Job Discussion Forums

[C76]

Hello,

Do any of you work at Colegio Bilingue Madison? Do you have any information that you can share? I'm very curious about what it's like. How are your accomodations? Are they within walking distance of your school? I don't drive, and don't know what the transit system is like in Mexico. Also, in terms of your hours--I understand that Colegio's teachers have to start at 7-ish. Does it take its toll on you? (I don't mean to sound immature. I've just never worked that early before.)

Any answers would be greatly appreciated.

[Ben Round de Bloc]

I don't know about that school, but I can comment about the hours.

For most of the 9 years that I've been teaching in Mexico, my schedule has been starting my first class of the day at 7:00 a.m. and ending my last class of the evening at 9:00 p.m. Of course, I don't teach all of the hours all day long between those times. Currently, mine is a split shift of mornings 7:00 - 10:00 a.m. and evenings 4:00 - 9:00 most days of the week. I teach at a state university where English classes are open to the public as well as to university students. We offer English classes at the times of the day when there's the most demand for them. We usually have lots more students enrolled for classes during the evening shift than during the morning shift. In this city most schools, including language schools, run on similar time schedules.

I drive to/from school, which takes about 15-20 minutes one way. If I used city buses, I would have to allow 45 minutes to an hour for the trip and change buses only once. Either way that's minimal travel time compared to many other Mexican cities, I think.

I can tolerate working split shifts and traveling back and forth to school twice a day, but it wouldn't be my first choice of schedule if I were given the opportunity to choose.

[C76]

Split shifts, eh?

Hmmm. *thinking*

I hadn't given that type of schedule much thought before

Thanks for the reply, Ben.

Still, I'm curious...

Anyone else have any wisdom to share?

[ls650]

[anne302]

Hi I just visited Instituto Anglo Britanico which is part of Colegio Bilingue chain. Right now I am editing this message. It seemed like a great school when I went to visit last month. I have found out that they are very unprofessional. I just got an e-mail from them saying that since they did not have all my paper work they gave my job to someone else. So I would think twice about getting involved with this school.

[C76]

I see.

Ultimately it's a matter of convenience.

@ Anne,

Thanks for the info. I emailed you a while ago. I think I had a few silly questions...


I'll send you a PM.

[Flo]

I thought I would share my negative experience with Colegio Bilingue Madison. About 3 months ago I was in the process of applying for a job with this insitution. I literally spend countless hours preparing all the information they required to complete my application packet. I was then contacted, via e-mail, by someone who wanted to interview me on the telephone. One 3 different days I waited at home for her to call, yet no one ever called. Finally, the school stopped replying to my e-mails, and I looked for work elsewhere.

Now, 3 months later, the school has offered me a job and has a contract for me to sign. No thank you! Either they have really bad business practices, or they are extremely disorganized. I think they are treating me as a last chance candidate. I have not responded to their e-mails. I thought I would let them wait and wonder, like they did with me.

It seems like this institution is not professional or organized.

[moonraven]

They offered me a job three years ago, after a telephone interview, and I did receive a contract to sign. I decided not to go with them not only because I had received better offers, but also because the person with whom I had the most contact by e-mail was disorganized and silly--two defects which grind my gears very rapidly.

[mikeparker21]

I noticed various posts about Colegio Bilingue Madison, and I thought it my duty to share my experiences with the school. This is quite lengthy, but a lot happened in my time there and I recommend anyone interested in working at Madison to invest 10 minutes in reading it. You might just thank yourself for it later!

As far as getting the job was concerned, that was relatively easy. I was working in Guadalajara in December and simply phoned them up and arranged an interview for January. When I arrived, I spoke with the principal, had a look round the school and moved into the luxury appartment opposite, for which the school was contributing rent on top of a 12,000 peso a month salary - very good by local standards.

It sounds like the dream situation for a TEFL teacher, and indeed it was.... for about a week. The first thing that set alarm bells ringing was the fact that all the other teachers were complaining - and I mean ALL of them.

