Teachers: a dying breed as school year starts

Vera Yudina is one of an endangered species in Moscow – a school teacher. "Only those who cannot live without school stay on in spite of the difficulties," said Yudina, citing low salaries as the main incentive to leave. The average salary at school No 1259 – where Yudina has been teaching for the past 10 years – is just over 350 rubles ($80) a month.

With nearly 800 teaching vacancies throughout its 1,366 schools, Moscow's Education Department is struggling with a severe shortage – with teachers of foreign languages, and English in particular, in greatest demand. Some Moscow schools cannot provide instruction in some of the most basic fields, including Russian, English and social sciences.

Russia's teacher deficit is nation-wide, but it is more acute in Moscow and St. Petersburg, where those with a command of a foreign language have more opportunity to trade in their skills for a higher salary with Western firms.

While Education Minister Yevgeny Tkachenko announced that the exodus of teachers from the classroom has levelled off, the staff at school No 1259 do not see an end in sight even though it is a privileged school. And judging by the increasing number of disgruntled teachers who turn to Moscow's employment agencies to find new work, the vacancies are likely to spread.

At firms such as Eurospan and the Russian Connection, they are still redirecting a steady stream of former teachers and recent teaching graduates, finding them better paid work as receptionists, secretaries, or sales personnel.

"In some cases teachers can find work in human resources – like myself," said a representative of The Russian Connection, who gave up his job as a math teacher a few years ago. The teacher deficit has not only affected schools scrambling to fill the gaps, but the quality of education as well. As school administrators find it harder to fill teaching vacancies, they are forced to accept teachers with lower qualifications.

According to Education Ministry statistics, the percentage of teachers with only a secondary education in Russia last year rose to just over 11 per cent. At the same time, the number of pension-teachers rose by 20,000 last year to nearly 9 per cent of Russia's total staff of 1.5 million teachers and administrators.

Assignments:

1. Read the text and say:

a) why many teachers quit their jobs,

b) how teachers' deficit effects the quality of education.

2. Suggest effective measures to improve the situation.

TESTING TIMES

Exam stress doesn't occur most strongly during the actual exams but in the few weeks just before them. The climax is usually the night before, when last minute preparations confirm your worst fears. There are, however, some simple ways of dealing with the problem.

First, the dedicated student can suffer from anxiety, brainblocks and memory "gaps," just as much as the student who has left everything to the last minute. But the remedy is the same in each case. The night before is too late to do anything. Far better to go to dance, for a walk, to the pictures or play a game rather than increase stress by frantic efforts to plug in gaps in your knowledge.

The brain is a complex bioelectrical machine, which, like a computer, can be overloaded. It does not work continuously, but in fits and starts. As you read this, the relevant part of your brain receives the messages from your eyes, processes them, and you comprehend. All this occurs in a series of steps. When you study, your brain reaches its maximum efficiency about five minutes after you start work, stays at a plateau for about ten minutes, and thereafter it is all downhill. Indeed, after thirty minutes your attention wanders, your memory actually shuts off, and boredom sets in.

For this reason, the best way to study is in half-hour sessions, with gaps in between of about the same length. It even helps to change subjects and not keep at the same one, since this reduces the boredom factor.

Two drugs are often used by students – as they are by writers, mathematicians and scientists everywhere. I do not mean pills, which can result in serious fatigue, but coffee and tea. The active ingredient in each is caffeine, a drug which definitely stimulates the brain, making you more alert. Coffee is about five times stronger than tea, and if you drink more than ten cups, it has a depressing effect on memory and alertness. And large doses of caffeine can keep you awake.

During sleep, the message conveyed to your brain – the things you have been trying to learn – are either put into your permanent memory store, in which case you will remember them, or pass into your transient memory store, in which case you will have a vague idea, but no clear recollection.

We put data into permanent store when we think it is important. It will file jokes, soccer results, film stars, names or pop tunes with extreme accuracy, on the other hand, erase things which bore or unsettle us.

The lesson here is clear. To beat exam stress you have to feel that what you are doing is fun, and perhaps the best way to do this is to treat revision as a game. This gives your brain the best chance to excel this. If you tire it with long, boring study sessions, you'll find you can't remember much, but if you stimulate it with short, snappy sessions you'll he surprised how quick and sharp you are.

Assignment:

Translate the text using a dictionary.

38.