Working for International House in Moscow, Russia.

I had been teaching kids for a few years in Asia and done some summer teaching in Toronto after doing the CELTA. I was interested in teaching adults and had heard about IH when I was in Toronto. I was working in Taiwan at the time and I had decided to take the Trans-Siberian route from Beijing to Moscow and then teach in Moscow. I applied to BKC/IH Moscow online and got a prompt reply. After a telephone interview with a British Director of Studies I was hired. I went to Beijing to pick up my visa which turned out to be a nightmare. I ended up spending a month in Beijing because getting the visa was not at straight forward as I had assumed. It took a week just to get in the door of the Russian Embassy. There was always a huge queue or the embassy was closed. A few days before the millennium I was victorious. Visa in hand I boarded the train and spent New Years Eve on an empty train enjoying the Siberian scenery.

When I arrived I was picked up by an English speaking Russian and taken to my apartment. My roommate, a first-time ESL teacher from Australia, was waiting to welcome me, as was my landlady. The next two days I was given an orientation and then I started teaching in a small school in the suburbs of Moscow. I taught 22.5 hours a week and had all my classes in the same place. It was walking distance from my flat. Everything was as I had been told it would be. I taught kids, teens, and adults. In June I started working in the center as my school in the suburbs was closed for the summer. I found the students in the center to be more demanding of their teachers. Russians take their learning very seriously and want their money’s worth. I enjoyed the challenge and spent the rest of my time in Moscow teaching at one of the center schools.

Most of my fellow teachers had just completed their TEFL certificate and were abroad for the first time. The winter was a difficult adjustment for a lot of them, but the long summer days made up for it. My friends and I took advantage of the many day trips offered by the school to the garden ring cities and later on when my Russian improved I managed to travel further into Siberia. It was definitely a different Russia to Moscow.

All in all I found BKC/IH Moscow to be a good place to work. We were always paid on time and had a lot of support/professional development. There were lots of different teaching opportunities with them as well. I was involved in developing a curriculum for their English Kindergarten as well as teaching on an intensive course for Russian Scientists who needed language skills to work with their counterparts in the west. This was the only language institute I had contact with during my time in Moscow so I can’t really compare it to others but I would recommend going there, especially if you don’t speak Russian or have any contacts there.