The most common gripe was the students. As schools go, Madison is pretty expensive so most of the students' parents were well off, to say the least. Not surprising then that, in addition to the usual dose of adolescent hormones, they were spoilt too. I taught Physics and Chemistry to these pubescent darlings, but I didn't need my degree to tell me that hormones + money = attitude. And lots of it.

To put it simply, they had absolutely no interest in learning whatsoever. And I mean ZERO. It was challenging enough just to shut them up, let alone try to squeeze some knowledge into their heads. I'd previously taught a year in Guadalajara and taken my Teacher Training there, so I knew all about dynamic classes and ways to keep the students interested. Being aware that not everybody finds science riveting, I was careful to plan my classes to be as dynamic as possible, getting the students out of their seats whenever possible. However, what I found was that the more dynamic I made the class, the less control of them I had. It reached a point where I had to cut down on this before someone got injured.

As you can probably tell from the title, Colegio Bilingue Madison is a bilingual school, which means that almost all regular classes are taught in English - science, mathematics, even English literature. In a place like Monterrey which is very US-oriented, this is a big plus for the parents. The only problem is that the books they use aren't designed for the bilingual system - they're the same books that an American kid of the same age would be using at school. But of course, an American kid speaks English outside of school. The school was very insistent on the exclusive use of English in the classroom - no Spanish! - but the majority of the kids just didn't have the level to understand or reproduce the often technical English that appeared in their science textbooks. Atomic structure is hard enough for most 13 year-olds in their own language. In short, it seemed that the whole system, whilst promising in theory, was completely unrealistic in practice and also led to resentment among students that they were forbidden to use their mother tongue 6 hours a day. Obviously that didn't do wonders for discipline either.

The school claims to use a 'constructivist' technique approved by the IBO, an international chain of schools, and that they train all there teachers in how to use it. Well, I taught there 3 months and I honestly couldn't tell you what that was, let alone claim to have used it in class.

Another issue - the administration. On the academic side, both the primary (elementary) and secondary (high school) sections were run by just one person. This same person also had a nasty habit of jetting off to Mexico City for a conference every week, so you can imagine she wasn't that easy to get hold of. Even when she was available, she wasn't much use because it seemed she had no idea what it was like trying to teach these kids.

These were my experiences as a foreign teacher, but I was living with my Mexican girlfriend, who'd moved up with me from Guadalajara and was also teaching at Madison, this time third grade. Or was it first grade? Actually we were never quite sure, because she was given third grade initially but told she would be moved to first grade... but they weren't sure when. So they put her to work, like me she was the third teacher in her post in 5 months.

What they didn't give her, however, was a syllabus. Now, even a well-trained and experienced teacher like herself is going to have difficulty when she doesn't know what the heck she's meant to be teaching her kids. The only way to find out? The incredible disappearing coordinator. But she'd probably be moving to first grade soon anyway. Soon. Probably.

This went on for three weeks, until my girlfriend complained, mentioned a few offers she'd received from other schools and was promptly made the permanent teacher for third grade... until the following week when another teacher arrived from the U.S. and was given her class, while she was bumped down to first grade after all.

In the meantime our first payslips were arriving. The school had an intersting policy of paying Mexican teachers half the wage they paid foreign teachers, no matter how well qualified or experienced they were. This meant that there were teachers with no experience or teaching qualifications who were automatically earning DOUBLE what my girlfriend was earning despite having a 4-year teaching degree and 5 years' experience. Why? Because they were native speakers of English. A plus if you happen to be one, but it shows you what kinds of scruples they have if they discriminate against their own people.

We knew about the pay situation beforehand but, as that seemed to be the going rate for Mexicans in Monterrey, she swallowed her pride and took a paycut. To add insult to injury, however, what they ended up paying her was even less than what they'd agreed to. The director's reason? She didn't have any teaching experience! Her 5 years at the University of Guadalajara and at a local college didn't count apparently. They still hired her though, didn't they?! The director also made a comment about how all the teachers were so happy there - which added to our suspicions that she wasn't entirely in touch with the mood on the shopfloor.

Believe it or not, 3 months was all we could stand. Although the salary was excellent, I didn't come to Mexico for the money, and it wasn't worth 35 hours of pure misery a week. And if you're not a native speaker, forget about it!

