The life of Ben Ellerby, the young British teacher in Calarasi, Southern Romania

Chomsky, Jack the Ripper and Kurt Cobain cross roads in a small Romanian town. In a private school in the southern Romanian town of Calarasi, the 26-year old British teacher Ben Ellerby explains the essence of modern media: it’s not the product- the newspaper- that’s actually sold to advertisers, but the audience. It is a sunny day in the beginning of February, and Ben’s audience, a dozen of ninth- and tenth-graders, are already wearing t-shirts. Today’s topic for the sociology class in English is “Does the media serve us propaganda for the powerful?” Ben starts the lesson by introducing Noam Chomsky, the man who “created the field of modern linguistics.” “Wow,” exclaims a girl who plays the bass in one of the school’s bands. She has long, red hair, and a t-shirt with a rock band. Ben then tells his students that he himself might be biased in relation to this topic, because he has a particular interest in it. He wrote his master thesis starting from Chomsky’s theory on media. “Yeah, but perfect objectivity is impossible,” says a 15-year old boy called Alex. He’s started playing drums some months ago, and his goal is to become better than Ben whom he really admires. The British teacher doesn’t look much older than his students, and he manages to catch their curiosity. He has prepared a series of videos and slide shows to illustrate this sociological theory on media. Kids are particularly bemused by one of Donald Trump’s remarks. The US presidential candidate suggested that a journalist was challenging him because she was on her period. “Did he really say that?” asks one of the girls in the classroom. Ben always takes time to prepare his lessons. He is the only foreign teacher in the school. He is also the only English person living in the small town of Calarasi in Southern Romania. The bubble The bus passes by the ruins of a factory. A board reads: “Siderca Calarasi - company under bankruptcy.” Not far away, another mammoth shows up. It’s the Italian steel producer Tenaris, which is operational and employs about 300 people. Then the bus slides by a car service, a funeral shop, a car wash, a hair saloon, a car wash again. We have entered Calarasi, a town with 65,000 people, situated on the bank of Danube's Borcea branch and 12 km from the Bulgarian border. Ben Ellerby is waiting in front of Penny Market, the end of line for those travelling by bus from Bucharest to Calarasi. I’ve come to meet him and take part in his classes, band rehearsals and any other activities he plans for the day. How is the life of a young teacher in this not very glamorous Romanian town? His first class starts in about 30 minutes so we hurry up to the school. He has vivid blue eyes and talks enthusiastically. Previous to Calarasi, he taught in Kathmandu for one year, and before that he was a political science student at Lancaster University: living in a bubble, with no idea of what he’ll do next. The private school where Ben now teaches also seems a sort of a bubble. The teachers’ room is very small and all the teachers gathered there are young. They all make jokes and laugh. Andrei, the music teacher and one of Ben’s best friends, is also there. Ben shows me his “messy place”, where he keeps the materials he has prepared for classes. He takes his blue rucksack, stuffed with things and almost as big as his torso, and heads to the first class. Two groups of kids have to write a movie script, and then actually make the movie. Ben has in his rucksack a green screen, an instrument that helps remove the background from the subject of a video or a photo. “Calarasi is not the most futuristic town, but it’s also not Victorian England,” Ben says. So he has brought the green screen along, although the kids are still far from shooting the movie. For now it’s the screenwriting stage.