed to help her open up and become more talkative. In her first lesson little Svetka is silent as the grave and I can't pull out of her whether she is just ashamed, or maybe there's something unclear for her. Besides that she was half an hour late for class, even though she lives around the corner. Well, after the lesson I am calling Mrs Ch., her daughter is said to be very cunning, she understands connections between things easily and there's no other option to fight her silence than outsmarting her. Next lesson she is late again, plus she didn't do her homework - Shall I call your mother again? It helped. I started approaching her more playfully, making funny faces and talking to her as if we shared the same desk. During the last class she was so vivid that I could barely make her sit still. Berlin has been conquered. 

Valerija (12) & Elizaveta (13). At first I had been teaching these ladies individually, however, as group courses are more profitable for the language school, the were making me merge students into educational cooperatives. Apart from Soviet peasants I have partly shielded myself from the collectivization by refusing to put together students with incompatible level of English, not regarding the extra cash the school could squeeze out of them. However, Liza & Lera had a comparable knowledge, and therefore I joined them together, not realizing that I have awarded each of them an ally against myself. Russian pronunciation is tricky, and so it sometimes happened that I didn't pronounce a word properly, which both of the girls awarded with a prompt eruption of laughter. Enough of neighing! Only horses neigh - Lera didn't lose her temper. Me again: I'm fed up with both of you. And here goes the blonde one bulging her eyes at me with an expression of absolute disgust - Is that even pedagogical to say that? If you'll be throwing a tantrum again, I'll tell you something that will be VERY unpedagogical. It worked. On other occasion I told Lera - let's bet 100 roubles that I'm right. Oh my God, that much money? Later I found out that she only lives with her mother - three women under one roof, and yet mum gives one quarter of her miserable salary to English lessons... 

Natalia, MEng, 27 years. The only student witch a master degree prefix in the list of students. Russians ascribe exceptional importance to university diplomas; if I had been coming up with a possession of one more often, they may have treated me differently in some cases. Natasha was interested in Business English lessons and I was supposed to be the one, who shall fulfill this wish - after, I am a foreign expert. In reality I had had to download PDFs of business textbooks the content of which I needed to learn day before I passed it along in absolute self-confidence. 

Marija, 21 years. A bit outside Volgodonsk there is a nuclear plant, therefore it's not surprising, if you can find a detached workplace of Nuclear Institute in the town. Masha was an attendee of that very institute and so she needed to deepen her English skills in the field of nuclear energy. Yes, of course, please, no problem at all, Tomas will take care of everything. That's how I became an expert on the field of nuclear energy, even though my knowledge stops somewhere halfway between Chernobyl and Fukushima. I didn't let myself be disgruntled, I was forcing Masha to meticulously describe the operation of nuclear reactor step-by-step, checking the information on Wikipedia. And other nuclear-linguistic oddities. 

Zalimchan, 35 years. His surname has sunk into oblivion, due to objective reason I could barely remember his first name - Zalimchan is a member of one of the minorities made up by numerous Caucasian nations, such as Chechens, Ingush etc., while himself hailing from Dagestan. The Caucasians are famous for their combativeness, almost every man is also a wrestler and Zalimchan is not an exclusion. Once in history it occurred that one Dagestani became the champion of Russia in wrestling, but he never became the champion of Dagestan. A harsh land, whose spirit is also reflected in Zalimchan's face, but only up to the moment when he pronounces first word and you discover that he is a pleasant and talented man. But you don't want him to beat you up. 

Anna, 14 years. My best student, whom I didn't have to handle with kid gloves and so I could come up with various difficult tasks and improvements for practicing the language. The top was a simplified version of Dungeons & Dragons, during which - in the role of a Dungeon Master - I was making up adventures in an imaginary world, which Anya and her hero had to travel through. And so Anya as an elven archeress overcame trauma after her birth village was burned to the ground; she got to know a talking boulder named James, who had eaten witchdoctor's talisman and it was necessary to return it; by solving a riddle she made it to the unforgettable party in Freecarpenter's lodge, then she joined the Assassins' Guild, and here I put her in front of a dilemma: to confirm her membership in the guild she was supposed to kill the goldsmith's son and as an evidence bring  back his gold necklace. Anya could have refused, steal the necklace, or fulfill the task as it was given. Here she demonstrated her loyalty to the guild and eventually killed every member of the goldsmith's family one by one. For an outstanding approach to the quest the member of the guild (which were named after the letters of Russian alphabet Ж, Щ, Ч, Ю, the leader as the toughest one was called 'Ъ', which means 'hard mark', Anya as a newbie was awarded the name 'Ь' - 'soft mark') invited her to a party in the best club in the town - The Deepest Dungeon. Anya lived her life happily as an assassin for hire.

Anton, 16 years. We had a regular two-hour lesson together every Sunday afternoon (it was normal to teach 8-10 hours on Sundays), the lesson was cancelled only in case Anton has left for some science contest. He is an example of a very gifted young physicist, therefore the topics of our conversation revolved around the 'big questions' of mankind and science. If he won't be working NASA (or its Eastern European version), he'll at least work on a particularly important project with a high degree of secrecy.


And many more. Once four teenagers have stormed the door of my classroom instead of the announced one; in this case it's handy to have a few educational games up your sleeve. The usual funny activity is 'Captain Russia' - create a superhero based on the stereotypes about your country; come up with his superpowers and a weak spot. The usual superpowers of Captain Russia were: ability to drink infinite amount of vodka, ride a bear, perfect knowledge of Russian literature, ability to play any song on accordion, summon an army of matrioshkas or employ ushanka of invisibility. His best weak spot was made up by a boy named Senya - if you give Captain Russia a bottle of vodka, he will forget that he is a superhero and he will go home with you and fix your electricity (in Russia you can pay for minor repairing services with a cashless transaction). Let's get back to our quartet of teenagers: after completing Captain Russia I commanded them to create their own superhero based solely on their preferences. After ten minutes of thinking I demanded result: Danill came up with a character, who can ride any vehicle - some sort of a 'Superpilotdriver', I reply: if I got all the licenses, I would become your superheroes. Poor, next! It was Vyacheslav's turn with his Superwelder - he can weld anything! Ok, we need to set this straight - you were supposed to create superheroes, and you gave me heroes of socialist labour. There is still a little flame burning inside Lenin apparently. Getting closer to the end of my teaching mandate, some students started to leave the school. What the heck are you doing there that you lose students? I tell them - they are leaving, because they know that I AM leaving. I took it as a token of their satisfaction. 

Captain Russia á la Lera and Liza.