Job Discussion Forums

[KerriKP]

Even though Mexico is part of North America and it seems so simple to just slip down there and start working, I think it is advisable to go down with your eyes open and few expectations and certainly no ideas of comparison in your head. I worked on the Gulf Coast, in a city called Tampico, for 5 years and held seniority at the language institute where I worked. There were only three or four local teachers who had been there longer than me, and I watched a lot of the foreigners come and go. Some went when their contracts finished, others ran away.

� In a language institute, courses are taught when people can take them, which means a split shift, usually 7 to 10 a.m. and then 4:30 to 9 or maybe even 10 p.m. And working Saturday is a fact of life. But then it�s usually over by 2 p.m.
� Students can be a valuable resource for seeing the city or area that you are in and even for finding reputable service providers, but you have to set boundaries. One pretty blond roommate that I had could not shake her �tour guide� until she got pretty blunt with him after weeks and weeks of inappropriate phone calls from him.
� Don�t expect people to know English. However, if you butcher your Spanish badly enough, that one employee who knows English might materialize from the back room. I had one roommate who kept yelling �Fish! Fish!� at an employee in WalMart, much to my horror, so I stepped in and ordered for her.
� Also ask students what areas of town to stay out of. Mine told me not to call the police unless I wanted to be ripped off again and targeted as a foreigner living without benefit of a Mexican family.
� Mexicans in general do not ever like to say no. Instead they use the Spanish equivalents of tomorrow or soon, and they usually do not ever mean tomorrow or soon. I found tomorrow (in Spanish) usually meant leave now and I will consider it and soon could mean anything from I will do it only if my boss makes me to I�ll do it when I feel like it.
� Public transportation in my area was designed for the operators to make money and occasionally there was only passing regard for the comfort of users. This could mean 4 passengers in the back seat of a route car that should only hold 3 people, people hanging out of the entries and exits of buses and taxi drivers opting using quick lane changes instead of brakes so they can drop you off quickly and grab the next fare.
� Some service providers will take advantage. We once had our portable gas tank taken for filling and it was not returned for three days. The only way we got it returned was by mentioning it to admin at our school and discovering the owner was a student. I also once waited 3 hours past appointment time to see a medical professional and there were no apologies or mention of sorry to keep you waiting.
� I found it safer to pay utility bills (phone included) at the office. I paid the phone bill twice at the bank (once 5 days in advance and once 11 days in advance) and had my service cut both times.
� Also, BanNorte in particular will not help foreigners unless they are carrying their passport. I found it helpful to carry my working papers too, but I usually went straight home after the bank and returned both documents to the secure spot I was instructed by administration to keep them in.
� Students generally don�t do homework, even if you beg them, and seem to think there is absolutely nothing wrong with plagiarism, especially in compositions. We used to get things that were downloaded all the time, so we stopped, at least with compositions, asking for homework, unless the homework was a second draft. I asked students once, when we were studying conditionals, what they would do if they saw someone cheating and an alarming percentage simply said �Continue taking my test, it�s not my business.�
� Maintaining English as a classroom language can be difficult. Younger students, siblings, best friends�different little cliques can form within the room and the language of choice within them is usually Spanish. One teacher in our institute had such a problem with one 19 year old that when she finally started to lose control of temper and told the girl she HAD to speak English, the student glared at her and said, �Make me.� I taught at the intermediate level and maintained a strict policy of speaking English with my students at all times, even socially, unless ordering from wait staff or being introduced to their families.

There is more, good and bad, I mean I am really happy after 5 years of a gas stove and a couple of lighting the boiler accidents that I can use an electric stove again, but I wouldn�t give up my time in Mexico for anything.

[Ben Round de Bloc]

KerriKP,

Yep, that all sounds pretty normal to me.

So, just out of curiosity, why did you leave?

[nighthawk]

KerriKP, you should post this in the Mexico Job Journals section of this site.

[M@tt]

Please please please, let me let me let me,
just kidding.

Please give me any advice on keeping students using English in class. My students always use Spanish. Next semester I will probably set aside a portion of their grades for "oral participation" so I can bully them into speaking in English. I'm really sick of this problem. Someone mentioned that they charged money each time and then had a class party at the end using the money. i can't imagine doing that. what works?? i feel like it's perhaps the most serious problem in my classes.
thanks for any advice.
matt

[MixtecaMike]

[nighthawk]

Hey Matt. I found something that answers your question. Of course, I don�t know if this really works, but you might give it a shot.

