Job Discussion Forums

[fratton]

does anyone know anything good or bad about this school? any help would be good. thanks

[Guy Courchesne]

I have helped arrange jobs for several people with them. I've heard nothing spectacular nor anything particularly bad about them. Michael Tan over there is a stand-up guy who will help out new teachers a lot.

[fratton]

thanks for the info....

[Guy Courchesne]

No problem...good luck! I hope you like SLP

[El Gringo]

�Michael Tan over there is a stand-up guy who will help out new teachers a lot� - I nearly choked on my cornflakes when I read this!

Guy, I�ve seen your posts in this forum and know you�re a very knowledgeable and generous contributor and I�m sure you�ve helped a great many people, but with the greatest respect, you�ve got this one wrong amigo.

I don�t know to what extent you�ve dealt with Michael, but in a day to day social or business context I can certainly understand why you hold this opinion as superficially he is indeed quite charming and friendly. Unfortunately it�s only when you start to work for him you get to see that he is neither an honourable person or an even vaguely competent director or employer. Although I have never publicly disparaged anyone before, I guess I should provide some reasons to back up what I say, so here goes (and if you are thinking of going to English Unlimited in SLP; this is a very long post, but please, please take the time to read it and save yourself a lot of grief).

Your problems start even before you arrive in Mexico. Even for an English school EU has a very high turnover because it�s such a bad company to work for. This regularly leaves unexpected gaps in the staff that need to be filled and Michael will get you to Mexico at his convenience saying you need to start right away because he is short of teachers. When you get there he has often filled the positions he had open, so you are without a job, or at the very best teaching 4 or 5 different levels over 3 or 4 different shifts starting at 7.30am and finishing at 9.30pm. He purports to have a wage guarantee where he will pay you for a minimum amount of hours if he can�t find work for you � this is a lie sadly. Also any prior agreements you made when being offered a job mean nothing, hours to work etc etc. Not unusual in this game of course, but it does demonstrate he�ll happily lie to you even before you start work.

Michael will steal tax from you. Although most teachers don�t earn enough to pay any tax (according to a Mexican accountant friend), he will deduct 10% which goes nowhere but his pocket. He stays out of trouble with the tax authorities by registering only 3 or 4 employees, when he has 20 or more. If you need any documentation relating to tax, you have to pay him for it, so that he can bribe the relevant authorities to provide the necessary paperwork. So he pays you a wage that is somewhere between a joke and an insult, steals 10% of it, then charges you the cost of the bribe to get the paperwork that covers his own back!

BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU! There are hidden cameras and microphones all over the school that connect to Michael�s office. This is his version of staff management as he doesn�t actually communicate directly with the staff at all (one teacher was here 3 months before he even spoke to her!). This leads to the bizarre situation where staff continually have to sneak off into a �safe zone� where you are beyond his gaze and can actually talk freely without fear of being caught. There�s a lot of this, as the school constantly winds everyone up so much they have to have a good moan about it to each other or simply go mad.

Don�t stand blocking the view from his office window! There are official no go zones in the courtyard outside his office as he doesn�t want unsightly teachers in his field of vision (you�ve got to laugh eh?!!).

You won�t get a contract. Michael will get the office staff to make you sign a contract (fair enough), but he will keep that contract and not sign it himself. The point of this is that if he needs to pull you up on a contractual point he then signs it to present it to you, but if you need to do the same to him, he hasn�t signed it so tough luck. Getting him to sign it is like getting blood out of a stone of course.

Your working visa (which you pay for), may take a very long time to come through because Michael is sometimes a bit slack with bribing the officials at immigrations, with whom he has a very nice arrangement. If he�s up to date with his kickbacks you�ll get it quickly, if not you�ll have a very long wait (this is because the officials like to remind him just exactly why it is worth continuing to pay them on time). This may or may not cause you problems or raise concerns, depending how much you care about working illegally. Personally I couldn�t care less, but I do think if you�re going to use corruption to get stuff done you should at least do it right.

