Meet Teacher Mila, who teaches online to neurodiverse adults who need practical English
Abigail Fulbrook: Welcome back to the Elevate blog. I’m here with Mila today. Um, Mila, where are you in the world?
Ludmila Ermolayeva: Oh, right now I am in Estonia. So I teach around Europe, a little bit of USA, I teach English, I teach Ukrainian. So lots of activity here.
Abigail Fulbrook: Yeah. So, you’re teaching online at the moment?
Ludmila Ermolayeva: Yeah. Absolutely. I started teaching online right I think at 2015ish. So when people were panicking about COVID and stop of the school and inability to teach any other way. We saw many many old school believers that teaching must be only person to person. We saw them changing their mind and seeing how comfortable it may be if you do the right thing with the right instrument.
Abigail Fulbrook: Yeah, definitely. So, tell me about your your lessons and your students. What kind of people are you teaching?
Ludmila Ermolayeva: Well, mostly I teach adults. Occasionally I have teenagers who are prepping for some life skills. I do not teach exams. I teach adults who have goals in life. For them, for which of them they need English. So it’s more often English for getting a new job, getting a new team, a reorient some orientation when you come to a new country when you are adapting to everything in the new environment. We were participating in such things like teaching the driving exam stuff because the person doesn’t want to be nervous about not understanding the rule making the mistake on the exam because of language not because of their knowledge. I believe that’s a good example of why you need language for reaching some goal. Yeah. She she passed from the first time. It was very very happy for me.
Abigail Fulbrook: That’s great. Yeah, that’s great. Yeah, it’s amazing about driving. I’m living in Japan and I’ve heard about taking driving exams. It’s not so much about the rules of the road which are kind of similar, you know, everywhere in the world, but the culture of taking the test is very specific. So that’s really interesting.
Ludmila Ermolayeva: I agree. And I would not even invent such a service myself. It grew out of a need. Someone had the need and I adapted to it. I I’m very grateful for that. Now I know that I can do that. Now I have such such opportunity.
Abigail Fulbrook: Yeah. Yeah. I never would have thought of that one. English for driving driving driving tests and driving lessons there. That’s great. Okay. So, what’s your favorite thing to teach? What do you like doing with your students?
Ludmila Ermolayeva: I mostly like dogme approach. So you have some structure that you supply by a certain book maybe but mostly you play around that structure with a lot of stuff that people come and bring you every day. Today someone have come and said I have a quarrel with my boss. Yeah. So you are not going to study the unit about clothes. You would fish something different out of that same book. Maybe you would listen to a person suggest some ideas and at the same moment you would do that in such a language that they will notice that this is the language that may helps them to express their ideas better and maybe renegotiating with that said boss in couple of weeks. That is really what inspires me so much because you see the real impact. You see your influence and at the same moment you see how it is not only things that you bring. It’s a partnership and you see how that 1 + 1 equals three. How that grows. How you may make may change and your life changes as well because you get nourished by all of these experiences.
Abigail Fulbrook: Yeah, definitely. So, you’re not a sort of book focused sort of textbook, do it in the right order kind of teacher?
Ludmila Ermolayeva: Well, I believe in textbooks from that point of view that these are colleagues who create things from their huge methodological expertise. It would be a bit foolish maybe for me to ignore all these effort and labor. So, I do work with that. But if it’s a choice between the mood and a real stuff that is hanging and stressing the student and they can’t concentrate on the book anyway, yes I will go to that I will address that issue and yes maybe that day the homework will be not a book thing but something like please watch this video. I think it may be helpful something like So yeah, at the same moment I would never be able to be the scientist who would be so concerned only about methodological things and very little details because every time I read the book I’m seen those and I think I would never. So yeah, I appreciate learning from them, but I would not be able to do the same
Abigail Fulbrook: Yeah. Me too. I definitely appreciate the people who can see the structure of the language and set it out clearly. Okay. Tell me about some memorable moments from your students. Is there anything that sticks out that you remember?
