Job Discussion Forums

[cowabunga84]

I have been offered a position teaching sciences at a private bilingual school in Morelia. From my research it appears that there isn't much of a foreign teacher population in Morelia. Between sending my resume and being offered the position it only took a week. This is my first time teaching abroad so lets just say I am a little green.

Can anyone share what they know about Morelia. Are there other foreign teachers there? How is cost of living? What could I expect? What is there to do during my time off?
The wage is 15,000 pesos per month with a couple other incentives. I gather that wage is a reasonably good one. Can one live well, travel, and save? Broad questions, I know, but anything in the right direction helps.

Cheers!!

[MELEE]

There are several posters who have lived in Morelia, I think for its size there is a reasonable population of foreign teachers.

I lived there from Jan to July 2005, but I was on sabbatical and the closest I got to the teaching sceen was hearing language school commercials on the radio. They have all the major chains there and numerous bilingual schools, so you shouldn't be alone.

Morelia is a beautiful historic city. I lived in a tiny house way up on the hillside outside of town, near my husband's school. I suspect rents in the center of town are rather expensive. We were paying a thousand pesos for our little one bedroom house. We rarely ate out, so hopefully someone else can give you an idea about cost of living. At the time our monthly income was about 14,000 for a couple and two babies and it was more than enough, so I suspect you will do okay on 15,000 is that before or after deductions? (Mexico have fairly high income taxes)

As for what to do in your time off, Morelia is a wonderful city, you will be able to do what ever it is you like to do! Concerts, movies, lectures, shopping, parks, hiking, art, museums, you name it. There are also a lot of fabulous places within day trip distances. I loved the town of TzinTzunTzan, besides being fun to say , it had good architecture (a magical church court yard!), crafts, views, a lake, ruins, etc.

[Polly0607]

Your salary of 15,000 sounds good, but you may be surprised at the deductions, taken out. Of course, that depends on the school.

Teachers at my school with that salary only clear 5,000 pesos every two weeks. Some of the deductions could be:

Tax
IMSS (gov�t health insurance)
INFONABIT (housing credit and savings plan)
Extra heath insurance
Savings plan
Pension Plan
AFORE (gov�t pension plan)

That�s all I can think of right now. A single person would probably be O.K., but if you are bringing a family, it is really hard to send a couple of kids to private school with that salary. Also if you have student loans, that will make it more difficult.

It all depends on your expenses.

[MELEE]

Polly, I'm not real up on Mexican labor laws but the employer, not the employee should pay the INFONAVIT and AFORE contributions, unless of course you've already gotten a house through INFONAVIT, then you start paying it off, and for AFORE you can choose to put in more, but you would do that through the adminstrator of your AFORE not through your paycheck (I think) IF your school offers an additional pension plan you should be able to opt out of it, especially if you aren't looking to live in Mexico long term.

My deductions are ISR (Income tax more than 10%!!!!)
IMSS (national health which includes a lot of other little things if you use them) You should be able to opt out of "extra health insurance"
My INFONAVIT payments (if you haven't bought a house on credit you won't pay this)
and the savings plan (which you get back with interest once a year)

[cowabunga84]

Thanks for the input! Encouraging to know that there is, in fact, a foreign base. Since I would be the only foreign teacher at the school, I was unaware.

The 15k is actually the net earnings. The wage before taxes is 18,100 pesos again with some food stipends, bonus, and other things. Fortunately, I do not have any heavy expenses . Just a recent college grad trying to gain a little international experience with making a little $$$.

What about weather? I understand the climate is a bit mild.

How is transportation in and out of the city?

[MELEE]

Yes, the climate is mild. I'm not sure where you are from, but freezing, 0� C / 32� F would be rare, maybe once or twice in Dec/Jan. April and May are the hottests months it might get up to 36�C/90� F in the middle of the day. The rainy season is from May to October but its not uncommon for the rains to start later than that.
I'm not the best to say about transport, because we have a car, but there is a new modern bus terminal and frequent buses to other cities. And there are numerous local bus and minibus routes all over the city.
You also might like to know there is a new superhighway to the coast, meaning you can get to the nearest beach in under 4 hours, Ixtapa/Zihuantenjo is like 6 hours.

[hlamb]

I tried Morelia before moving to Cuernavaca. I found work there easily enough but it wasn't enough hours. I was working at 2 different language schools and would barely have been able to cover my rent. I found rent to be pretty expensive in the centre-it was hard to find a decent furnished place that was clean. I chose to move to Cuernavaca because I had a much better offer here.

With 15,000 pesos you'll do absolutely fine. You should be able to eat out and explore a bit. Bus travel to other places is really good with lots of options of different companies and destinations.

You might want to check out morelia connect. It is a yahoo mailing list and you can ask lots of specific questions there about where to live and visit. Most members are retired Americans but there are a few other young people and teachers as well.

[jillford64]

15,000 net is a really good salary for Morelia. The average teacher here in Morelia probably makes 6000 to 8000.

[Polly0607]

I think you are right, MELEE, probably a couple of deductions I mentioned are not paid for by me, I guess I was making a list of what items appear on my cheque stub.

Unfortunately, my school does take into account what I cost them, including the benefits they have to pay for. They are reluctant to raise our salaries because of this.

15,000 net is a good salary. I agree. Definitely worth trying it for a couple of years to see what the work environment is like.

[delacosta]

15,000 net sounds fantastic to me. DO you mind me asking for whom are you working, how you came across the job and what are your qualifications?
Morelia is a much sought after location, kind of like Oaxaca City (used to be, I guess) and getting jobs that paid enough to live well always seemed to be a challenge from what I recall from many of those on this board who have tried.
How'd you manage it?

[M@tt]

sounds like the TEC. that's pretty standard pay for them.
i visited morelia while working in veracruz in order to interview at the Tec there. at that time they had just completed a brand new, very unusual but basically very nice building. the campus is definitely "out there", about 25 minutes from the center of town (morelia is not big, so 25 minutes is almost like a different city). it's on a hillside and the prepa and profesional are in the same building. one reason i didn't take the job is that i would have been forced to teach a mix of college and high school classes. i had already been in mexico long enough to know that i hated tec high school students and had no desire to be in the classroom with them, so i ended up not taking the job.

morelia is nowhere near as popular as oaxaca, but my impression of it was positive. colonial, mid-sized, nice surroundings, definitely very nice weather, but i felt like it was too quiet for me. if you're from a small town you will feel fine there, but if you like big city sights and sounds, morelia will seem very provincial.

i could be entirely wrong, but if indeed you are talking about ITESM, get some teachers emails and contact them about the situation there. it was a complete mess when i went and they couldn't retain anyone. things could be better now--that was over two years ago, which in Tec years is an eternity. half the staff has surely been fired and replaced, possibly by more competent people.

in sum: morelia = good if you don't need a big city
the job: if it's ITESM, thumbs up with reservations--talk to current teachers before signing anything!!

and good luck!