Michael treats his gringo staff badly enough, unfortunately it�s even worse for his Mexican employees, particularly the maintenance and general assistant type guys (who are absolutely brilliant people). He has one of them washing his Mercedes parked right outside the school almost every day. Why � because he can and it shows he�s got money. He also has these guys working at his house at the weekends and they do 12 � 14 hours a day 6 (sometimes 7) days a week and get paid less than 1US$ an hour. The Mexican minimum wage is very low and as gringos my view is that it isn�t our place to comment on this, but Michael treats these guys like absolute crap, simply because he can.

Unfortunately this typifies his attitude to all his employees; they are there solely for his convenience. He is not actually Mexican, but Filipino and has a Filipino maid he flew in to work at his house. He pays this woman so little and deducts so much money to cover the cost of her airfare that she is in effect trapped because she doesn�t earn enough to repay the air fair and return home as she desperately wants to do. She barely earns enough to be able to eat and is so malnourished her case has attracted the attention of a local human rights lawyer who is working on her behalf to improve the situation.

There are many, many other stories about Michael Tan, but as I can�t substantiate them I will not mention them here. However, if only 10% of them are true, then this guy is indeed truly evil.

So that�s Michael Tan. Having lived in 6 countries on 4 continents and travelled to over 40 more, I�m certainly not na�ve or a young idealistic bleeding heart but I can honestly say I have never ever encountered such a thoroughly contemptible human being in my entire life.

I could stop there, but the above are only half the reasons you should avoid English Unlimited like the plague. With this sort of person at the helm, it�s not surprising to find out this isn�t the best school in Mexico. The list of problems here could go on for 10 pages, but here�s a start:

As of a couple of months ago they have restructured the time table so there are no breaks between terms. This means there is no holiday at all other than the public ones (for which you do actually get paid), an Easter break and Christmas 2006. Not much of a life to look forward to and this alone is making a number of teachers leave at the end of this term.

The shifts are pretty awful and would typically be start at 7.30am with classes to 9.00am, then maybe back to school for a class during the day, but nearly always at 5pm until 9.30pm. Saturdays are not optional and run from 9am to 2.00pm. Sunday is largely (or at least partly) taken up with prep for the upcoming week so you�re effectively looking at a 7 day week with no holidays, for 40 pesos an hour and nothing for any prep time at all.

The problems are compounded by the fact that the school is in a very expensive part of town, so most teachers cannot afford to live close by, so you either have to give over you whole day to the school from 7.30am to 9.30pm, or do lots of walking or commuting back and forth several times a day.

Because of the above schedule the whole staff is absolutely exhausted and stressed to the point of illness in a number of cases. Looking around the school people are walking about like ghosts as they are just so tired and fed up with life at English Unlimited.

The teacher coordinator does not help this at all as she has a job title, but no job which makes for an exceptionally poorly run school. She has no power, must refer absolutely everything to Michael and her function is only as a buffer between the teachers and him (as mentioned above he has a considerable distaste for communication with employees) Although she is given no power to do anything, Michael still places considerable pressure on her to perform, which is then transferred to the teachers. Although this is a difficult situation for her, the coordinator doesn�t help matters by being quite nasty to the staff and generally incompetent in all aspects of the job and I can say without any shadow of doubt that nobody in the school has any respect for her whatsoever. In fact she�s currently on holiday in Canada and the school is running better without her.

Learn Spanish � forget it! EU offers free English lessons as the only perk of the job. These are conducted by someone who used to be an admin assistant in the school and was promoted to English teacher without any training. She loves it of course, nice little office, nice job title, but sadly she doesn�t like the work and rarely shows up. One teacher here is schedule for 5 lessons a week and in the first 7 weeks since arriving she has had only 7 lessons out of the 35 she should have had, all missed because Silvia didn�t turn up, mostly without informing the teacher beforehand. If you already have a reasonable level of Spanish and just want conversation practise and don�t mind that the conversation will be 100% centred around gossiping about the school, then Silvia might actually be of some use, if you want to learn grammar or anything technical � forget it, she�s worse than useless.

Office staff � nice enough sometimes, but very lazy, often rude, always inefficient and dictatorial and usually more concerned with flirting with the better looking students than doing their job. The regime in place is so incredibly petty and obstructive to efficient working; at the beginning of term you have to sign for your Tipex, then sign it back in at the end and replace it if you haven�t got it. The �resource library� is a locked cupboard with a few books and you have to ask for the key then the office staff stand there tapping their feet there waiting for you while you find what you need (which almost certainly isn�t there). I could go on, but basically it�s a working environment that any even vaguely professional person would consider as being an absolute disgrace.

