Job Discussion Forums

[e.alice]

I am looking for some advice.. I am looking for my first teaching job in Mexico (I studied there a few years ago) and I received a list of 'do's and don'ts' from a school that included quite a few things about my personal behavior. I know that I will be living in school housing and that as a grade school teacher I can't act like an idot out on the town. Still.. the list made me a little nervious about the school. Is this pretty common for schools to be up front about what kind of behavior is expected from a teacher outside of the school setting or might this be an indication of a really anal school?

[Ben Round de Bloc]

[MixtecaMike]

It would really depend on the rules and how you perceive them, personally I'd prefer an employer to be up front with what they expect from me, rather than suffering "hints" and nasty looks later because I was breaking rules I didn't know existed.

[moonraven]

I can see the school's point, based on an experience I had three or four years ago. I was training teachers and teaching secondary school kids and sharing an on-campus apartment with two gringas teaching in the grade school. One of them was cut from the mold of the "trailer park tootsie" whose photos in the Iraqi prison have been causing a scandal for a couple of weeks now. This young woman got blasted every weekend, and dragged whatever flotsom and jetsom of bar males she encountered back to the apartment with her to party. Sometimes they didn't live up to her expectations--whatever those were--and she'd be fighting with them, throwing things against the walls in the apartment and running outside to scream at them in the street at 4 or 5 in the morning--waking up all the dogs, donkeys, roosters and other light-sleeping species in the area.

I made a number of direct complaints to her and also did counseling mode about self-esteem, etc.--and she screamed at full volume in "trailer talk" or some such lingo--so that I thought I was living on the set of "Deliverance"--that I was crazy and that I was driving her friends away.

As it was useless to try to deal with this person, I complained in writing several times to the owners of the school. They talked with her, but all that meant was a few days of my receiving obscene notes from her in our shared bathroom, and then it was back to letting it rip. I spent most weekends in another state or in Mexico City anyway, but I resented having to share a space with a crazy person who thought that Mexico was one gangbang party after another. I finally left, after making the school's owners pay me the rest of my contracted salary because they did not correct the problem of my living situation.

A true story. I have no idea what list of rules you were given by the school, but perhaps now you can see why school owners want to have some guarantee of acceptable behavior.

[e.alice]

Thanks for your feedback. The rules that were posted were things like no boyfriends overnight (in school housing), not acting like a drunken idot in public and smoking discouraged. I really will have no problem with any of these rules.... but it seemed a little strange to see them in a contract. I can see the reasons for these rules but I also don't want to be in a situation where I am being evaluted all of the time. However, I think this may just be a cultural difference between the US and Mexico.. although in a small town in the US there can be many unwritten rules for teachers so...

[ls650]

[moonraven]

e.alice: sounds like they had somebody like my "trailer park tootsie" apartment-mate living in on campus housing before....maybe it's even the same school....

As for cultural differences--well, yeah: here in Mexico single women live at home with their parents, and they don't have boyfriends stay overnight with them. Young women who seem to be too close to their boyfriends, or who have vices such as drinking or smoking are described as being "quemadas" (burned), which means that they have trashed their chances of securing a "decent" husband. There are tons of hotels in every town in Mexico, and not very many travelers--those hotels are "de paso"--the indicated places for sexual hook-ups. This all may seem very hypocritical to you, but that's the way it is.

The reality is that many young people come here to teach, and because it's not their home culture they make complete fools of themselves acting out in ways that they would probably think twice about at home. This is the traditional "bordertown" syndrome--of (usually men) crossing the border to spots such as Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez for drinking, gambling, fighting, whoring, etc. During the last few decades some young women have caught the same bug, and come to Mexico to see how many men will give them a tumble. They are usually "wallflowers" in their home country, so the attention from men here goes to their heads like several shots of mezcal.

My best advice to you in Mexico is to try to keep a low profile.

