Job Discussion Forums

[incognitogenius]

Hello all!

My fiance and I would love to move to Mexico later this year to teach English, wherever we can, though preferably together!
We are looking to pay off our student loans at the same time that we can learn about Mexico, incorporate Spanish into our daily language, and travel the history we are relatively obsessed with.
Although I feel I have been searching for weeks, I am not sure exactly where to start. Should we go through an embassy? Contact individidual schools? Is there a place where Mexican positions are most often posted and updated?
To give some background, I have a B.Journ from Ryerson University, and my honey has a certificate of art fundamentals from Seneca College. We will both be receiving our TESL before we embark on our adventure. Our landlord told us that he had lived in Mexico for two years, earning $500 (American) daily by working through Coca-Cola - is this possible!? Obviously it's an extreme if it is true, but are there possibilities like this?
Any help you might be able to offer would be greatly, greatly, appreciated!

Thanks,
Sue

[inmexico]

500.00USD a day? He must have been the president of Coca-Cola. A good wage here is 100.00 -150.00 pesos an hour for private lessons . if you are busy every day you might make 100.00 USD a day

[incognitogenius]

Nope, not the president, but he certainly found himself a good score.
How much does 100 pesos work out to, in American or Canadian?
Do you know of any positions?

[Paul G]

The Peso is trading at about 10.8 Pesos = 1 US dollar.

http://www.xe.com/ucc/

[Ben Round de Bloc]

USD$500 a day! Are you sure your landlord wasn't referring to coke instead of Coca Cola?

[MELEE]

Sue,

I won't mention the likely hood of 500 US dollars a day as others have already taken care of that
But I do want to mention two things I would be concerned about in your post.

1) pay off student loans. How much are we talking about here? What are your monthly payments. It is most likely that you and your partner will be making about US $ 500 a month, not a day. Living together will cut down on expenses, but you'll need at least $200-$400 a month each depending on where and how you live of course. So you won't be able to make monthly debt payments of more than $300 a month, but realistically I would say it's not doable if your payments are going to be more than US $150 a month.

2) You want to work Spanish into your daily language. This is hard when you spend all day teaching English. It's twice as hard when you are living with an English Speaker. I know, I tried it years ago. I went to Ecuador with my ex. My spanish was intermediate his was not existant. He learned enough to be generously considered a mid level beginner and I maybe moved to high intermediate--maybe. After we broke up I came to Mexico alone and found my self a Spanish speaking honey. My level shot up.
Other teachers I work with, hang out together a lot, we speak English all day at work, then they go out and speak English together in the evenings. They want to learn Spanish, but it takes a lot of work on their parts to create opportunities to speak it, and they are living in Mexico!

I'm not saying you shouldn't come, but I want to make sure you think it through. I love my life in Mexico. It think it is a great experience for almost anyone. But you need to know what you are getting into.

Cheers,

[LM]

I agree with the former posts about money. If you don't have a master's degree in education or even a bachelor's degree (again in education), you probably won't make more than 5,000-6,000 pesos (500-600 american) a month working full time in a language school. Universities will not generally hire anyone that doesn't have the an advanced degree in the area they wish to teach. They will hire a Mexican with good English and the right degrees first.

The area you could do well in is teaching English for business purposes, which pays good per hour, but requires a lot of time lost for travelling.
There is always a steady stream of professionals looking for someone to converse with and correct their English. This will require you living in a larger city with many factories and companies. I did this kind of work for a year in Toluca. I enjoyed the job, the students were interested, but it requires a lot of time on public transportation, and sometimes a day that starts with a class at 7a.m. and doesn't end until after your evening class at 8 or 9. I would often be in three or four different factories in one day. I never made over 6,000 pesos for the month. I had a degree in languages at the time. You might be able to do a little better than that since the pay has gone up since I was there, maybe 8,000 pesos if you get enough hours.

Now I have another bachelor's degree in second language education and I will be leaving for Mexico this summer. I still don't expect to get a university position, at least not right away. My two bachelor's degrees may give me an edge, but I know that many universities will still have to enforce their policy of hiring only teachers with masters degrees.

You will need the majority of this 5-8,000 a month to live on. So, the bottom line is, whether you can go to Mexico or not will probably depend on how big your student loan payment is.

Suerte.

[MajaJSJ]

For your consideration: Four years ago I was receiving $800.US per month teaching in a private school in central Mexico. That was the top rate at the time for native English speaker teachers with the most number of years of experience. (Sadly, the Mexican national teachers with similar experience received as much as $150 US less.) I would say that I lived simply and it took every centavo! However, I imagine that it would have been possible, if one is so inclined, to supplement one's income by teaching private lessons or by teaching at a language institute at night. Someone I taught with did that.

[dan allan]

You can find work in Mexico City. It has the highest pay. Yes, business classes would be best. How well you do depends on your motivation and business acumen. Contact me if you want more info.

By the way, can you post your email here?

DAN.

[Ben Round de Bloc]

I think it could be done but not to the degree that you're probably expecting. Financially, it would be hard to do both: pay off student loans and "travel the history [you] are relatively obsessed with." Probably to earn enough money to pay off student loans, if monthly payments were relatively small, the only travel you could afford would be back and forth between your apartment and work six days a week. You'd have very little time to enjoy and appreciate the culture or develop your Spanish language skills.