Do you have dreams with greetings from the past? University exams or an unfinished essay?
My nightmare is a parent-teacher meeting where my students’ parents ask about their grades, and I haven’t checked their journals in months… So shameful.
I never could have imagined that such a routine task for a teacher would turn into a years-long nightmare ☠️
I worked in a regular public school for nine years, including maternity leave. One year as a German teacher, then as an English teacher.
After quitting school, I ran into the district’s foreign language methodologist on the street, and she asked: “Didn’t they try to convince you to stay at school?”
– “More like they breathed a sigh of relief that I finally left…”
I returned from maternity leave when Anya was 2.5 years old – I enrolled her in a kindergarten near the school to make drop-offs and pick-ups easier.
While she was at kindergarten, I taught lessons at school and ran around to students for tutoring.
They immediately loaded me up with homeroom duties, open lessons, and events – only now do I realize how much extra work a teacher has to do beyond their direct responsibilities…
I said “no” to many of the administration’s initiatives: I had an ironclad excuse – my child was waiting for me. Period.
But what celebrations we had with the students?!
On Halloween, the kids would walk into school, and there were paw prints on the floor and walls leading to the English classrooms, where we had hung posters with contests and quizzes on every wall 🎃
Recently, I found a certificate they gave me for a methodological development for English textbooks called “PowerPoint for Projects.”
You have no idea how much effort it took to get permission to hold some English lessons for high schoolers in the computer lab!
And we also sang songs with a guitar 🎸. Right in class. Because the songs were in English. A good excuse, right?
After maternity leave, I realized I had lost my spoken English skills, even though I graduated from university with honors.
I decided to restore my language proficiency – through communicating with native speakers. I found some English-language website where English teachers from all over the world gathered.
The idea for joint projects came quickly: with one Japanese elementary school, we organized an exchange of handmade New Year’s cards.
With some American school, we exchanged posters – I don’t even remember the topic anymore.
The kids drew the posters at school after lessons, but the cards were prepared at home.
I spent a week collecting the cards. Before sending them to Japan, I looked through everything they brought me again, and for some reason, I decided that some cards looked too childish.
Luckily, I had girls from art school in my class – we quickly fixed everything up…
When we received the package from our partners, inside were drawings appropriate for their age.
And a note saying they had hung the Russian children’s cards on the first floor of the school – so everyone could see how to draw?!
It was a good lesson in respecting a child’s individuality and not trying to fix everything.
But corresponding with English teachers wasn’t enough for me.
I found a website where travelers from different countries stayed at the homes of those willing to host them.
I couldn’t travel myself – with a small salary, unmarried, and with a child in my care. But I could invite someone to my place.
The first to come was an American who had quit his job as a lawyer in the US and was teaching English in Yekaterinburg.
His appearance at our school was a sensation! Many of my students had never seen a foreigner in person 🙃
Later, I was called in to the vice principal and asked not to do that anymore… Yeah 🤦♀️
Back then, schools were actively computerizing, and teachers of various subjects were sent to professional development courses to gain computer literacy.
It was at these courses that I heard about a special program for computer science teachers on building websites.
When I asked if I could take this course, I got a “yes.” Hooray!
I wrote an application to the district education department saying they were obligated to send me to the website-building courses… So what if I wasn’t a computer science teacher… We were holding English lessons in the computer lab, after all…
⚠️ If only I had known what a role my whim to get into those website-building courses would play later!!!
I loved being a teacher. I loved working with children. I even solved the financial issue: at school, I earned 4,500 rubles (~$158 USD) at school, and with tutoring made 9,000 rubles (~$316) a month.
But at some point, I felt I no longer fit into the requirements of the education system as a whole, and I didn’t want to break myself.
I probably would have sat in deliberation for a long time if I hadn’t heard an economist on a radio show say: those born in 1975 and later won’t receive a pension – there simply won’t be anyone to pay it.
The illusion of security that kept me at school vanished, and I wrote my resignation letter.
This chapter of my life was finished. Ahead – the two most productive years of my life 😍
P.S. If you missed the other stories, read them at the link >>