Job Discussion Forums

[Slim Jim]

Does anybody out there in the motherland have any info on an organisation called the 'Centre of Intenational Studies' based in Oktyarbrsky and having other branches in places like Salavat in the area?

They have posted notices on several EFL sites in recent months requesting teachers. But there is something distinctly odd about the way they are going about it. A couple of months back I saw an ad on the 'englishjobmaze' I think it was and I made some tentative enquiries. The pay was no big deal about $450 a month but the conditions were about average. I contacted them and the director or manager, a woman called Guzel (otherwise known as Jizel), said yes we're very interested and offered me a job. The response looked like a cut and paste job with no responses to any questions I posed concerning accommodation arrangements and the like. But I played along and wrote another email asking if there were another present or former teacher who could provide me with the lowdown on the centre and the area itself. The response was laughable and so obviously a bad version of a Russian school director impersonating a native speaking teacher. A 'Rudy Herman' from Down Under had this to say:

my name is Rudolf Hermann. I`m from Australia. Now I`m teaching in Oktyabrsky. Since coming to the republic of Bashkortostan on Oct 31, 2004 I have had the opportunity to work and live in Oktyabrsky and Tuimazy. Both cities are pleasant, especially in Spring. Cost of living is low ( it is lower than in Moscow ) and it is easy to save a large percentage of your salary. The highlight for me is teaching students and pupils who are hungry like wolf for English language and culture. There are many age groups if you like variety. Also many different text books are used with excellent results. Preporation for lessons is min. for experienced teachers.
Centre of International Studies is a private school. Guzel is a director of the school, she is young but students respect her. My hosts and co workers have been hospitable and helpful. I can extra recommend this part of the world to teach.
Best regards,
Rudolf

My apologies to Rudy if he does indeed exist and did indeed write these splendid words of recommendation. But not unduly perturbed I write back asking from what part of Oz he hailed and if he knew the Gold Coast where my relatives live. No reply. In the meantime, the ad is mutating. This organisation now seeks 'volunteers' for a 'Russian cultural Exchange' to work at their centres in Oktyabrsky, Tuimazy and Salavat. But all along, in spite of the new improved job ads which I didn't mention, when I write to Guzel she reassures me about the job and apologizes for delays in replying because her internet's up the creek or something.

Has anyone, with the exception of Rudolf, actually worked for this organisation (which by my reckoning has been in business for at least 2 or 3 years)? Did you get paid, did you volunteer, or what!? I would appreciate any input - just to sate my curiosity, you understand, as I decided already to give them a wide berth. Thanks in advance, comrades.

[Larry Paradine]

I haven't worked for the "Centre of International Studies" or even been to Oktyabirsky, but I believe it's a front for a branch of Language Link in Ufa. Guzel was a non-active Director of LL when I worked there in 2002 - 2003 and I didn't have much to do with her, so I'm not automatically tarring her enterprise with the same brush as I did the school in Ufa (see my article "Language Link Ufa" in the Job Information Journal for my unfavourable and still unchanged view: also the case for the Defence in the form of a couple of eulogies in the same journal by more recent teachers castigating me). What I do know is that the school in Oktyabirsk was due to be opened as a "filyal" of LL Ufa in the spring of 03 and that the executive Director of LL, who asked for my help in putting a teacher wanted ad on the Internet, edited out all reference to Oktyabirsk, so that the ad appeared to refer to the school in Ufa. Leopards don't change their spots: if Faniza Yakupova (the Ufa Director) has any connection with the "Centre" in Oktyabirsk, I would advise extreme caution!

[malcoml]

I'm from Australia, we speak like that here lol.

Why do they always say hungry like wolf. I remember my old girlfriend would just want a small snack but she would inform me that she was hungry like the wolf. I got this impression of Russian mums telling their children to stay in bed at night or a hungry wolf would appear and eat them.

[Slim Jim]

So that school really was just a white rabbit yanked out of the LL hat, after all. Kind of makes you wonder at the tricks these places devise to lure unsuspecting teachers. The younger, fresher and more naive, the better!!! 'You vanting yourself zis job wizout zahplata, da!!?? Free food, nize flat und eeeeeevver-so-charming Russian ladies, being hungry for a good educating, da?' Fast forward a few months to the intrepid teacher blue with cold... light bulb flickering... holed up in the small room infested with cockroaches and indestructible bedbugs of the two-room apartment that he shares with a puritanically religious old lady in the grey suburbs, babbling about her piles and verucas, demanding rent a week early, demanding that you don't bring alcohol into the joint and double-bolting the apartment door at 9 in the evening...

On a lighter note: I don't know about you malcoml, but that's the way I like them Russian ladies - hungry like she-wolves, baying at the mad, white moon, wanting to feast on blood in the middle of the night. Isn't the Russian language just so rich when it comes to dark and pithy idioms and proverbs? I love it. Especially that one about the only free cheese being found in the mousetrap. How apt a metaphor for this life.

[Slim Jim]

There you go again! Deleting any word, innocuously containing the word 'c o c k'!

C o c kroaches... Lots of the blighter in Russia.