Job Discussion Forums

[aisha]

i'm hoping to go to itto and what i was wondering is would it be better to take the course in may and try to find a job in june or would it be best to wait until after summer to find a job, like in august for example?

[moonraven]

Not many schools hire in June. The summer months are downtime.

[Wouter]

I have no idea what low season is for finding a job. We have a school where we teach spanish and english and for this reason know that the summer vacation for the schools in Mexico are from around 27 of June till the 19th of August. For us this means extra people because we organize summer courses. I dont know what other schools do. Can imagine that the bigger ones are closed as well.

Are you planning for next year by the way?

Wouter

[moonraven]

Most language schools organize summer courses--specifically because they have considerably fewer regular students then, and they do not want to to reduce their teachers' hours. Wouter's is the first one I have heard about that hires folks to staff them.

At the Harmon Hall I directed, I paid the teachers double for their hours spent teaching the special summer courses--as we did NOT have a downtime, and their teaching those courses was above and beyond the call of duty. I also gave them volunteer teachers' aides--kids 11 to 13 who had already completed the TOEFL course--to run interference with the children.

K-12 type schools also do not hire in June--they start up again in August.

[Wouter]

As a reply to moonraven. Our course start every 10 weeks so we have a course going during the holidays. To get some extra students in we organise summer courses. For this reason we need extra teachers for this period.

Wouter

[moonraven]

You going to give those "extra teachers" documents and salary guarantees so that they can get FM-3s--or is this just an under the table and out the door caper?

My money says it's the latter.

[Wouter]

The summer vacations are only for two months and with a maximum of two extra hours a day so even if you wanted to you wouldnt get an FM3. Also I dont think they you would get one because there is a minimum you have to earn to get a FM3 as far as I know. I dont think with these amount of hours and the money you would make, you will get an FM3.

To get an FM3 will take you about a month. Mine took even longer. Why should you aply for an FM3, which cost you 2600 pesos, when you salary will be for two hours a day for two months 3600 pesos.

You wrote FM-3s. I'm not familiar with all versions of a FM3. Could you tell me where the "s" stands for?

Wouter

[moonraven]

S usually indicates pluralization. In this case as well. You said teachers. Plural. I asked if they would be given FM-3s. Plural. So that they would be working legally. I had bet that they would not be working legally. And I was right.

Your analysis proves my point. These are not real jobs. Folks will be paid a pittance under the table, and then booted out the door.

I don't think you should be touting illegal employment and other rip-offs here on Dave's.

Incidentally, could you tell me where you learned English?

[Wouter]

Hi moonraven,

Thank you for your reply. Could you tell me if it is possible to provide a teacher with a FM3 for two months. I actually have no idea.

I think this are jobs. Some people are actually looking for this jobs because they only have two months or less. At the moment we have one that only good teach for a month.

Often we have teachers with not much experience and we observe their classes and than sit in together to go over the stuff they did. Till now we never had a not happy teacher. I must say this is the first year that we opened.

We never "booted" teachers out of the door. Even teachers that visit us searching for a job we help with lists from schools or websites where they can search. We have one teacher that teaches here for more than six months.

I'm curious how many teachers work in Mexico and have an FM3. Most of the schools dont provide a FM3 when your not working longer than 3 months and i guess there are a lot of teachers that travel from place to place and dont stay longer than 3 months with a job.

My English I learned at my school in Holland where I come from. Maybe not the best English but I bet it is better than your dutch.

Wouter

[Ben Round de Bloc]

[Wouter]

Hi Ben Round de Bloc,

Could you advice me then what I should do if we have an internship or a teacher for less than 6 months. Also do you know something about minimum payment for getting an FM 3? Can you get a FM 3 when you are working only 2 hours a day?

About teachers only working for a short time of period. They do exist. We have them all of the time. I cant imagine that we are the only school that take people in for less than half a year.

Also the problem that we have that the amount of students fluctuate a lot. So the amount of classes sometimes varies from week to week. This his horrible to organise with teachers.

[moonraven]

Wouter:

You have some problems with logic here--and I do NOT believe they attributable to your not being a native speaker.

