That was a week ago last Monday. On the next day, I went into the school at Borovitskaya to discuss things with the recruitment manager, whom I find to be a kind person, and, with tomorrow now being my last day, we promptly signed a freelance contract beginning on Monday 13. I will only have a few classes on this basis - they are not obliged to offer them to me, nor am I obliged to accept them - but I am also teaching at a university now and, in a nutshell, I should earn considerably more money for considerably less hours. It is time for me to think about money, as I'm on the dawn of my thirtieth birthday, and the occasion for living frugally for the sake of cultural experiences is becoming a thing of my past. If all goes well, I hope to soon be on an income comparable to what I was getting in South Korea.

I can say that I was happy with my school over all. For more than eighteen months they took care of my visas, my flight and travel costs, my accommodation costs, and left me with enough pocket money to save a little bit. However, the costs of living in Moscow have been steadily rising, and after the first six weeks back in Russia I had saved nothing more than a measly 3000 roubles (approximately NZ$150, or US$100). When I was stung US$26 for forgetting to go to my 'standby' one Monday - I never had standby in Zelenograd and, anyway, it was my first mistake of this sort - I asked myself whether all the benefits were really enough to offset my relatively low pay. I wouldn't be writing this update if I had concluded that they were.

The 'contractual package' that many Moscow schools offer is great for fairly new and inexperienced teachers who are also new to the capital, but it is definitely the thing for many teachers who have lived here for more than a year or two to go it alone. New teachers are provided with stability, security, and on-going training and career development. Some can also very quickly climb up the ranks of management, with no more post-qualification experience than a few years of part-time teaching being necessary to become a 'senior' teacher - with responsibilities concerning other teachers.

Therefore, for new teachers, teachers new to Moscow, and teachers whose personalities are suited to positions of responsibility, working on a contract at one of the main schools can be quite acceptable for some while. It was precisely this for my first contract, and for a bit of the other contracts that I did as well. On the other hand, once you know Moscow a little, a vibrant city of opportunities presents itself. I have contacts who have been very helpful to me and I believe that I will be able to acquire my own visa and take more responsibility for myself from this point on. The benefits are as I've said: my earning potential increases significantly and I will have a lot more control over the work I do.


I heard about someone who read my last update, laughed very loudly at the fact that I believe I can be a good ADOS, and proceeded to tell one of the new teachers that I was unpopular at my old school.

Just to begin with, this doesn't really matter to me. My former colleagues promptly informed the new teacher, after he related what he had been told, that I am (in the words of one of my dear friends) "a valued and important member of our group". Oh, bless her. Also, just because one school has the opinion that I'm not right for a senior position doesn't mean that all schools have thought or shall think this. My boss at 'Modern-Age' in Auckland asked me to be 'Head Teacher/Teacher Trainer' of the TOEIC course at a branch they were about to open in Beijing. It was a great pity for me that soon after that my school went into liquidation (having attempted to expand too quickly in a market that was about to slump after September 11 and SARS). However, these unfortunate circumstances consequently lead me to teach in four more fascinating countries, and so I wouldn't want to change anything now. Nevertheless, even back then, a good school demonstrated belief in me - and my boss was a doctor of English Literature with many years' experience in the ESL industry. Eventually another school will feel the same.

I wasn't going to comment on this small matter, incidentally, but for the fact that it relates to something I have observed now in every non-Anglophone country that I've taught in, and this is that I often detect resentment from a small minority of the English teachers who are native to that country. (I mean the ones who were born in a non-Anglophone country, who speak English as a second language, but who work as English teachers.)

Normally, the teachers I work with are very professional and perfectly friendly. I met a scary Scottish girl about four weeks ago who tried to convince me and my friends that Russian English teachers can never be as good at teaching English as native English speakers. As it happened, she only lasted about a week at the school, and was rushed home after too many of her students raised strong objections about her classes. This fact in itself seems already to work against her point, although at the time I argued that there are a great many native English speakers who, for whatever reason (English Literature majors, maybe), are more articulate and proficient at English than I am, but it doesn't necessarily follow that they'll be better at teaching English than me. Someone with a Master's in Applied Linguistics, for example, is surely 'better' at English than I am; but Applied Linguistics majors have a reputation within the industry for taking a long time to become comfortable with the 'Communicative Approach'. Being good at teaching English doesn't necessarily follow from being exceptionally good at using English, and in the same way many English teachers who learned English as a second language - although they may still be more prone to making mistakes than I am - make excellent English teachers for other reasons. What they sometimes lack in accuracy is often more than made up for by what they know from having been students of English themselves, but then they can bring plenty of other positive attributes as well, just like anyone else. In short, I have met terrible Anglophone English teachers, and I have met excellent non-Anglophone English teachers. What I am about to write, therefore, is not aimed at non-native English teachers in general.

I have also known a few non-Anglophone English teachers who carry the same prejudices (in reverse) as the Scottish girl. Some seem to feel nothing but contempt towards us Anglophones. I know a Russian teacher who essentially admits hating foreigners and foreign English teachers. As another example of her attitude problem, she spent about a month teaching in an Anglophone country and came back absolutely detesting the place.

In China I knew a teacher - calling himself 'Prince' - who found it difficult to understand me and immediately concluded that, rather than needing to brush up on his own listening skills, I needed to change my speech to be more 'American'. Only because of this, he was convinced that he was the better English teacher.

