The pedagogical dynasty of Ekaterina Alexandrovna Yudina, senior lecturer at the Department of Romano-Germanic Philology and Translation Studies at SSU, has 5 generations of teachers who have linked their lives with Saratov University, schools and universities in the region. This branch comes from a great-grandfather and great-grandmother who started working in the field of education back in the 1930s.
Ekaterina Yudina
E.A. Yudina is sure that it was easy for her to choose her professional path – her family consisted of university and school teachers, researchers.
"My mother Ksenia Nikolaevna is a philologist, just like me. Only she studied German, and I am a novelist and teach Spanish. My grandmother Svetlana Vasilyevna Denisovich worked as a biology and chemistry teacher at school. My grandfather Nikolai Yakovlevich Denisovich was a teacher at the Department of Criminology at the Saratov Law Institute. Great–grandmother Ekaterina Ivanovna and great-grandfather Vasily Ivanovich Stroganov dealt with issues of scientific communism at the Saratov Law Institute named after D.I. Kursky, great-grandfather was its rector in the postwar years," recalls E.A. Yudina.
Since the second grade, Ekaterina Alexandrovna studied French at gymnasium No. 2, then she fell in love with foreign languages. The choice of the next path was obvious. After school, she entered the Faculty of Philology of SSU (now IFIZH SSU), where she continued to study the Moliere language.
In 2000, E.A. Yudina began working at Saratov University. Now she is a senior lecturer at the Department of Romano-Germanic Philology and Translation Studies at SSU. She practices Spanish with the students, which she learned at the university. Ekaterina Alexandrovna also works as a translator.
"I always try to find a common language with students, take into account their interests. Now I'm talking about empathy – I was once a student myself, so it's not at all difficult for me to try to take the student's side and meet him halfway," notes E.A. Yudina.
E.A. Yudina believes that teaching Spanish is in demand now. Today, there are more French teachers than Spanish, so she chose Spanish out of the two Romance languages studied at the university.
"The fact that teaching in our family is a craft has helped me a lot. At home, they often talked about teaching and science, it was one of the favorite topics for parents to talk about. They gave me such valuable qualities as punctuality, responsibility and sensitivity," says E.A. Yudina.
Ekaterina Alexandrovna told how she managed to instill a love of teaching in her daughter:
"I used to take Masha to my classes. She would sit at the last desk and watch me work. She was interested in being in this environment. I think this contributed to her attraction to teaching in some way, since, as a student, she also plans to continue the work of the dynasty."
Now Ekaterina Alexandrovna's daughter, Maria, is a 4th–year student majoring in Fundamental and Applied Linguistics at the Institute of Philology and Journalism of the SSU.
E.A. Yudina together with colleagues at the All-Russian Olympiad of Schoolchildren in January this year
For Ekaterina Alexandrovna, the university is primarily a place for the exchange of energy and new ideas. E.A. Yudina believes that at SSU a person will never be able to lock himself in and be limited only in the field of his activities.
Ksenia Aristarkhova
E.A. Yudina's mother is Ksenia Nikolaevna Aristarkhova. She became a philologist and devoted her life to the German language. This decision was not easy for her, because her father was engaged in political science and law at the Academy of Law (today the SSU), and her mother was a biology and chemistry teacher at school.
After graduating from school, Ksenia Nikolaevna faced a choice between chemistry and German, but the future teacher decided to stop learning a foreign language because of poor eyesight, and her dad advised her.
From 1979 to 2015, K.N. Aristarkhova worked as a senior lecturer at the Department of Romano-Germanic Philology of SSU. She was engaged in teaching German and its aspectology.
"I know that my mom is very hard at work. She worked through every aspect of it very carefully. My mom gives me confidence because she always knows what she's going to do next. Perhaps this has something to do with the peculiarities of the language she teaches. When I saw such an example, I understood that this is exactly how you need to work. Even at an early age, I began to have a clear idea of what to strive for and where to lead my students," says E.A. Yudina.
As Ekaterina Alexandrovna's daughter recalls, the atmosphere in her mother's classes, according to the students, was family-like, soft. Sometimes communication in the classroom became informal, and after the lesson, students could drink tea with Ksenia Nikolaevna at the department.
"My mother conducted scientific activities until her retirement, graduated students under her supervision. She devoted about 40 years to the department, constantly improving her qualifications. She traveled to Germany several times to develop her professional skills. Ksenia Nikolaevna participated in the work of the Goethe Institute project on conducting methodological and didactic seminars in various regions of Russia on professional development. She organically managed to combine teaching with scientific activity," says E.A. Yudina.
Now K.N. Aristarkhova is retired, she continues to warmly remember the university and study German. Now Ksenia Nikolaevna finds more time for her daughters, granddaughter and grandson.
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Such important and special qualities as an active interest in science, a thirst for teaching and a love for students still allow us to continue the work of the Yudin dynasty.
Text by Daniil Pronin
Photos from the interviewees’ archive
Translated by Lyudmila Yefremova
