School Life

School

I teach at Atlantic International School, which is an international school with a group of 3 schools across Moscow. The main school is in Dubrovka (School 1). This school is for children age 2-18. It contains a Kindergarden/Early Years Department, Primary School and Secondary School. This school is the largest out of the schools. All claases in Kindergarten and Primary are taught be native English speakers and also have a Russian teacher. Secondary has lots of International teachers, who speak English but it is not their first language.

I teach at Atlantic International School Festivalnaya. This is a smaller school with 6 classes.

Pre-Nursery – age 2-3

Nursery – age 3-4

Reception 4-5

Year 1 – age 5-6

Year 2 – 6-7.

Each class has a teacher who is a native English speaker and a Russian teacher. Year 1 and 2 share a Russian teacher as class sizes are both small. Each class also has a assistant (nanny) who is available to help with the children during lessons, serves meals, cleans up and supervises the children. At the start of term I have 5 children in my Year 2 class, but it is expected to grow. The maximum class size is the currently 15. Festivalnaya was originally only build for Pre-Nursery, Nursery and Reception, but parents wanted their children to move up through the school locally. As a result the school now operates up to year 2 and they are planning to open a primary department (grade 3-6) in the local community over the next year if possible.

The school is very bright and quite spacious. The school is gated which is quite common in Moscow wiith security guards. Everyone entering and leaving the building most go through security. The security guards speak very basic English – well really just hello and goodbye. The guards keep your classroom keys and it is a interesting experience trying to get the correct key number.

Inside the school we have 6 classrooms, an art room, indoor playroom, gym, computer area, kitchen, dining area, assembly hall and offices. Children are at school from 9am-3:15. Extra curricular activities (P.E, Drama, Sports Club, Dance and Music) start at 3:15pm-4:45pm, then children can stay for dinner and then outside play until 6pm (most children leave between 5pm-6pm). Quite a lot of the children are then collected by a nanny or driver – although some are collected by parents. It isn't uncommon for children to travel up to 2 hours a day to school. Moscow has a shortage of English schools and kindergardens.

The majority of the children in the school have English as their second, third or fourth language! Although there are a few British and Americans. Quite a lot of the children are from wealthy Russian families.The class that I have consists of 2 Russian children, 1 Turkish, 1 Italian and 1 Dutch.

My classroom is almost complete – but still waiting on some more equipment as it was used as a storage room last year. It will be getting a Smartboard installed at the beginning of the term.

The third school in the group is Skolkovo – which just opens this September (Kindergarden and Primary School). 

School term will start at the end of next week (1st September)