Go to www.eslcafe.com. Then click on �Idea Cookbook�. Then click �Discipline�. Then click �Hit them where it hurts�. This is what is written there:

If students in your class are using too much of their native language and tests are part of your curriculum then this form of discipline is very effective. Write all the students names on a chart of paper and post it at the front of the room. When you hear a student use their native language put a mark beside their name. Then, when you test them each mark beside their name becomes 1% off their test score. So if a student scored 90% on the test but has 6 marks beside his name then his test score becomes 84%. I've found that most students are very concerned about their test scores and after they see their marks deducted from the first test they will very quickly start to use English more. Now all I have to do is pick up the felt pen I use to make the marks and every one instantly starts speaking English.
Shelby, Japan

[seanie]

I have to agree with MixtecaMike on this. I think applying penalties to students for speaking their own language is counter-productive. It only gets the students' backs up and is especially not well-received when they know the teacher isn't that fluent in the language of his/her host community. Still, it's a pretty frustrating problem when you hear Spanish all the time, I agree. One of the strategies I use is dictogloss. I read the students a story, then put them in groups of 3-5 to reconstruct it in their own words. You can still hear a lot of Spanish going on ("El profe no dijo eso, wey") but they really DO have to do a little speaking in English because that's the language of the final product, and they bounce English sentences off each other. Another technique is giving each student a short, simple story to read (the funnier or more risqu�, the better) helping them to understand the vocab and pronunciation. Once they've got it, they tell their story to the group..again in their own words. And, yes, as much as I like both these techniques, they do fail sometimes

[KerriKP]

As I said in my first post, I maintained a policy of speaking English with my students, even socially. I mean, in the first year or so, I cannot tell you what a stab in my uninitiated heart it was to have them come back from Spring Break or Christmas vacation and be unable to spit out simple sentences they had well mastered before they left. But then these were adult learners in a language institute. The prevailing attitude behind their motivation was achieving the "percentage" of English contractually required by their employers to keep their jobs or get a promotion.

One of my most favorite memories is of a conversation class I had in Chile. It was scheduled for the lunch hour and often a lot of tummies wer rumbling full boar. So one Monday I suggested that we choose a restaurant, confirm it Wednesday and then for Friday's class, meet there. Oh did the class get behind that. But for me, the great thing was we had this grandmother in class who absolutely refused to speak unless spoken to. Then we had this young mother who wouldn't shut up unless asked. Somehow it had come to be known that the grandmother's grandson was in the hospital. People expressed genuine concern for his health the week in the days leading up to the lunch and the grandmother mentioned hoping to know more by the weekend. At the lunch, the grandmother arrived right after me and I began the slow, dental like procedure of drawing her out. That is until the young mother arrived and asked her how her grandson was. I still get shivers. It was like smashing the Hoover Dam, that was all the prompt the grandmother needed.

Take home lesson? Social events can be great icebreakers. Also...and I think someone has already mentioned, find a topic they can't help but respond to. One teacher in Chile walked into his class on a Saturday morning and told the whole group, which included a priest, that he was sorry he was late but he had been watching the Pope make some stupid speach. I heard the gasps from next door. But I also heard the animate, surprisingly respectful stream of conversation that followed. In Mexico, when the lesson called for the students to discuss world landmarks, I had small groups "educate" me on Mexican landmarks. By the end of my tenure I knew the story of the castle Chapultapec (my apologies if that's spelled wrong) WAY better than some of my students.

P.S. To the person who asked why I left: one of the locals told me when I arrived in Tampico that it was the second most humid populated place on the face of the earth. The month I left (August of 2003), I think it was 36C, 75% humidity (and higher) EVERY day from like 6 a.m. til midnight. It gets so exhausting. So does dealing with aspects of the "it's always worked this way, so why, after hiring you for your experience, should we actually listen to you and benefit from your experience and try something different"?

[jobe3x]

Kerri,
Where are you now? Are you still teaching for a living?

[KerriKP]

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

No. Customer care, inbound call centre.