Teacher Interview

RUSSIAN TEACHER INTERVIEW

By Stephen Wilson

Second City Teacher interviewed 31-year-old Russian psychologist, teacher

and linguist, Anna Kogteva about her views on education as well as her

early experience as a teacher in Russian schools. Anna was one of the

founders of the Russian storytelling sessions and has played a prominent

part in ensuring that this project persists and does not dissipate or

collapse into obscurity like so many previous well intended ideas. She

is endowed with an impressive capacity to organize many events as well

as having a deeply profound empathy which makes her a good psychologist.

Second City Teacher

Have you ever worked in any Russian State schools?

Anna Kogteva

I worked in a school immediately after graduating from university in 2009.

I just wanted to test myself in this profession as I'm a teacher and

linguist. I was attracted to this profession because I thought it was a noble

profession and I liked the idea of  hanging about with kids. As far as I know

the schools have not changed a lot. At university, they don't prepare you

for your experience at school. In the university course you have your

'practice' : a couple of months in a year in your 4th or 5th year. I can't

recall! I was assigned to an English teacher and she gave me plans

for the lessons and encouraged me to use my own ideas. But there is a

lack of psychological preparation for your experience in school. There are

a lot of emotional and chaotic school children you need to be able to

handle. If you are sensitive to noise you need to have some other method

except to yell at kids telling them just to shut up. Some of the older

teachers had their horrible voice which children would listen to. At the

same time you have to be able to be nice, caring, playful and have

empathy. At university they don't tell you about the thin line between

being strict and nice. What I lacked was psychological preparation for

this.

Second City Teacher

What about the notorious high drop out of trained Russia state school

teachers? I mean many graduates don't even begin teaching in schools

following their graduation!

Anna Kogteva

Even extroverted people get lost in school. It is true that most of my group 
at university did not go on to 
teach in school. They went to work for foreign companies. At that time

it was a warmer climate for foreign companies. But there are three girls

whom I still communicate with most who went on to become school

teachers. They became school teachers after graduating and they are

still working in schools.

Second City Teacher

And  what about the wages of teachers? Some say you can earn

70,000 rubles a month

Anna Kogteva

You really can earn that much. It isn't all about your state salary. I

got a scholarship grant which amounted to 80,000 rubles a

year. It was a sweetener, but it created envy between foreign language

teachers and teachers of Russian. Teachers of Russian have a

bigger workload and get less pay than English teachers. They still

get less. I think there is a certain air about European languages. It

was prestigious. When learning this you became part of a special

elite. Nobody but the diplomats had the privilege of studying foreign

languages. Now this has changed. But the idea still lingers on.

Second City Teacher

What do you think of a proposal to organize a Red Calendar day for

teachers as a way of boosting their prestige? In other words,

teachers and the public would get a day off.

Anna Kogteva

Well, in case of the National Unity Day, it worked really well. More
people became aware of historic events. People still celebrate this day {Editor Russians celebrate on 4th November how almost 500 years ago the Russians

forced the invading Poles out of Russia in 1612 during the Time

of Troubles }. But I don't think such a proposal will help teachers.

Generally speaking, teachers have been losing their authority. There

are reasons fro this. Teachers are living in a new paradigm of 'post

truth'. Traditional teaching was based on vertical power structures.

We had to respect the knowledge of the teacher otherwise we could

fail in life. We depended on teachers for our lives, for dealing with

bureaucracy which required important social skills and how to live

in this culture. But now you have the internet and you don't need to

get off your sofa ... People can get knowledge from other sources

than school. Children find those alternative sources of knowledge

more entertaining. They want something more emotional than what

is in the school textbooks.

The Soviet regime cared a lot about keeping this vertical power

structure of the teacher being seen as a semi-God. The teacher

had a certain amount of spiritual authority. Of course, when the regime

fell we had new heroes such as businessmen or entrepreneurs  who

could make money. The state no longer paid teachers a good salary

so many of those teachers who stayed in schools got burnt out.

