”Countryside children are thrilled to play the roles of fairy tale characters”

Interview with Cristian Găvruș

Găvruș Cris­tian – some facts: 

• Stud­ied  Ro­manian and French Lan­guage and Lit­er­at­ure gradu­at­ing  in 2005 from the Uni­ver­sity of North Baia Mare
• He has been a French teacher in Șișești since 2006 and an Eng­lish teacher since 2011
• He star­ted the   Ca­na­dian Stud­ies Mas­ter Pro­gram in 2005
• Took his second BA in Eng­lish Lan­guage and Lit­er­at­ure in 2013
• Mar­ried in 2008 to an­other Eng­lish teacher
• Two kids: Alex (now 10) and Selena (3)
• He loves nature, likes day trips in the forest 
• Likes mu­sic too, he plays the guitar

You have been teach­ing Eng­lish for seven years, but you star­ted as a French teacher. How or rather why did you fall in love with English?

I’ve been teach­ing the Eng­lish lan­guage for quite a while now.  I guess it has al­ways been my dream. I star­ted with French lan­guage, be­cause in my early twen­ties I used to travel to Paris and work there, so know­ing the lan­guage was in­ev­it­able, but to tell you the truth, I fell in love with Eng­lish when I was quite young. Mu­sic was my first in­tro­duc­tion: I re­mem­ber be­ing 13 years old and listen­ing to bands like Guns’N’ Roses or Bon Jovi. I loved their songs but I had no idea  what they were singing about. One day, a friend of mine gave me an old note­book con­tain­ing lyr­ics from their songs. Day after day I stud­ied and learned them, and the more I knew, the more I grew fond of English.

Tell me a bit about your­self, what you think it is rel­ev­ant to your career.

Well, as you already know, I work as an Eng­lish  teacher at Scoala Gim­nazi­ală “Vasile Lu­ca­ciu” in Șișești, 20 km from Baia Mare [see on map].

I don’t see this as a reg­u­lar job, done out of ob­lig­a­tion, but rather some­thing that I do driven by curi­os­ity and pas­sion. Work­ing with chil­dren is really en­ter­tain­ing, in­ter­est­ing and re­ward­ing. They em­brace life with hope, joy and feel­ings of hap­pi­ness, and their read­i­ness or learn­ing and dis­cov­er­ing new things is inspiring. 

Where does your love for fairy tales come from?

I’ve al­ways con­sidered my­self an avid reader. Grow­ing up in a fam­ily where both my par­ents en­joyed read­ing books, it was easy for me to have ac­cess to all kinds of books. But fairy tales were my fa­vor­ite. My first fairy tale ever read was “Tinerețe fară bătrânețe și vi­ață fără de moarte”. I was really im­pressed by the ad­ven­tures of the main char­ac­ter, fight­ing all kind of mon­sters and ful­filling im­possible tasks in or­der to find hap­pi­ness and immortality.

Why did you choose to write a pa­per on fairy tales?

As I grew older, my pas­sion for fairy tales grew deeper. In my years as a stu­dent, with the pre­cious help of per­haps one of the most in­flu­en­tial per­sons in my life and car­rier, Mr. Otoiu,  I dis­covered the fas­cin­at­ing world of Eng­lish lit­er­at­ure. In ad­di­tion to read­ing nov­els and short stor­ies I began to read fairy tales from the Brit­ish folk­lore: Eng­lish, Ir­ish and Scot­tish fairy tales. Then, one day, I real­ized that all these nice stor­ies can help young learners to dis­cover the Eng­lish lan­guage in a dif­fer­ent more en­joy­able way, and at the same time to de­velop their ima­gin­a­tion and ex­er­cise their read­ing and listen­ing skills. So I de­cided to write a pa­per about how fairy tales can be brought into the classroom.

Mr. Otoiu offered me his sup­port, and un­der his guid­ance and folllow­ijng a painstak­ing but nev­er­the­less re­ward­ing ef­fort I achieved my goal. Fi­nally I de­cided to en­title my pa­per Descov­er­ing Eng­lish Cul­ture and Civil­iz­a­tion through Edu­ca­tional Videos and Fairy Tales.

What was the most chal­len­ging fact in do­ing re­search on fairy tales?

Per­haps the most chal­len­ging fact was to fig­ure out how to make the dif­fer­ent texts of fairytales more ac­cess­ible, in or­der to be un­der­stood by our stu­dents. At first I was quite un­sure about how to do that. I began with easy an­imal tales such as The Two Foxes ( a Scot­tish fairy tale) or a sim­pli­fied  text ver­sion of the Eng­lish fairy tale Tom Tit Tot (backed up) by a video version. 

