Life as a Teacher in the Wild Wild East

I remember during my first Linguistics lecture almost a decade ago the professor entered the room and wrote a quote on the board that went something like this: “What makes a language widely used in the world are battleships and tanks.” This is not the exact quote, but it is the gist of what our professor wanted to get across: a lingua franca appears on the scene thanks to the military might of the nation where it is officially used. The economic might of a country is no doubt tacitly assumed in that statement since you can not have the former without the latter.

Thanks to this situation, I am abundantly employed and have been for most of my time in the CIS. I suspect this will be the case as long as I stay outside the United States. In all honesty, while I do like my job and take pride in the fact that I have managed to survive all of these years here as a teacher, as I move into my mid-thirties, I am beginning to worry about my job prospects once and if I ever leave this part of the world. Teaching English is about all I know how to do. Indeed, it is what I studied to do! While it is a profession in wide demand world-wide, to be perfectly frank, the demand for teachers is so high, that it does not take a rocket scientist or lots of qualifications to do this job. In light of the fact that I will soon turn 34 and have begun to think a lot more about what I will do with my life in the next few years, I figured I would talk a bit about my experience as an EFL teacher in the Wild Wild East. There have been a few guys out there who have written extensively on this subject and have been pretty pessimistic about this profession. Two teachers in particular, known on the Web as English Teacher X and the English Droid, have made names for themselves among English teachers by their satirical and cynical blog posts, books and comic strips dealing with the day to day hassles that EFL teachers have to deal with. While I can relate to a lot of their complaints and have had more than a few laughs while reading their material (I even have one of English Teacher X's E-books), I will try my best to give a more balanced depiction of what you can expect if you are considering taking the plunge and leaving your homeland to take an EFL job abroad.

First, if you want to do this in Russia or in some of the other CIS nations, be ready to deal with lots of hassles. This is not a part of the world for the weak and in my experience, few stick around for half as long as I have been here. You don't have the “safety nets” you have in the West and since many foreign language schools are not run completely by the book and your pay is generally partially, if not mostly, unofficial or “gray”, using legal channels to seek full compensation for services rendered in the event your pay is delayed (something that goes on quite a bit in my experience as a teacher here) is almost impossible.

There is also the problem of language schools (aka McLanguage schools among the more cynical types) preying on the naivety of Westerners who want to get into this field. Statements in language school vacancy ads with alluring statements like, “You will receive the average local salary” are a farce, but often dupe those who are new to the field or have no knowledge of what the cost of living and the market here in general is like. Setting salaries based on what average salaries are in a place betrays all market economic principles due to the fact that it is arbitrarily set by language schools and not by the market principles of supply and demand. I have heard that this is less of a problem in other parts of the world like Japan, South Korea and the Arab Peninsula, but in the CIS in general and in Moscow in particular this proverbial wool is pulled over the eyes of many a gullible Westerner all the time.

Now the document issue here complicates the situation even more due to the fact that if you try to work over here legitimately, you will have to get documents through a language school which is a huge bargaining chip for the school when you are negotiating conditions and compensation. There are ways, however, to come here without getting visa support directly through a McLangauge school (yes, I do tend to be more cynical about a lot of these schools ;)). I have also heard of people going to interviews at certain schools and talking up the initial offer made to a more reasonable amount. At the end of the day, the demand for teachers here is high as is the turnover rate of teachers at a lot of schools. School owners are well aware of this fact and might be willing to give into your demands if you can show them you are serious about working long-term in this part of the world and that you are no fool.

I could write a lot more about the ins and outs of working in the teaching field over here and will continue to do so in the future. If the above seems off-putting, let me say that there is a silver lining in all of this that may be appealing to some. For starters, Russia is an interesting place with a great history and language. Also, for the more rugged individualistic types who are convinced as I am that governments in general and in Western countries in particular have become overly intrusive in the lives of their citizens, are leech-like in their tax policies and are making promises to certain segments of the population that they neither have the means or ways to provide other than by robbing other segments of the population and/or printing their currencies into oblivion to pay for the promised services, this is not a bad place to pitch your tent. The lack of transparency here from the top down makes it very easy to make what a school teacher can make in the US or more without all the taxes and deductions for Ponzi scheme pension programs to more fully enjoy the fruits of your labor. You will probably have to pay your dues at first if you are just starting out, but with time, a little savviness and perseverance, success here is possible. I know for some having security is more desirable than liberty and personal responsibility, but I see no reason at this point in history to trust in the system as it is; it just isn't sustainable. Better start getting used to being more self reliant sooner rather than later if you ask me.