Job Discussion Forums

[staedtler]

I've been offered a position at William Caxton College in Quito, but I'm hesitant to take it. The terms of the contract seemed, a little unorthodox, to say the least: The contract will say my monthly salary is X amount, though in reality, I will (supposedly) receive almost 2X. Also, all forms/documents sent to the government will have a different name on them (the name of a national), as I will be working on a student visa. Additionally, the position is for teaching the sciences, in English, though I studied English language and literature in college. I don't really feel prepared or qualified to teach science courses....I can't even recall the last time I had a science course.

My questions:
Does this seem like normal practice for schools (Ecuador, South America, everywhere)?
Does anyone have any information about the school? I was only able to find their website online and not much other information.
Also, I was told the class size ranges from 3 to 28, though the average is 23. I know this is a lot of students; I've had some experience with really large, often unruly classes, but never with ESL classes. This is will be my first foray into ESL (just got my TESOL cert a couple of months ago). If anyone could share their experiences, opinions, thoughts, etc, on classes this size, and any other info, I would really appreciate it.
Thanks!

[idiggs]

I can only speak for Ecuador. It is not uncommon to have their teachers working on other visas rather than a work visa. However, any school that refuses to give you a work visa is either trying to save money (so they will break the law to do it) or they have some problems with the Ministry of Education. I do not know anything about that school. 23 students is a lot of students. And most expensive, prestigious private schools are usually the ones where you have to deal with spoiled, undisciplined students. Will you able to handle a situation as such?

A student visa has to be renewed every three to six months. So, it could be a way for them to get rid of you if you don't comply with their system or if they simply don't like you. Getting almost 2,000 a month is an excellent offer. Most schools in Ecuador don't pay nearly that much to foreign teachers.

In regards to teaching science, ask the administration how much cirriculum control will you have. Most private schools have a structure/cirriculum and they would expect you to follow it. However, there are some schools that are flexible and allow you to do as you please (as long it is revelant to the content).

My advice to you is get them to give you the official contract (it will be in spanish) before you come to Ecuador (ask him to sign it before sending it to you). Get a lawyer (or perhaps someone that understand the spanish language and jargon) to review the contract. Make sure the correct salary is included in the contract.

If he/she sends you the contract without a signature, do not sign it. In most cases, they could take your signature and post it to another contract.

And before you come to Ecuador, bring a copy of the signed contract with you just in case they try to talk you into agreeing with terms different than what was stated in the contract.

[AGoodStory]

[staedtler]

Thanks for the advice, AGoodStory and idiggs. I'm just out of college, so turning down any job seems counter-intuitive, but the more I think about it (and the more advice I get from other people) the more bizarre the whole thing seems. I suppose Ecuador will have to wait for me......

Just to clarify -- the salary was not 2,000/month, more like (a supposed) 2,000/3.5 months. I don't know if that's the average in Ecuador (housing was provided) but that part alone made me reconsider. But like I said, college grad + getting desperate = thinking ANY job is better than NO job. Just have to start telling myself, that sort of thinking isn't always true.

Thanks again for your advice!

[Globetrotting Teacher]

I just wrote a ton about this school (its good and bad points) but the message has disappeared. I currently teach here and could write pages and pages about different aspects of it.

In short --

The positives: Decent pay and benefits; Quito is a cool city and Ecuador a nice country. Especially when we take into account the relatively low cost of living here, the salary is more than sufficient to get by on.

The negatives: many of the students behave shockingly badly here and the administration does absolutely nothing about it, seeing their parents as paying clients. There is little or no logic in how classes are assigned to teachers or even how particular classes are structured; some of the staff members/administrators leave, in my opinion, something to be desired as human beings; a lot of the teachers who are supposed to teach English classes have a slightly-better-than-mediocre English; the boss likes and pays white gringos better than even ethnically Latin people who were born in or who lived in the US/Canada, etc. for a long time and who speak English well (though probably not flawlessly.)

I'll write another more detailed message another time.

[AGoodStory]

GT, on several occasions I've had messages I was composing disappear. In each instance the message was quite long, or I had taken an unusually long time to finish it. What I concluded was that there is a time factor involved--after a certain length of time the message "times out" and disappears. Someone else may know more about this than I do. The next time I want to write a message that will be unusually lengthy or complex, I think I'll write it in my word processing program, and then cut and paste it into the "message body" box of the reply page. It's really frustrating when a detailed message you've put some effort and care into just vanishes!