How ap­peal­ing is for chil­dren teach­ing Eng­lish through fairy tales?

Luck­ily for all of us, the ma­jor­ity of our stu­dents en­joyed read­ing and dis­cuss­ing about fairytales. Moreover some of them con­tin­ued read­ing other Eng­lish tales, in their free time, thus en­han­cing their vocab­u­lary and know­ledge. They were thrilled to play the roles of dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters in front of their col­leagues, or to ima­gine al­tern­at­ive end­ings for well known fairy tales. For ex­ample, re­gard­ing the story of Jack and the Bean­stalk one of our stu­dents  ima­gined how Jack failed to cut the bean­stalk, and the gi­ant made it safely to the ground, des­troy­ing Jack’s house and tak­ing back his goose that laid golden eggs and the ma­gic harp. In the end the gi­ant re­turned to his castle in the sky. When I asked him, why he had chosen to end the story that way, he ar­gued that Jack was a thief and de­served to be punished.

Con­sid­er­ing the prag­mat­ism of the world we live in do you think read­ing fairy tales is use­ful for children?

Read­ing fairy tales will al­ways be use­ful. Why? Here are two reas­ons why. In the first place, books are a door to a dif­fer­ent world pop­u­lated by talk­ing an­im­als, fair­ies, old crooked-nosed witches, fire spit­ting dragons. Read­ing fairytales stim­u­lates ima­gin­a­tion; puts the chil­dren in the situ­ation of ima­gin­ing their own fant­astic world. In the world we’re liv­ing there are plenty of jobs that need cre­ativ­ity and a vivid ima­gin­a­tion. Secondly, read­ing fairy tales en­riches the lan­guage and vocab­u­lary. When one learns the Eng­lish lan­guage it is ne­ces­sary to build up a rich vocab­u­lary. Moreover, in a world of glob­al­iz­a­tion where Eng­lish is spoken every­where that vocab­u­lary will prove use­ful in nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions. So I would strongly re­com­mend one book, that is suit­able for be­gin­ners: Eng­lish Fairy Tales col­lec­ted by Joseph Jac­obs. It con­tains a lot of amus­ing and easy to read tra­di­tional Eng­lish  fairy tales.

Chil­dren who live in the coun­tryside could be more at­trac­ted to the fantasy world or quite the opposite?

I have never really thought about this as­pect. It’s hard for me to com­pare, be­cause I’ve only worked with chil­dren com­ing from the coun­tryside, and it’s dif­fi­cult for me to com­pare. But I think that all chil­dren are at­trac­ted to activ­it­ies that stim­u­late their de­sire for know­ledge. Learn­ing dif­fer­ent as­pects of Eng­lish cul­ture and civil­iz­a­tion through fairy tales can prove en­ter­tain­ing and in­ter­est­ing for both teach­ers and stu­dents, be­sides it is a fun way to fight the bore­dom and to get deep into the ma­gical world of books.

Which are your fa­vour­ite fairy tale char­ac­ters? Who do you identify with most?

This is a tough ques­tion. I’ve al­ways been fas­cin­ated by   dragons, those majestic creatures able to fly over the forests, lakes and castles. They are mag­ni­fi­cent creatures loved and feared at the same time. I think they rep­res­ent ab­so­lute power in fairy tales, and without them the ma­gical world of fairy tales would be a lot poorer.

But I can identify my­self with the shy yet ex­tremely clever cat from Aesop’s fable The Fox and the Cat.  The cat lets the fox boast about its clev­erness, but in the end it is the cat who es­capes the dogs by climb­ing a tree while the fox is torn to pieces by the dogs.

What is your ad­vice for be­gin­ners in teach­ing English?

I once read some­where that learn­ing a for­eign lan­guage is like go­ing to the gym. The more you ex­er­cise, the more your muscles are strengthened. So is the case with the pro­cess of learn­ing Eng­lish: prac­tice makes perfect.

There are some tips that can prove use­ful in time. First of all, it is  an im­port­ant thing to prac­tice every day. It’s im­port­ant for be­gin­ners to prac­tice 15 or 30 minutes a day: listen to fa­vor­ite Eng­lish songs, watch short movies or in our case read a short fairy tale. 

As a be­gin­ner and not only, you can also in­volve oth­ers, such as col­leagues, fam­ily or friends, get in­volved in dis­cus­sions on dif­fer­ent topics.

And people shouldn’t for­get to have fun. Pos­it­ive emo­tions fa­cil­it­ate the learn­ing pro­cess. The most im­port­ant thing is to have fun and make pro­gress with each passing day.

Elena Pet­ro­van