That was quite a long explanation, but if anyone has any questions or would like more info, please feel free to email me at [email protected] .

[moonraven]

I am truly sorry to hear about your experience at Colegio Madison, but it was about what I would have expected. Private schools in Mexico usually (not always) pay well, but you earn your money. I spent 3 years in those kinds of environments, and most of the time I enjoyed myself immensly with the students and they really learned--because I made them responsible for their own learning. It's not our job as teachers to "squeeze some knowledge into their heads"--that creates an Us vs. Them dynamic that is very negative, and students will grind you into chorizo very quickly if you take that approach. I could say a lot more about this, but I think I did that in other threads a few months ago.

[mikeparker21]

Thanks for your comment Moonraven. As I said in my post, I made my classes at Madison as dynamic as possible, at least at the beginning. I know that this is very important with teenagers, even more so in Mexico, where learning through dynamic activities is much more effective than traditional-style 'chalk and talk'.

However, I quickly found that the students lacked the basic discipline (and I mean VERY basic) to pull these activities off in class without mayhem breaking loose. My girlfriend found the same with the primary kids, so much so that she was afraid to leave the classroom for 2 minutes for fear that someone might get seriously hurt. No exaggeration.

In the end, I had to resort to more controlled methods or we wouldn't have gotten anything done. They have exams to pass - every month at Madison - and, as I was warned by one student, "if we don't pass our exams, our parents will complain to the principal and you'll get fired".

The lack of support from the administration made what was already a hard job impossible. With that support, e.g. backing us over the kids, training us in their 'constructivist' method as promised, and... er... being there, it might have been a little easier.

Also, as a science teacher I was hampered by a woeful selection of lab equipment. Ten test tubes for classes of 26, bottles labelled BY THE KIDS with some degree of uncertainty as to their true contents ("sulfuric acid?"). Not much use to a teacher who's trying to make science fun.

I agree with you that the situation would probably be the same at other schools. I turned down a later offer from another school who wanted to pay me 50% more for that very reason.

My advice to anyone considering working at this type of school is to make sure you know what you're letting yourself in for!

[moonraven]

Mike: It's not about "making your classes dynamic"--that's ESL training b.s. Education is a dialog, which has as its goal making both the teacher and the student conscious.

[some waygug-in]

Not that I am any expert, being a nobody with BFA and some EFL experience. There are some situations that are just intollerable, and unless you've worked in a place like that, it's difficult to comprehend just "how bad it can be".

Not to argue with anyone here, I am without a doubt the least qualified to comment, I just mean to say that I can identify with the comments above. I have been in a couple of places where any kind of teaching or education was simply impossible. The classes were more closely related to baby-sitting. No matter what you try or don't try, they will find ways to make it a waste of time for you. When the students know that they hold more power than you do, then there's not much hope.

You may as well sit and play cards all class because they won't do anything anyway. As for exams, it really doesn't matter what marks you give them, because the director will go behind your back and boost the marks anyway. I really wonder why they even go through the sharade of exams anyway, they might just as well have "movie night".

I suppose I will get a lot of flak for this, pero eso es la vida.

Suerte

[moonraven]

What did YOU do when the director changed kids' grades? When that subject came up at one of the private schools I worked at in the north of Mexico, I said I was 100% opposed to changing kids' grades, and that if they chose to do that to my grades, I would go to the Secretary of Public Education with my grade book and expose them. End of discussion.

Mexico has one of the lowest levels of education as measured by the OCDE--second to last place, just above Brazil. I don't think we are here to contribute to the mediocrity of the "system", nor support corruption.

[some waygug-in]

What could I do? I handed in the marks to the director, she acknowleged what I had given each student, and then after I left, she promptly changed the grades because she didn't want to deal with "complaints" from parents of failed students.

They told us to our faces that we were supposed to give honest grades according to students efforts, but if we ever tried to fail anyone................... oh brother!

Why did they even bother with marks and exams and such? It would have been better just to call the classes "activitiy" classes with no grades, just attendance.