[Ben Round de Bloc]

[moonraven]

Ben--My advice was directed at someone who is planning to live in housing provided by a school--and on the school grounds. It's simply stupid to push the envelope under those circumstances--unless the teacher wants to be fired very rapidly, especially since her employers have made their requirements clear.

If one lives apart from the school, it's a different story. My compa�ero and I lived together off and on for several years, and had an active social life of parties and dinners at our house. We also spent vacations with his family in the Istmo de Tehuantepec. I was subject to gossip, probably--but as I am not young (I will be 60 this year)--I couldn't have cared less. The rules of the game have a lot to do with age....My "virginity" was clearly not an issue....

[Ben Round de Bloc]

moonraven,

I couldn't agree more with your advice regarding school-provided housing and rules. If a person is made aware of the rules and chooses not to adhere to them, then he/she has no right to complain when there are consequences.

My concern was that someone who hasn't spent much time in Mexico might take what you wrote -- here in Mexico single women live at home with their parents, and they don't have boyfriends stay overnight with them. Young women who seem to be too close to their boyfriends, or who have vices such as drinking or smoking are described as being "quemadas" (burned), which means that they have trashed their chances of securing a "decent" husband -- as being general and standard throughout the country, when, in fact, such isn't the case.

I hope that anyone new to Mexico wouldn't take my examples in my previous posting as general and standard throughout the country either. The point I was trying to make was that it's a big country with lots of variety.

For the majority of TEFL jobs, a teacher isn't expected to live like some semi-sequestered nun. By the same token, if she hopes to keep her job, she probably can't have a reputation of being the easiest woman in the barrio either . . . although I must admit that I've seen one or two who appeared to make a serious effort to achieve that status.

[moonraven]

Ben--I think the area in which you live might be an exception. I have lived in the north of this country, in the central part and in the state of Oaxaca, in fairly large cities, small towns and tiny villages What I described in my post certainly holds true--still--for the areas with which I am familiar. It's a hypocritcal set of standards, but a lot of that has to do with the still powerful influence of the Catholic church.

I feel that it is helpful for young foreigners not to call too much attention to themselves in any region--xenophobia and racism are also alive and well in this culture, and sometimes locals are especially scrutinizing of foreigners' behavior. A young person who has not lived in this culture is more likely to have a positive experience if she--or he--doesn't try to impose social norms from her--or his--home culture and is respectful of the norms here. Effective ESL teachers are precisely that because they are skilled at taking the pulse of cultural norms and creating an atmosphere of trust.

[saraswati]

What is and isn't the norm is a matter of perception. When I first moved to Mexico, I rarely heard of Mexican women cohabitating with boyfriends. Now, it's more and more common. In larger cities, people have more anonymity. In smaller towns, couples who cohabitate are usually pressured by families to marry as soon as possible. I've lived in a number of different cities/towns and this seems to be the case everywhere.

Most couples have intercourse before marriage but it simply isn't discussed, mostly due to the fact that the women live at home and this supposedly serves as some form of chaperonage. (The true hypocrisy.)

Female foreigners who have boyfriends are presumed to be sexually active, thanks to the stereotype, whether they cohabitate or not.

As to the original posting, it sounds as if the school wants to be ever so clear that certain behavior will not be tolerated. As Ben said, image is everything.

[moonraven]

The illogical extension of this particular kind of hypocrisy is the scarcity of protected sex and the frequency, still, of "shotgun weddings". When I was directing a Harmon Hall one of our brightest students who finished with us and was able to get his Michigan certificate just before at 16, he and his 14 year old pregnant girlfriend were hustled to the altar--and away from a viable future-- by their respective families. The afternoon of the wedding the kid called me at my office crying, said he was completely freaked out, and pleaded with me to come to the wedding. Obviously I hopped in my vocho and went--and when I arrived he grabbed me as if I were a lifeboat from the sinking Titanic, and we posed for photos--he looked like a deer caught in the headlights of a very big truck....