The Foggy Lesson

What’s it like—going to class every day knowing you might be met with aggression, indifference, and protest? Polina Petrenko, a Russian teacher in Germany, shares her real story without embellishments. After moving to a new country, her life unexpectedly becomes a battlefield where cultures, prejudices, and irreconcilable social problems collide.

Polina tells about a German school where children with a difficult fate and low achievement are sent, where swearing and insults are heard in lessons, and cold arrogance can be felt from colleagues. Over four years, she will go through racism, students’ uprisings, attempts at suicide among teenagers, severe burnout, and a deep re-evaluation of her own ideals. Against the backdrop of global upheavals from 2019 to 2022, her professional and personal experience becomes a story of self-discovery and desperate struggle for herself and her principles.

This book is not only an open-hearted revelation about the life of a Russian teacher in Germany, but also a profound study of how external and internal conflicts shape us in the toughest of circumstances.