Staff appraisals: Better be tough if you�re coming to work here! Staff appraisals are carried out twice a term; a member of the office team will enter your class unannounced, half way through and inform you it�s appraisal time, upon which you must leave the room and she will hand out the appraisal forms and score cards. When finished you then walk back in to a class full of people you know have just spent 20 minutes talking about you, not only your professional performance, but your personal looks etc. Recent appraisals contained such gems as �our teacher has the best body in the school� and �don�t like the dresses she wears� etc, which, for the female teachers especially, is very difficult.

Public humiliation: This is a pretty strong suit at English Unlimited and after the appraisals are complete there is a staff meeting in which everybody�s appraisal scores are published and publicly discussed, so that everyone knows just who is �a bad teacher�. You can�t win here; the expectation placed on the teachers is high, but even the worlds best teacher cannot do well in the EU environment, which is loaded against everyone. For example, the students always complain there isn�t enough audio and video content, but the resources the school provides are absolutely laughable with video and DVD machines that don�t work, if you want to teach a grammar point there is no decent library or any combined pool of knowledge saying chapter 9 of this film teaches XYZ, it all has to come from you (in your time of course). There is communication between teachers to help each other out here, but the system doesn�t allow for any growth of resources because it is just so badly run. The text books are 10 years old and an obstruction to learning rather than an aid. We�d all bin them of course and do it ourselves, but you can�t as you have to follow the books.

This is fine, resources aren�t the issue, I�m sure many of us have sat on the floor of third world schools happily drawing in the dirt because there was no chalk this week, but we didn�t get judged by a system that is so fundamentally flawed it wouldn�t allow us to perform to it�s standards no matter how good we are.

The underlying problem is that this school isn�t about teaching, it�s about making money for Michael, even in the worst schools there is usually at least an element of both. English Unlimited teaches up to grade 6B and there are students in this grade that cannot string together a vaguely coherent sentence. This isn�t because the teachers are particularly bad, but because the whole system is geared to passing exams, rather than actually learning English.

There is an unofficial no fail policy, where you mustn�t fail students unless absolutely necessary (i.e. you have to fix the results to make them pass) because if you do fail them they might not come back next term. This is partly EU�s fault, but partly the mentality in San Luis. Most of the students work for large overseas companies based in SLP, they need English certificates to be able to show they can communicate with their counterparts in the US and Asia to be able to get promotions etc. They often need the certificates, not the ability (like much here, it�s about being seen to do the right thing, rather than actually doing it), so this is what EU delivers, whether it�s warranted or not.

I really could go on, but you�ve probably got the picture!!

Nobody currently working for English Unlimited likes it at all, everyone is exhausted and stressed, many are ill and all feel nothing but contempt towards Michael and Mary (the teacher coordinator). If you�re a teacher who�s in it for the crack, then forget it, with the shift patterns you won�t get to travel or go out socializing very much and the pay to cost of living ratio is very poor. If you�re an experienced professional teacher you will find the regime even more frustrating and it will drive you to distraction. Also if Mary considers you a threat you will be deliberately given awful schedules that encourage you to leave so you don�t threaten her domain.

Sadly, English Unlimited is probably not the worst school in San Luis. People have come here from United English and report things as being worse there. I don�t know if it�s just San Luis, but from what I�m told the general style of English education in Mexico is pretty frustrating (though by whose standards I don�t know and as I have no personal experience of this can�t really make any worthwhile comment).

San Lu�s Potos� in general�well, pleasant enough on many levels, the people have always been extremely friendly and welcoming to me, although I�m told it�s a very different picture if you�re either a Mexican from outside of SLP, or you�re a poorer Mexican. There are lots of parks, the centre is very nice and you�re close to lots of interesting places, although with the EU schedule you may not have any time to see them. For me and many of the other gringos here though, San Luis and it�s people are ultimately very bland and overwhelmingly obsessed with money, status and consumer society.

