Marisa Constantinides – TEFL Matters
Language Teaching, Teacher Education & New Technologies
In Silence
Blog post October 25th, 2009
Last night I went to a theatre performance. The short one act play is called “Silence” and was staged at a small avant-garde space for new artists, stand up comedians and musicians called Centre of Speech the Arts in my part of town, Exarhia.
This is not a theatre review but I was totally blown away by the four members of this small theatre group, and most of all by Rosa Prodromou, daughter of a very well-known ELT figure to many of my readers and valued friend, Luke Prodromou.
Rosa was at some point (some 3 years ago) also my trainee on a TEFL course, sent on by Luke who I guess was terribly worried about the prospects of her working in the theatre and wanted her to have another source of income. She is an astonishing young actress, with theatre and drama studies at MA level in the UK, talented and beautiful beyond belief.
The tools of her trade, her body and her voice, are trained to the perfection of a finely tuned instrument.
I must say, she totally smote my heart with her powerful acting. So did the other young actors in the play, but Rosa was absolutely outstanding, she stood out and is up there in the top league, with a face, body and voice just simply made for acting. And you must understand that I have known her since she was about 10, so for her to “get to me” in such a powerful way, was even harder.
There were only eight people in the audience and we all left totally blown to bits by what we had seen.
As the evening progressed at a nearby cafe-restaurant, I started getting more and more upset thinking about it.
Rosa Prodromou and her friends are operating in a world where quality in what they do is the only thing that matters to them. But of course, networking and publicity matters to the rest of us but because they don’t know how to operate the tools of 21st century communication, they have to act their hearts out for audiences of 8 and 10 people. And they don’t care all that much about it either, as long as they can do what they believe in.
“In the name of my father I will find a job in silence
In the name of friendship I will use you in silence
In the name of my career I will forget myself in silence
In the name of success I will stress my silence”
These are lines chanted during the play but Rosa’s silence is not my silence.
Then I got to thinking that Rosa is not the only one. I also know many, hundreds upon hundreds of young teachers who are in the same league as she is – talented and passionate about teaching, delivering lessons any of my readers would be proud of and yet, they work in dinghy schools, making 8 euros per hour and being told off if their classes are a little livelier than the institutional grammar-translation approach accepts.
They shouldn’t have to put up with that, just as Rosa should be acting in the big theatres to communicate her art and should be paid decently for her art.
I am upset about the number of people who have developed self-aggrandisement into a fine art and they end up rulers of every game you can think of.
I am also upset that all these young and talented people have to make do with so little and have to take second and third jobs to be able to do what they love.
Rosa now has her certifcate in TEFL from me, but she should not have to use it, although she is absolutely super as a teacher, too, with everything in perfect place! Nor should the teachers I am talking about have to trudge the big city running to this private lesson and that, just because classroom teaching doesn’t pay them enough to be able to survive.
In an ideal world, mediocrity should not rule but it does, both in Rosa’s world as in mine.
I know this may be of no interest to anyone, but well, it’s my blog and I had to get it off my chest and break the rule of silence for a change.
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9 Comments to “In Silence”
Marisa,
It is truly terrible that passionate teachers like your friend do not get paid well. I think educators are underpaid, especially for the significant job they hold. Educators empower the workforce. However, we are often under appreciated, not given enough resources, and definitely underpaid. This is a frustrating situation.
Hi Marisa,
And all I ever wanted to do was be a writer, actually write movies… I love teaching and do it with passion, but I hear young Rosa’s silent longing.
The food has to be paid for, the roof over the head, the clothes on the body.
What can we really do about it though?
Karenne
p.s. my suggestion regarding the web and stuff, would be for your friends to film themselves and upload it into youtube, if they can get a following there… perhaps they will be able to reach a wider audience and get “noticed”
Thanks to both of you, Shelly and Karenne for commenting on this post. Underpaid I don’t mind so much about, but unappreciated, really bugs me!!!
Your suggestion is great, Karenne; are you doing anything along the same lines to get “noticed” as a writer? I hope so. I love teaching with a great passion too, but my first choice of a career was music, so, yeah, I feel for you and for Rosa. It shouldn’t be like that.
Mind you, this is the first time in years she has allowed me to write something about her or to mention her father’s name – not in vain I hope…
How incredible to hear what Rosa is doing. More and more these days, one finds out about the children of friends in ELT and what they are up to.
I completely understand how Luke must have felt when Rosa announced that she wanted to be an actor. My daughter Anya not only said she wanted to work in theatre, she wanted to work in MY theatre! When I said she would have to go to drama school first, she relented, and decided that five years in further education would be enough.
The fact is that here in the UK, we have a wonderful well0-oiled system producing batch after batch of talented performers – and we also have an unemployment rate among professional actors of 75%.
This is going to sound very lame, but I think Rosa can be so proud of what she has done. And it’s better to have touched the hearts and minds of eight people than to decide not to give it a try in the first place.
Hey Ken, I’m now getting the next generation of TEFLers, as you see!
No, it’s not a lame comment at all. She should be proud as I expect are Luke and Kyveli. Come to think of it I was proud and I had nothing to do with all this burning talent! What a flame she has!
The situation in Greece is not much different to the UK. Most talented young actors are unemployed. Many untalented ones are not.
Argg! Just typed a long answer and lost it! Anyway, to recap, I wanted to echo Ken’s nice words about finding out what children of friends in ELT are doing.
And about undervalue, and underappreciation I personally found the book The Cost of Caring by Christina Maslach really helpful in this regard. In it she studies educators, social workers and others in the helping professions and talks about those feelings and why they happen. Great stuff, makes you realise you, me, Rosa and all those other great teachers are not alone.
Oh, I’m sorry, Lindsay!
It must have happened just as I was posting my response to Ken!
Thanks for the book suggestion. What Rosa needs though, is lessons in networking…and before those lessons, she needs lots of convincing about the value of networking!
But it’s in the DNA I guess!!!
Geia Marisa!
I just want to pick up on two points.
Firstly, as I am still a linguistics and TESOL student I know for a fact that Rosa’s lineage will work in her favour. Amongst my classmates, there is a bizarre fascination with the activities of the children of famous linguists/EL teachers.
As a group we all went to see a public lecture by David Crystal (also featuring his son Ben Crystal). As a whole, everyone was far more interested in what Ben was doing with his life, many people went out and bought Ben’s book, downloaded his play script etc.
So the fact that you are promoting Rosa amongst those who will recognise her father’s name will definitely gain her a fan base I think!
My second point is about the pervasiveness of mediocrity in society. It is also a problem we have here in the U.K (picked up by Ken) but it permeates every circle of life. I notice it at University, where “good enough” has become the standard. I especially noticed it in the workplace, promotions were rarely based on talent, the path to success came from being friendly with management, volunteering for every event possible, “blagging” (talking/faking your way into success without necessarily having the talent needed” -U.K slang).
It is perhaps the only thing I admire the Americans for, their society is far closer to a meritocracy than ours.
Getting political….time to stop!
That fascination may exist within ELT but Rosa does not move in that world – not her major interest anyway. But, yes, I do hope she will get some people interested in her acting, even though I had to really twist her arm to get her to agree to this post. The next mission is to convince her to get herself a page in Facebook, or, as Karenne suggested very wisely, to upload some videotapes there or MySpace…
Art as a consumer product is not the stuff that dreamers can thrive on, unless, by some divine coincidence, they get that rare thing, a lucky break.
There is very little we can talk about without, eventually, getting political I’m afraid, is there?
I am not that sure about meritocracy in American society, Ty. But thanks for stopping by and adding your thoughts.