[Globetrotting Teacher]

A Good Story ....

I think you hit the nail on the head here; not only was my message here a relatively long one, but it had taken me a fair amount of time to finish it.

I thought that I copied it, in order to copy-paste it elsewhere in the case of an unexpected internet failure, but you're right in that I probably should have written it first in word and then transferred it here. That having been my first post on this site, I didn't know exactly how to proceed; know I do and will write more about "William Caxton College," about my opinions regarding Quito, regarding Ecuador and the next relatively obscure country (this will be my fourth, as I lived for a good amount of time in two other European countries which aren't so terribly well known to Americans) in which I'm likely to teach.

Got to go to my (very inexpensive and helpful) Spanish-language center now .... I'll write more later !

[Globetrotting Teacher]

Ok ... so I have a bit of time to write some more here.

The deal with William Caxton College is (in short, so my message doesn�t disappear) the following:

if you are a white gringo from the US, Canada, England, Sweden, etc you will be offered 700 US dollars net a month (the US dollar is the official money here in Ecuador.) As things are relatively cheap here, that is a good salary.

Beyond that, the school will pay the rent of your apartment (which usually is a three bedroom apartment that you�ll share with another gringo employee of the school.) You have to pay for the utilities, but they are quite cheap here.

My remark about your salary being connected to your status as a white gringo was not incidental -- the owner of the school has the attitude typical of those who come from the upper middle class and upper class of Latin American countries -- they like to kiss the a.sses of Americans and Westerners and are ashamed of the fact that they come from a relatively poor part of the world where a lot of the people see the world differently than does the US government.

If you are of Latin heritage, even if you speak English well and lived in an English-speaking country for a long time, she will pay you less.

So the pay of 700 USD net a month is good; your apartment is paid for, which is also obviously a good thing. Your visa situation is taken care of, which is also a good thing. And the school pays for your health insurance and (SOMETIMES -- this is a long story) the medicine you need too, which is also an obvious plus. Finally, the school was providing with a lunch after school every day until recently, which was a good thing (until they stopped doing that.)

[Globetrotting Teacher]

Furthermore ... Quito is a pretty cool city where it seems to me that almost anyone can find something interesting (and relatively inexpensive) to do.

Though I�ve only left Quito to go to another part of the country once (to go to Ecuador�s coast with the Pacific Ocean,) that was fun too and there are, apparently, plenty of other really decent places to visit in this country.

So what are the downsides of it all ?

Well, I already gave you an idea that the owner of the school has values which I don�t agree with. She�s generally not nasty ... but if problems appear, she might kind of talk down to you (though it is doubtful that she would fire a white gringo.)

Worse than all of that is the situation with the discipline in the school.

In laymens� terms, the situation with discipline SUCKS. A lot of the kids are totally out of line and nothing is ever done to change it. They run around the class, talk loudly, generally screw around, manifest a total lack of respect for the teacher, beat each other up and generally just continue doing these things even when you tell them repeatedly (or scream at them) to stop.

There are these sheets of paper that you can fill out (you should either get them translated into Spanish or write them yourself in Spanish) through which you can complain about the behavior of the students, but .... basically nothing ever changes, even after filling them out and giving them to one of the "inspectors."

A solution might be to call the parents and I planned on doing this (actually I made a list with the names of the problem students and a teacher promised me that she would call their parents, but -- and this wasn�t her fault, she simply never got the chance to do this, as every time she was going to, the school gave her some additional responsibility to take care of). Another teacher (an American) actually makes the kids spend their lunch/recess with her during her free periods as a punishment, and this might have some kind of positive impact but, even though she will come back, she made her return contingent upon her not having to teach the 8th, 9th and 10th graders (generally the worst, though some of the younger kids and even a few of the 11th graders can be exasperating, also.)

In a lot of the classes, there are 25-26-27 kids, and this can be a real pain-in-the-a.ss. too.

Obviously, the administration of the school leaves a lot to be desired; nothing is ever done to solve the discipline problems because this school is actually a business and the kids and their parents are paying clients that the owner does not want to lose.

