Job Discussion Forums

[cordilleranevada]

so the standard here in Santiago seems to be:
-about $5000 pesos an hour, or a little over US $8.50 .
-only paid for in-class, actual teaching hours (not preparation time or time/transportation to off-site classes, unless they�re really out in the boonies).

Today I got offered an off-site class (at a bank - by "off-site" I mean at the contracting company�s location, not at the institute), 3 hours a week. It�s my first teaching job in Chile, so I�m starting off slow. But I�m spending hours preparing for my first class, which will be Thursday, for 1.5 hrs. This despite the fact that my pay this week will be $12.75, and next week $25.50.

O.K. So then I hopefully get in the swing of things and am teaching "full time" - that is, as much as the institute will give me/that I can handle. I�m assuming that�s not 40 hrs a week of classroom time, since that would mean giving me another dozen or so 3-hr-a-week classes per week and me running all over the city. Even if I did have 40 hrs classroom time a week, that would end up netting me about $340 a week, or $1360 a month. Am I right in thinking getting PAID for 40 hrs/week, whether I put in 40 hrs/week effort or not, is not going to happen? How many hours/week is considered standard "full time"? Can I expect, optimistically, to have 20 hours of classroom time a week? Say that was the case: I�d get $170 a week, $680/month. But, considering preparation time, it would still end up being less than $4/hr, if that. $170 a week? And I don�t think I�d even be getting 20 hours a week for a while - maybe 10 hours a week by next month? So for all of April, I can hope for $340?? $85 a week? who the hell works for $85 A WEEK? Yet this seems to be the standard. Fellow teachers, please explain - how do you live on such low salaries? Maybe if Chile was a super-cheap place to live, but it�s not!
(I hear private lessons are a lot better remunerated, but where do you find the time? Is it better to do private lessons only?)
So I�m not really sure why the reality of how low the pay really is just hit me, but I know that plenty of teachers out there work for these low wages, and I wanted to ask: how do you make ends meet? I know Chile is ch�aper that the US, but it�s still pretty expensive, and travel is pretty expensive too. I was hoping to do some traveling, not just spend month after month trapped in the city. Anyone out there working for these kind of wages find the time and/or money to travel much? Am I missing something here? Are English-teaching jobs all over the world this poorly paid? I mean, I wasn�t expecting to get rich or anything, I�m just surprised at how low the pay really is, and trying to figure out other people�s motivations. For the experience, I guess? Should I think of it like an internship or something? Sorry, I�m a little confused.
Thanks for your input, I�d really like to know what others think!