SLP is a very strange spot, it�s an industrial town and only recently have the career and consumer opportunities presented themselves so understandably the people are climbing over each other to grab their bit of it. The first supermarket appeared 10 years ago, now many of the US chains are here and you can easily get credit to help you grab your part of the American (whoops, Mexican) dream.

People work 26 hours a day to buy yet another big car to park outside to show the neighbours they�ve got money and to give their campesino servant something to wash - no point in having a pet poor person if you don�t show the neighbours you�ve got one. People even go as far as to sell large houses to buy (or even rent) smaller ones, so they can use the money to get a bigger, better car. The thinking being that the car is much more visible at work and in the extended social circle than the house, so you get more status points per $ with a car. Plus you can hop in it, drive the family to Walmart, Home Depot or HEB to buy things you don�t need with money you haven�t got, pop into McDonalds, KFC or Burger King on the way home and there you go, the perfect SLP Sunday.

I can�t speak for Mexico in general as I don�t know it very well (see working schedule info!) and despite the comments above I�m not anti American or anti Mexican in the slightest, it�s just very hard to watch an entire city devote itself to the pursuit of a distorted version of what they think is someone else�s dream and beg you (as a gringo) to please, please judge them by someone else�s standards rather than their own, whilst all the time trying desperately to maintain the deeply traditional Mexican values this schizophrenic society demands.

More worldly Mexicans from SLP often comment even more negatively on the way things are here, so it�s not just the view of one pompous gringo. Divorce, AIDS and car accident figures for SLP are all in the top 3 in the country � it�s as if the city is tearing itself apart, caught between 2 worlds, one it has half forgotten about and one it has only half learned about. Whilst I�ve seen this before in a number of countries, I�ve never seen it played out so relentlessly as here and ultimately (for me a least) it�s hard to respect people that don�t respect themselves or each other in a city where everything is judged solely by your material assets.

So in summary: English Unlimited really, really sucks and Michael Tan is certainly not the sort of person you want to work for. Maybe all schools in SLP are this bad or worse and maybe many schools in Mexico are the same, who knows � who cares. If you�re from North America and you�ve not been outside the country before (as is the case for a number of teaches here) and you�re going south of the border as a new experience (good on you!) but maybe don�t want too much culture shock, then SLP will probably give you a reasonable experience as it�s a nice mixture of the familiar and more genuine Mexican stuff, though the school will still drive you mad! If you�ve got wider experience and have been to say, South America or Asia or have traveled widely in the �real� Mexico, you�ll probably find SLP very bland and stifling and the way of life here will probably frustrate the hell out of you; as one teacher said, �it�s like a cultural experience for people who don�t want one�.

English Unlimited is not worth your time or effort, please, please go somewhere (anywhere) else.

[Guy Courchesne]

Wow...first, I'm sorry it went like that for you. This is the first I've heard in such detail of problems out there. I clearly don't know Michael as well as you must for that scathing post. Michael has only ever been helpful by telephone and email, but, like you say, that's only the superficial tip of the iceberg.

[Samantha]

[Guy Courchesne]

now how did I know you would be posting here?

I stand by exactly what I wrote, when I wrote it. Michael Tan had always been helpful with the three people we had sent there. The feedback I got from one was neither good nor bad. In fact, here it is...

[Samantha]

[Guy Courchesne]

That email came to me as feedback on the 17th of January, 2004, so, only 11 days after she arrived. This teacher ended up staying for about 8 months I think before moving on to a position in Chiapas.

[El Gringo]

Well, I feel I should leap to Guy�s defence here as my post has caused him some heat, which wasn�t my intention at all and I hadn�t even realised he was a placement agent.

As I said at the start of my post, ANYONE would believe Michael Tan to be a nice guy as that is genuinely how he comes across - during the phone interview, during initial phone contact upon arriving in the country and in person (if you�re lucky enough to ever meet him!). Everything about his manner says genuine and pleasant, sadly it�s his way of running a school and treating staff that cause the problems. Upon meeting him for the first time having worked there for a while, several people, including myself have made comments like �wow, he�s so nice, he really doesn�t seem like the total ?$%&* !% I know he is�, so for someone acting as a placement agent, it would be impossible to think Michael is anything other than a decent guy, unless he/she received bad reports from someone they�d placed at EU.

