Job Discussion Forums

twoface · Joined: 12 Nov 2004 Posts: 31

Taking work home may or may not be a good thing. What I do know is this; as a former store manager taking work home was a slippery slope of unpaid slavery for an ungratful company. I gave it up as a bad idea. I get paid for the work I do period. If I were in a situation where I was sharing in the company profits or was getting a productivity bonus it might be different.
What Guy said about wi-fi hotspots made me wonder how many of you have laptops. Is it a big help? I was thinking of buying one before I came down to Mexico to use as a teaching aid and for other business as well.
Are there many hotspots in Mexico? Is it advisable to buy a computer in Canada or in Mexico? I can certainly see the advantages of keeping grades and other records organized, as well as lesson plans and downloading from the net. What about the hook up? Is it readily available, is it inexpensive? Sorry about all the questions. Just answer them, now! Wink

Guy Courchesne · Joined: 10 Mar 2003 Posts: 9650 Location: Mexico City

DO NOT buy anything more complicated than a light bulb in Mexico. Most of it is imported and twice the price in Canada/US. I paid 1400 us for a top-model laptop in Chicago. The same model, one year later is still retailing at 2200 us in Mex City.

I think a laptop is a great tool for classes or for general travel. Couple it with a digicam and you can have a lot of fun and do a lot of work. The only issue is security. You would have to keep it hidden when crossing borders or moving around in both urban and rural settings.

On wi-fi hotspots, pretty much only the big urban centers have them. Few are public access by design...those that are public access are from people or companies too lazy to secure it. If you know your stuff, hacking a secure wireless connection is fairly easy.

Big providers like TELMEX offer pay services in various locations around the republic. In Mex City, Starbucks (cringe...) has free service.

If you go dial up, there are numerous providers. 10-20 us a month gets you a dial up connection. It's the plug-in that's hard to find. Any internet cafe will give you an ethernet connection for high speed, at 1-3 dollars an hour.

If you head out to the beach or somewhere in the 'hot country' your laptop will suffer. Extra heat and a lot of dust have brought down 2 laptops of mine, so, be prepared to have it serviced a few times per year.

twoface · Joined: 12 Nov 2004 Posts: 31

Info received, logged and appreciated.

Guy Courchesne · Joined: 10 Mar 2003 Posts: 9650 Location: Mexico City

Anytime...

Twisting in the Wind · Joined: 20 Oct 2003 Posts: 571 Location: Purgatory

At one school I taught at in the past 5 years different teachers contracted "prep time" with the school at the time of hire. That meant that there were some teachers getting paid for prep time (i.e. paperwork, grading papers, taking attendence, lesson planning, etc) and some teachers who were not :>( This created sort of a hush hush hierarchy amongst the staff. We all knew there were these teachers but weren't exactly sure who they were unless they told us, and the admin strongly, of course, frowned on teachers getting paid for prep time talking about it with the other teachers.) It created, in short, a bad working environment. But, I would encourage the OP and any others who are reading to negotiate with the school the next time they change jobs. Apparently, unbeknownst to me, there is/was a lot of leeway when a school hires and one teacher's contract is not necessarily the same as another's.This is the same for prep time, as for medical/dental ins, and other perks. Just call me "naive," I guess.

denise · Joined: 23 Apr 2003 Posts: 3419 Location: finally home-ish

I guess another related issue is whether teachers get paid an hourly rate or a monthly salary. I have always had monthly salaries, so I have never bothered to figure out how many hours I actually work.

I have a laptop. Brought it with me from the States. It is really convenient--far more comfortable than the computer lab at school, which has limited hours, slower internet connections, and invariably several broken computers at any given time.

d

guest of Japan · Joined: 28 Feb 2003 Posts: 1601 Location: Japan

I get a monthly salary. I only do work at home if Ive fallen behind in marking student assignments, have a lesson coming up - but didn't have the time to prepare it, and final exam gradings. Usually, I don't work at home, but sometimes the occasion arises.

ntropy · Joined: 11 Oct 2003 Posts: 671 Location: ghurba

denise · Joined: 23 Apr 2003 Posts: 3419 Location: finally home-ish

Could get steamy...

d

maymun · Joined: 06 Dec 2004 Posts: 8

Brooks · Joined: 16 Jan 2003 Posts: 1369 Location: Sagamihara

I used to when I was at the junior high. I thought it was strange that the Japanese teachers would stay after the sun had set to do their marking.
Because we won`t do it at home, they said. And why not? Especially if they had a spouse or kids.

Later (after a year in Japan)I thought, why bother. By the time I got home I didn`t have the energy. And if I had a beer then I got into my relaxing mode and couldn`t be bothered.

Since I have been at the high school, sometimes I do prep at home. It tends to be on Sunday night. I have sleepy students on Monday morning so it helps if I have a decent plan.
I find that teaching at high school requires more energy, so generally, when I leave school, I am done.

valley_girl · Posted: Wed Jan 19, 2005 8:13 pm Post subject:

I am on salary and am supposed to work 35 hours a week. Contact hours = 25. I actually spend a bit more than 35 hours at work a week on average - between the classroom and the office - and I do another 10-15 hours of work per week from home (lesson prep, handouts, and correcting tests/assignments).

Deconstructor · Joined: 30 Dec 2003 Posts: 775 Location: Montreal

Taking work home is the only aspect of the teaching profession that I truly dislike. I have 217 students in 7 different classes from primary five and six to all secondary levels, average class size: around 30. This meant that if I skipped corrections even for a day when I got home, I'd fall so far behind that I'd have to get my wife to help me. In fact, once things got so bad that I was going with 3 hours of sleep a night for a month to meet the deadlines.

So I got to thinking the next academic year and designed exams so easy to correct, that I could finish 50 of them in an hour. This meant that the student evaluations were neither reliable nor even valid, but better to hell with their education than my health.

Deconstructor · Joined: 30 Dec 2003 Posts: 775 Location: Montreal

Hey Maymun,

Does your screen name by any chance mean "ugly" in Turkish? I know just a little bit of Turkish and this word has come up in a context that made me think it meant "ugly".

bluffer · Posted: Wed Jan 26, 2005 5:21 am Post subject:

ntropy - any chance of you reducing the size of your avtar? Its really screwing up the formatting of the page.

Work home? Nope. I get paid 8 til 4 and everything I need to do, I do in that time. Home time is home time. If I think of an idea out of work I write it down but nothing else til the next day.

I learned long ago, as someone else mentioned, start to do extra work unpaid and then it becomes standard and its resented when you stop doing it.