My Dutch is, yes, also quite marginal, even more so than your English--BUT I am not teaching Dutch.

Nor am I trying to justify hiring teachers illegally in Mexico. And I certainly am not recruiting them on Dave's! Every teacher I have ever hired received his or her FM3. Period.

I, like Ben Round the Block, have also never met any teachers or prospective teachers who wanted to work illegally and move around from place to place. I have worked in the following states: Morelos, Puebla, Mexico, Coahuila and Oaxaca. In every case in the schools where I worked ALL of the teachers were working legally, and to the best of my knowledge no one turned up on our doorstep requesting illegal work.

It's really very simple, Wouter: Don't hire "interns" for 6 months or less. Hire them for a year and exploit them like crazy while giving them "training" like some other places do. That way they can get an FM3. (I am, yes, being sarcastic.) For 2 hours a day you can get an FM3 if you receive a living wage for working only 2 hours a day.

I directed a language school for 4 years in the state of Morelos. None of my teachers worked less than 6 hours per day plus 5 hours on Saturday. Initially, some were foreigners. They received FM3s--and the school paid for all the cost.

If you are not in a position to hire folks legally, and guarantee them a living wage, you should not be in business. Period.

It doesn't matter whether you rip people off with the best of intentions or not--you are still ripping them off. And someone who you ripped off will report you to the INM office sooner or later--and you will be fined a bundle.

[Ben Round de Bloc]

[Wouter]

Hi Tim,

Yes, we are strugeling a bit with finding the best solution for both our students and our teachers. The problem at the moment is that our experience is that Mexicans can�t pay for a whole course at once. The simply dont have the money.

The course are devided in 10 weeks for each level. So they sign up for a level for 10 weeks but the pay every 15 days as is quite common in Mexico. What we see is that it often happens that people dont show up any more and other people want to start half way.

This wont be a problem when you are a big school but for us this is. We only have three class rooms where the biggest is only for 7 persons.
We only give 5 hours a day english which means a maximum of 5 hours per teacher. Ofcourse not all classes are full every hour. For this reasons we only can offer to some teachers 2 or 3 hours a week.
Sometimes we start with a class of three people and half way through there is only one left or everybody drops out.

What we try to do and a lot of other schools dont do, is keep the levels seperate. We have seen a lot of school where they have all kinds of levels together in one class and then you are more a tutor than you can give a class. This makes of course the classes smaller and more expensive.

Here in GDL none of the teachers that I know work legally as having a FM3 and I can tell you, I know several. This is not only with the small companies but I also know some big companies who work with business like HP where they teachers dont have a FM 3.

I must say that we are working to get everything legal but this is still in progress with the acountant. He is going to advice us how we have to do this and what the extra cost are going to be.

Being a new school will take time to get everything sorted out. It's good to here everybodys opinion. We defenitly are not exploiding teachers as the teachers that we had were all very satisfied and had a real good time.

Also I think you only can speak from exploid when you are making a lot of money your self. I will tell you, we are not. Both me and my partner live form 5000 pesos a month and we work from 8 in the morning till 9 at night with of course the 2 hour break.

I�m not complaining because live is great in Mexico.

About the decent part-time position. This is an option for a bigger school. The problem is that we are talking about 2 hours a day. We would like to pay all teachers 5000 a month but curently with the 50 students we have we cant offord this.

I have the feeling that moonraven is thinking that we are a big company that is making a lot of money by underpaying their employees. I will tell this is not the case.

I think we treat our teachers very good. My partner worked for several other school here in GDL and was treated very bad. Had to pay for copies that he made for his lesson plans. Had to pay for using the internet and always had problems with getting his money by the end of the month.

Again I�m not complaining but I think some people are a little bit harsh and as I see it not really realistic.

Wouter

[moonraven]

You don't only need an accountant to help you "get legal". You need a lawyer. Then you need to turn in your legal documents to INM so that they can decide if you are approved to have foreigners work for you.

I suggest you get some legal advice now, before you find yourself in very big trouble.