Job Discussion Forums

[DevonMil]

I had been working at Minerva School in Gracias Lempira for several months and it was not a pleasant experience at all. I was there from January until early April 2014. For one thing, the Director was constantly in your face. She and her cronies would show-up to your class unannounced which caused a big commotion every time. It seemed that they enjoyed to make the teachers feel uncomfortable. Not only that, the school has very few resources for both teachers and students. I had spent several hundred dollars of my own money, so that my class would have things like markers, construction paper, and things to help me teach. There was no teacher support, and the syllabus that they required me to follow- was all over the place. It was just so disorganized, and not a very good work environment. I attempted to discuss my concerns with the Director, and all I heard every time, was a laundry list of excuses. She demanded that I perpetuate this disorganization, if I wanted to be paid. Really, for me the $350.00 monthly salary was not worth being miserable. Honestly, I got the impression that the school administration did not care about if students actually learned anything, but more about just passing everyone so that they could continue to collect money from the parents. I feel bad for those students, who probably spend a good amount of money, and receive a sub-standard education. That being said, I do not recommend Minerva School to anyone.

[esl_prof]

[paulac]

It is in rural Honduras. Relatively safe place for Honduras, colonial and cute, but it gets old if you stay there long enough with only $350 a month, plus you are spending some of that money on classroom supplies, plus a lot of your free time on weekends lesson planning and preparing materials for the school... to which you get very little thanks.

I can only imagine that this year is worse, as they have eliminated the position of North American Staff Director to be a liaison between the Americans and the Honduran staff, and things were already really difficult last year even with someone in that position.

I posted before about my experiences with this school and the post seems to have been taken down, don't know why... but I will echo DevonMil's statements in that it is not a good place to work. Don't waste your money buying a flight to Honduras to make $350 a month (basically nothing) to do a job that deserves about 10 times that much money.

And they are looking for 3 more teachers for this school year right now, already like a month into the school year, I really wonder why???

[esl_prof]

Sorry to hear you guys had bad experiences at this school. I think for rural Latin America, one of the best teaching opportunities is via the U.S. Peace Corps. If you don't need to worry about making money, there also a numerous volunteer opportunities with NGOs and faith-based organizations that are doing good work in education and community development.

[PaulSal]

I actually had a skype interview with someone who claimed that they lived in Panama, but were an associate of the school.

The woman interviewer seemed strange to me. First of all, she couldn't describe how the curriculum is set-up. Nor could she explain how the English Classes were scheduled during the day. When I asked her an example of one of the books that they used, she was dumbfounded.

What really stumped her was when I asked if there was a library situated in Minerva. It seemed to me that she was trying to sell me something that did not exist. I know when someone is trying to pull the wool over my eyes, and I could tell right away, that this is not a very good school.