Ludmila Ermolayeva: Well, driving exam is one of them, but another one was very impactful. I believe it was 2022. It was full-scale invasion into Ukraine and I’m from Ukraine originally and I started morning group, for donation for free and I was allowing people to feel any structure because life suddenly started being so chaotic, so unpredictable that we all could not even focus on anything like should we go to work, should we not, what’s going on. We were discussing some news as well but we were discussing some uplifting stories, some, I don’t know diet requirements for you, in terms of stress because you need to be strong to answer the challenges. Some ideas on what can we do if something happens. Uh, some basic life stuff like if we see a fire, what do we do? What do we do if we see a child who is lost and doesn’t know like is only emotional? Something that actually is very much needed in your usual everyday life too. All these situations may happen with you. But at that moment, it looked like everything can happen at you like at once. So we were finding some some source in getting prepared and yeah some uplifting stories, some structure, some let’s talk about what kind of recipe you cooked today. What are you planning to cook? Hey guys, I found that idea. Let’s discuss. Can we maybe do that for ourselves? It’s a meditation or a psychological practice like written practice. When you write in the diary, you are answering some certain questions and you feel better. So I probably ran this group for three or four months since the very beginning and I was finding the structure in it. I was finding the comfort in the fact that I can help someone and people were coming, people were appreciating that yes we could a little bit distracted, relax and be ourselves like the people who we were before with the people who we were before we were impacted and that really rests in my memory very vividly. Um some other stuff was less dramatic. When you help someone to change the profession, it feels very very impactful. And it’s not because of their hard skills of course it’s about, it’s all on them but the fact that you help them to find these negotiation skill in English and you help them to see their own achievements in their career that is just I don’t know a source of endless endless inspiration for me because uh one time it was an engineer who were a real strength engineer like in physical life but she became a QA tester totally different totally different and she got better job better conditions better everything and she did not have it well before and I was impressed and I am always impressed working with strong people different people neurode divergent people ADHD people. I am the same. I’m also like, if I could be licensed autistic, I would be because I do have official evaluation about that. And uh the life in these conditions it teaches you some strategies how you how you learn how you rest how you feel uh better when something happens when you feel um socially insecure and all of that I love just spread and it comes back to me with new ideas new challenges because people come and say I can’t do that and I look at their work and they say, “Have you ever considered that you may have may be dyslexic?” No. Couple months later, they are officially. And I’m like, “Oh, that’s why that’s why it was not you.” And you were not bad, lazy, or anything like the ability to shift this perspective is priceless. I believe.
Abigail Fulbrook: Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Now, um Mila, my last question is always, why do you love being a teacher? But I think you’ve totally answered that question already. I can see it.
Ludmila Ermolayeva: Okay. Another comforting thing for me would be that again, I am chronically ill person and teaching gives me an opportunity to work remotely, work my hours, not go to office, not be overwhelmed by certain office conditions that I think counts as well. not only your inspiration but your creature comforts that’s also important and I believe it’s important for people like me who may be disabled to see that you can work you can have this self-realization, you can do things even if you are restricted sometimes people are just a little scared to change the status quo, but I’m always about trying if not change it, maybe rattle it a little bit and see what happens. So, I’m always supportive on this.
Abigail Fulbrook: Exactly. Definitely. Great. Thank you, Mila. It’s really interesting to talk to you.
Ludmila Ermolayeva: Thank you very much for having me. I hope we meet soon on summit.
Abigail Fulbrook: Yes, of course. and Mila will be talking about English under stressful and chaotic circumstances.
Ludmila Ermolayeva: Yes, I’m hoping to speak as well.
Abigail Fulbrook: I hope you’ll be able to attend the summit and watch that. Will be really interesting to to see
Ludmila Ermolayeva: So I I hope we all bring something extremely valuable to people because again our world is not super comfortable. We have this stressful news everywhere around the world. So I think it’s a good opportunity for all of us to bring to recharge and to sell that recharge to others.
Abigail Fulbrook: Yeah, for sure. Great. Thank you very much, Mila.
Ludmila Ermolayeva: Thank you very much too. Bye-bye.
You can get in touch with Mila at Elevate the directory of English language teachers here
