Siberian Teacher
Amice Golden
The travel bug infected me when I was in the 11th grade. My social studies teacher went to Russia, then part of the Soviet Union. When he returned, he filled us with wonderful and exciting stories. At that point I knew I needed to see this place for myself. I am happy to say that I have made it to Russia, twice, plus many other counties.
N: I have traveled throughout Europe, and my next adventure is to China with GEEO (Global Exploration for Educators Organization). I attempt to couple my travels with educational opportunities such as a conference or a summer course.
N: The most memorable opportunity was taking part in the Tallinn Summer School. This is a three week program occurring every July that offers undergraduate and graduate courses in languages and social sciences.
The best way to describe it is that it is the perfect mix between adventure and academics. I have participated in the program three times but have returned to Estonia may more. Tallinn University also offers a Winter School during the month of January.
N: Estonia is a small country located on the Baltic sea with Russia, Latvia, and Finland as neighbors. I was surprised at first with how many beach communities there are in this country.
N: Although the courses and Russia trip were unforgettable, it was the connections that I made that make Estonia near to my heart. I continue to return to the Summer School and Estonia because of the people. Relationships were created that will last this lifetime and the next.
The author, Lillie Marshall, is a 6-foot-tall National Board Certified Teacher of English from Boston who has been a public school educator since 2003. She launched TeachingTraveling.com in 2010 to share expert global education resources, and over 1.6 million readers have visited over the past decade. Lillie also runs AroundTheWorld L.com Travel and Life Blog, and DrawingsOf.com for educational art. Do stay in touch via subscribing to her monthly newsletter, and following @WorldLillie on social media!
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Marc Fogel was my history teacher and softball coach at the Anglo-American School of Moscow. He has borne the brunt of deteriorating Russian-American relations for over 900 days since he was detained.
I immediately felt a sense of ease upon first meeting Mr. Fogel in 2012. Perhaps it was his disarming smile or his infectious enthusiasm for living and learning. Maybe it was his affinity for storytelling, allowing him to weave seemingly random historical facts together to paint a picture of people and events that remain at the center of policy debates today. Or maybe it was simply the fact that he arrived in Moscow right around the same time as me.
He was known in our school for having an unstructured classroom setting, and inevitably won over even the most aloof students by fostering university-level debates in class. From our very first writing assignment, he encouraged students to challenge the assumptions underlying the question being asked. He would beam with delight when a student voiced a revisionist opinion about the Cold War, using it to guide much of the discussion that day.
His expectations for his students were high. Our tests involved explaining how dozens of people, policies and places were connected and their historical significance. He recommended that we memorize a myriad of quotes from key historians or primary source documents to use in timed essays.
One day, I remember him starting class with an uncharacteristically somber tone. He announced that he was taking an extended absence and returning to the U.S. for surgery due to his debilitating pain. This was the first time many of us had heard about his condition.
He did not talk about this for long, though, instead emphasizing that he would be back in the classroom (and on the softball field) as soon as possible. He also took the opportunity to warn us of the dangers of opiates, due to their addictive side effects.
It is clear that his commitment to his students and family prevailed over his chronic pain. But, as his family rightfully said, a 14-year prison term in a maximum-security Russian penal colony is like a death sentence to a 62-year-old with chronic back pain.
We are facing unprecedented challenges. Russia's Prosecutor General's Office has designated The Moscow Times as an "undesirable" organization, criminalizing our work and putting our staff at risk of prosecution. This follows our earlier unjust labeling as a "foreign agent."
These actions are direct attempts to silence independent journalism in Russia. The authorities claim our work "discredits the decisions of the Russian leadership." We see things differently: we strive to provide accurate, unbiased reporting on Russia.
This is my first full-time job and being a teacher is no joke. Prior to this, I worked with elementary school students as a tutor and activity leader. So, while before I could dump a handful of crayons and a bucket of sand on the table and have the kids go at it, now I meticulously plan and lead activities, lectures and assessments. (Also, high school students in Russia go to school six days a week, which means so do I.)
The next age group has the benefit of further control over their emotions and bowels. However, their English skills and motivations are similarly limited or nonexistent. Best of all: when they do likes a particular game or lesson, their enthusiasm and energy is unmatched.
My students believe that life is made up of logical stepping stones and they are all excited about becoming adults. I like hearing them muse about their futures and I wish that I could as well. Rather than stepping stones, my life thus far is more like a boulder being hurled off a cliff and then a family of rats has to build a shelter out of the broken pieces. The other American ESL teachers here have travelled and continue to travel around teaching. As much as I enjoy this life, the icy, frozen ground makes me yearn for fresh dirt to plant roots in.
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Update: The Altai region's Education Minister said Tuesday that he "did not see anything reprehensible in the photographs" of Kuvshinnikova, Interfax reported. He added that the ministry would work to find a new job for the teacher.
My intention in writing this text is not to negate that these issues exist; nor to suggest that education is ever free of bias or fraught power relations that continue to marginalise large groups of its participants. Rather, I would like to engage in a thought experiment that takes inspiration from Ira Shor in considering whether it is possible to view an unexpected shift to online teaching as a critical pedagogical opportunity. Such a view attempts to take into account the perspective of staff (Willems, 2019) as well as students and tries to offer a path of agency for both lecturers and students in a situation that can feel disempowering.
When the measures regarding the COVID-19 pandemic were taking effect in Spring 2020, our university programme was largely inexperienced with any form of online education. Training teachers for international schools, we believe, is best achieved through engaging in dynamic, face-to-face learning experiences that foster a sense of community, much like the sense of community we would like to see students creating in their future places of work around the globe. However, in a spirit of flexibility and with a willingness to model rising to challenges, our staff took to the requirements of mainly synchronous online learning generally more or less enthusiastically. What Willems (2019) sketches out was true for our faculty as well: large differences existed. Some staff members had had extensive training and/or experiences in using technology in both teaching and learning; others embraced technology in their everyday life and felt therefore confident to attempt the use of new systems; yet other staff members were more reticent in their approach to technology, both privately and professionally. As an established and committed community of practice, we aimed at supporting one another, which occasionally led to a flurry of recommendations sent to our inboxes by savvy colleagues who were trying out the latest in terms of digital pedagogy. Other colleagues shyly mentioned that they had just discovered how to create a word cloud with the students. Our students, on the whole, were forgiving of our enthusiastic overkill in sessions where no less than 10 online tools were deployed, and equally supportive in sessions where a lecturer simply talked for 2 hours, as in a regular lecture hall, without any noticeable adaptations to the online medium.
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