There is no detention in this school, you can�t scream at the kids, you can�t tell them (even in Spanish) that they are "acting like idiots" (which I did once) because they turn that into a "the teacher called me an idiot," you can�t toss the "malcreados" (badly-behaved students) out of the class ... because all of this is illegal and, according to the law, the teacher and not the student is virtually always to blame for whatever happens in the classroom.

Some of the administrators and the teachers seem to me to be either moderately dubious in one way or the other (desirous of climbing higher in the school hierarchy in a few cases) or intellectually mediocre in a few other cases; I said "some" because there are some reasonably cool people that work here, be they American, Ecuadorean or from some other country.

Another thing is that if you work here, you will probably be assigned classes in a completely random, illogical manner. I have an academic background in social sciences (Economics, History and International Relations) and in teaching ESL and, among my other clsases, I was assigned Science classes and also "Speaking" classes, which are supposed to be based on getting the kids to speak in English ... about Science. The confused character of that class, of its actual focus, makes it close to worthless. Similarly, there is a class that meets once every two weeks (for two 39 minute periods) called International Cultures (in my case and in another teacher�s case, it meets during the last two periods on Friday) and some of the kids cut this class and a lot of them just completely blow it off and act horrendously in it.

So, that�s the story with William Caxton College (me and a few other employees, ex and current have taken to calling it Crapton) .... there is some good here, but there is plenty to criticize as well.

Ecuador is a nice country and Quito a nice city; you could probably do better here than work at "Crapton," but, as describerd above, the pay and conditions are decent (and partially compensate for the school�s myriad other weaknesses.)

[AGoodStory]

Thanks, GT, for telling us about your experience at this school. How did they deal with the visa/work permit situation? Did you work on a student visa? (The OP reported the school would arrange a student visa for him.)

[Globetrotting Teacher]

Yeah, the situation with the visa was that I first just came as a tourist without any visa, this being ok for your first three months here. (I flew to Ecuador from Romania and, apparently for this reason, I didn�t need to have a return ticket to show them;) because this happened so long ago, and because it didn�t directly concern me, I wasn�t and am not sure about it, but if you travel to Ecuador from the US without having any kid of visa, I think you need to have a roundtrip ticket to show the local authorities. But .... don�t quote me on this as I�m not an expert.

So, I got here without any kind of visa in late October of 2010. The getting of a visa was done more slowly in my case than in the case of 2 other teachers from the US, but eventually, after coming back from a 9-day vacation (December 23 - January 1) in the States to visit my mother and my aunt, my visa situation was quickly arranged.

The school has a lawyer who, through his connections, smooth way of talking or ability to exploit the more ambiguous parts of the law, pretty much always solves the problems that can pop up in these kinds of situations. Officially, I was applying for a student visa, as one of the professors (one of my least favorite) in William Caxton owns on the side a language (English) center. Officially, my application was for a student visa that would let me study Spanish at that Caxton professor�s private language institute. While this one American colleague of mine had to accompany this lawyer various times, I got my visa in one day (but my passport was given back to me several days later.) The visa was for 6 months, and in my case expires in mid-late July (though I will leave here in mid-June to go to an old friend�s wedding in New York state.)

About two weeks ago, I had to go with the American teacher I just referred to to get our official cards (they usually call them "cedulas" in Spanish) and initially, because of the fact that my passport is 9+ years old, full of millions of entry and exit stamps from diverse (mainly, though not exclusively, European) countries and worn (I have traveled all around the world with it,) the officials in this governmental office didn�t want to give me this card (which isn�t really totally necessary anyways.) But the lawyer somewhow convinced these state functionaries to offer me a card. So ... now I have it .....

Adios, mi querido Ecuador ... te extranare !

[HLJHLJ]

[naturegirl321]

[just_a_mirage]

I believe you are talking about the censo which you need, and which are given with any kind of visa except the 90 day tourist visa. They are absolutely necessary, as you must show it when you leave the country, or you will be denied exit until you have paid a hefty fine.

[AGoodStory]

GT, have you accepted the job with MIST? I have a question about teaching there, but I'll post it in the Balkans forum, so as not to derail this thread.