Five months into my contract, several Chinese English teachers who had at first sympathised with Prince came up to me and 'admitted' that my English was actually better than theirs. This was from two teachers with English degrees whom, if I had met them during a 'placement' test, I would have graded as being no higher than at an intermediate level (ie, no better than around half my Russian students). As for Prince, whose own idea of teaching English was speaking extremely rapidly and then translating everything he said into Chinese, he was not so confident when I informed him that the name he had chosen for himself was very often modern slang for 'homosexual'. Anyway, I've encountered this kind of thing again and again in my travels. In Poland, I felt completely ostracised by the Polish English teachers at one of my schools. They treated me as if I were merely a subordinate teacher, there to give 'speaking' lessons, and to be detested for not having the same teaching background as them. Meanwhile, their own classes were full of the Polish language and, from what I observed, utterly boring. This was my worst experience overall, although I loved living in Poland despite this.

In Germany, one German teacher asked if I knew off the top of my head the difference in usage between gerunds and infinitive verbs. I explained the over-all rule that there are verbs after which we may use either a gerund or an infinitive ('I love swimming', 'I love to swim'), there are other verbs after which we only use a gerund ('I detest smoking'), and others still after which we may only use an infinitive ('I decided to take singing lessons'). I also explained that generally there was no absolute rule governing the correct usage for each, and that students normally had to resign themselves to the arduous task of memorising examples from charts and tables. After this, he asked whether I could give more of an explanation. I told him that sometimes gerunds carry a 'present' significance, whereas infinitives may have a 'future' significance, and I thought this a fair demonstration of my grammatical knowledge.

By now I imagine that I'm only mildly impressing a minority of readers, whereas I'm thoroughly boring a majority, but I'm coming to a point. The thing was that after all this, he kept asking for examples, and naturally my ideas soon ran out. I was confounded when, rather than being satisfied with my explanation, he told me that I still clearly had a lot of work to do with regards to teaching grammar. I worked as a freelance teacher with this man for several months and found his arrogance to be bordering on insolence.

I could go on with further examples of the animosity that I sometimes pick up on in non-Anglophone English teachers, but I feel that I've offered enough. I think it and comes down to simple jealousy. At the end of the day, most Princes of the ESL world are simply never going to milk from the industry even half the experiences that are (however unfairly) readily available to Anglophone English teachers. Prince may do all right in China, but he's not about to be flooded with teaching offers from other countries. (Incidentally, a school in Italy recently headhunted me, asking whether I'd like to work for them!) Perhaps, if he tries hard enough, he will find work in the UK or in NZ or somewhere, but it is much harder for him to find work in a whole bunch of countries than it is for native English speakers. He might be able to work for one of the big schools, like English First, but that would leave him earning the kind of salary that I'm trying to get away from. Most well-paying independent schools are really only ready to pay the big dollars to the expats.

Naturally, there's a certain amount of injustice here, but nevertheless that's part of the reality of capitalism. Students are generally more willing to pay higher fees when they have teachers from English-speaking countries. It may seem callous of me to go on like this, but I'm still coming to a point. As I've said, most of my Russian colleagues are very nice to me, and they are very good at what they do. As for the likes of relatively inexperienced teachers who might look at my site and laugh about the idea of me ever holding a senior position, it wouldn't hurt them to bear in mind that they have nothing on those of us who have teaching experience from all over the world. Be more humble.

Local teachers observe us expats as we come and go, and we must truly seem to them like temporary butterflies. We come to their country in a flurry of bright colours and high living, but most of us don't rise within the ranks so much, and then we go. Many butterflies are indeed destined to perish - in the sense that they will give up teaching and go on to other careers. Alternatively, they fly away to other lands, and from the perspective of the local teacher who observes their departure, they might as well cease to exist.

But not all the Anglo-butterflies fly away or drop dead after a brief existence. Teachers like Prince know nothing of what that butterfly may have done before he or she flew in to town. A butterfly who has taught in Moscow for a year will probably know as much about the local industry as a local teacher with equivalent experience. However, if this butterfly has also worked in Beijing for a year, he or she has probably gained more insights into teaching than a local teacher who has taught only in Moscow for same amount of time in total. To offer only one example, I have insight into the differences in learning assumptions and characteristics between students from more than three European and five Asian countries; and from having to adapt to the different needs of these students from very different cultures, I have learned a lot about teaching.

Anglophone English teachers are not just temporary, we only seem so. In fact, teachers like Prince very often grow stagnant - certain that the international teacher is inferior to them and confident that they know all there is to know in their own little niche or microcosm. In reality, the international teacher is part of a much larger niche, or macrocosm, and although they less about the local industry than local teachers when they first arrive, in reality they are benefiting from a world of experiences and from all the insights that can be gained from teaching around the globe.

If international teachers sometimes look temporary and inconsequential to local teachers, local teachers sometimes look to us like big fish in small ponds. In reality, these ponds feed into a vast ocean in which most fish are small. The fish who take refuge in one pond often fail to appreciate the scale of this ocean, and so they learn little from it, whereas the little fish that go from place to place are steadily building up their knowledge so that one day they may prosper at the top of the food chain.

In the small pond, some teachers with only a few years' experience may rise within the ranks, but to be in a position of responsibility isn't all it's cracked up to be. I can think of three reasons for wanting to be an ADOS. First, it is a good way to avoid other (possibly less experienced) ADOSes observing your lessons and attempting to give feedback. Secondly, it can be nice as an experienced teacher to help newly-qualified teachers. They come to us all the time anyway, so why not get a little extra pay and recognition for our troubles? Finally, the promise of an increase in salary is surely part of the attraction. So what's the point in being promoted if teaching on a freelance basis also gets people off your back and generally pays a lot better? From what I've seen, it is the international teachers who, because of their experience in the bigger ocean, soon break away from that little scene and do quite well for themselves. I feel pity when I meet the Princes of the ESL world. When they act with inflated egos, they become laughable.