People have changed and have new gods such as money. Children

became skeptical about the role of teachers and in the 1990's they

preferred to buy and resell cigarettes.

Now the situation is better because the prestige of science has grown.

This is connected with Medvedev's Skolkova University which has

organised funds for science. There are now funds and grants that

provide money for doing science. We have a lot of good young scientists

who know about the importance of soft as well as hard skills such as

how to be creative and use critical emotional intelligence.

Second City Teacher

What is your view on the Unitary State Exams (U.S.E.)?

Anna Kogteva

I think that it has good and bad points. It emerged from American evaluation

tests. Maybe this is not the best way. It is very tricky when you formulate

questions in history because students can easily get puzzled as there are

a lot of shades of opinion. A lot of history is taught to support the opinions

of those in the current state or regime. If we are speaking about freedom

the state wants to raise people who have a certain loyalty to the existing

political system. A lot of school children don't worry about the political

situation. The U.S.E. gives more opportunities for children to enter

universities and develop other views of the world. If getting a good

score in Chelyabinsk allows you to enter Moscow State University then

maybe it is a good thing. Then there is less corruption since  everything

is automatized and there is no bias. But in the Caucasus in Daghestan it

was 'normal' for some kids to score 100 points in Russian! There are too

many incidents like this for this claim of less corruption to be true.

So it is still a case with people who have more money getting a better

chance to enter university. So this U.S.E was devised to fight corruption.

May be there is less corruption. We need more statistical data to really

say whether this claim is true.

Second City Teacher

What role can psychologists play in decreasing stress in schools ?

Anna Kogteva

Most psychologists are marginalized at school. I recall

that  at my school some psychologists gave tests, but did not give us

the results. If I had problems talking to other kids I was unaware that I

could go to a psychologist and talk about it with her or him. Nobody told

us at school about those available services. It was funny and strange.

Stress among school students has increased. Parents work hard and push

their kids more and more into doing all kinds of activities. It is not the best

way to handle kids. Often children don't have anyone to speak to when

they come home to eat and do their homework. If you compare it to Soviet

times they had more time for talking and communicating. Maybe the Soviet

system was more balanced ... Parents play a role in organizing to meet

their material needs. They don't forget to give them breakfast and money

for food, but they neglect social time around the table. Even if the family

gather, kids play on their smart phones. They don't communicate with

each other. Children feel under pressure and they can turn to suicide. They

can easily rebel against the system since they have such huge problems.

When you are young between 13-18 you can easily end up hating the

world around you. You really think the world is against you. You can't fix

things so you feel very powerless and you want to scream at adults and

tell them they are not living up to things. You can even think adults are

all hypocrites. That is how I once thought. But now at 31 I realize that it

is not always the case.

Second City Teacher

What about school bullying ?

Anna Kogteva

Often nobody notices it is  going on in schools. I have seen this a lot of

the time. If teachers know this, they can ignore it. This can be explained

by the fact they are under pressure, and don't have the  time or resources to

deal with it. They have too many things to do. This is really the psychologist's

job to find out what is going on and to do something.

I have noticed that schools resemble a military structure. Last year I participated

in a jury competition of poetry devoted to heroism of the Great Patriotic War.

I thought, wouldn't it be great to organize competitions around what we could do

to prevent wars breaking out?  War is not something to be proud of. It is the fault

of governments. They use lives for their own purposes. It was upsetting for me

to listen to poems titled: 'Killing the Enemy'. Of course, there were some good

poems. The winners tended to fall into two types: those which were either very

artistic or whether they wore good costumes as part of the theater. The good

poems were in a minority. About 70% were about heroism and how we need to

die for our country, 20% thought war was horrible but we need to remember the

dead and be proud of their deeds and only 10% thought that war is horrible and

by no means should we ever repeat it. When I heard Yevtushenko's poem

Flowers are Better than Bullets, by a bunch of 10 grade students it was like a

breath of fresh air. Concerning listening to all the rest of the poetry I felt very sore.