I think the feedback Guy received and posted above is a very fair reflection of how most people would feel after the first week or so of teaching there. Let�s face it, if anyone is shouting about how bad a place is after their first week, they really haven�t given it a chance yet, so most of us would try to be reasonably optimistic or at least neutral about things I would have thought. EU is a story that unfolds more slowly than most and it takes quite a while to get to grips with just how badly the school is run.

As for the lack of hours, well, it certainly was true at the start of this January�s term that things picked up slowly with tentative classes filling up in the second week, so this wouldn�t have raised too many red flags for me either. Anyway, I thought (and I may be wrong here) that anyone going to Mexico to teach and particularly SLP knew they would have to subsidise it themselves in some way. If we want the big bucks we go elsewhere to teach right? The equation might stack up if you�re flying/driving in from North America, but try it if you come from Europe or even Australia (as many teachers at EU do) and you�ll never save enough in a year or two to get the cost of your flight back, so one way or another you�ll come out behind.

This is one of the major gripes with the school in fact; as it isn�t fun or rewarding, it would have to be well paid to stay and of course it isn�t, so people eventually decide they no longer want to bust a gut having a stressful and unpleasant time solely to line Michael�s pockets. The only people it really seems to work for are those who are retired and have a pension to fall back on � if you�re trying to come out ahead or even, forget it in SLP.

In any event, if someone is looking to go to SLP and is considering the monetary perspective, EU is probably your best bet as the other schools there pay more, but people prefer to work for EU simply because they give more hours than anyone else. This is because they have more students than the other schools, because they charge less - everyone want�s to study elsewhere of course, but EU is all the students or their employers can afford.

Also, one teacher�s experience is not another�s and the hours vary greatly. I�ve seen first time teachers being swamped with 35 hours a week covering three levels on crazy shifts and others being given virtually nothing, so it�s real pot luck.

For what it�s worth, Guy sent me a private message enquiring after the well being of the last person he heard of starting there and saying he is re thinking having English Unlimited on his database after my post (and this was sent to me before the first post from Samantha, not in response to it) - I hope you don�t mind me mentioning that publicly Guy. These don�t seem like the actions of an agent who doesn�t care and I don�t think anyone could be blamed for sending people to EU based on phone or e-mail contact with Michael Tan.

[Guy Courchesne]

Thank you for that, and no I don't mind. Regarding the topic of this thread, and the stuff about my job aside, this is a perfect example of how this forum should work in my opinion. Dialogue, not the one-off post (praise, rant, or horror story) and following flamefest. This is how we can all get good, reliable info whether you are a teacher, a placement agent, or school owner. I believe that one of the reasons the Job Information Journal was canned was because of the lack of dialogue it offered.

Consider what happens now. I'm pretty sure than Michael Tan reads the forum. I certainly do as do other placement agents. Job seekers often read as well.

Mr. Tan sees that he should probably make some changes to address these concerns. Placement agencies get valuable feedback and EU could lose a reliable source of staff if these agencies won't send more people. Good, qualified teachers searching on their own aren't likely to apply.

To me, that's what makes this the number one site for job information. We're lucky that in Latin American forums, we self-police well, and there aren't too many trolls. If you haven't, you should try checking out the China forums. Mods must work a 30 hour day in there.

[Samantha]

And there is no such thing as bad publicity obviously. My concern is that the teachers placed there should be followed up on, thereby preventing this from happening (purposely) to another teacher, ever again. A new teacher trusts someone here in Mexico to know what is going on. Those of us that have worked here awhile know full well how many fast talkers and sharks there are out there. And they aren't all Mexican, contrary to popular belief.

[Guy Courchesne]

I don't buy for a minute that you're concerned about anyone. Your posts haven't reflected that at all. Ambulance-chasing is your game, without concern for fact or detail. Reading through your past posts I don't see a lot of help offered.

[Samantha]

Judging from the pm's I receive, there are those that would disagree with you. Anyway how could you possibly have time to read through my past posts...you are too busy power posting on various ESL forums. Now back to the topic at hand....