Category Archives: Employment

October 17, 2016 · 7:00 am

Working boy

My son has been carrying on like a typical teenage boy about how BORED he is with his life. So I decided it was time to find him a job. I sent an email to my local acquaintances listing his stellar qualities and work experiences and asked if anyone knew of a job would they let me know.

I also started scanning the streets for help wanted signs. There were a quite a number, however, for the most part, they were looking for empleadas (female employees) because they are “known” to be more responsible than male employees. Whatever.

Of course, the other glitch is that although my son looks 17 with his bitty ‘stache and impressive height, he’s only 14, thus underage for most positions. So our cruising around didn’t get us very far.

Then my boss’s husband’s sister sent me an email asking if my son was employed. If not, she could offer him some hours at the papeleria (stationery store). He’d work there before but was replaced with a ‘chacha (girl) after a few months with no explanation.

The catch is he would be working with the elderly mother as sort of a caretaker/salesperson until the daughter gets home from work and takes over. She’s well into her 80s and quite set in her ways, which makes it a bit challenging to work there and all. Well, we’d give it a shot.

The first week he was supposed to work Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday from 3 to 8. I took him to work, and the store was closed. We knocked on the door, and the old lady said his hours started at 4. So he went back at 4. Then she stated that I had said he would be starting at 5, which I hadn’t. I sent an email to the daughter and asked for clarification of the hours. 4-7:30 was the response. However, that changed yet again, now it’s 4:30 to 7:30. All righty then!

The days changed too. His days would be Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and not Saturday. Well, ok. But then on Monday, she changed them again. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday and not Friday. My son changed his guitar lesson from Tuesday to Friday to accommodate the hours. Then on Tuesday, the days changed yet again back to Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Well, the music class was already scheduled so he wouldn’t be going on Fridays. (See Music Lessons)

Meanwhile, my son was invited to be a chambelan for a quinceanera party. Dance training would be Tuesday and Thursday from 5 to 7 pm. (See Attending a Quinceanera) Now he was up to his eyeballs in activities!

So, feeling overwhelmed and missing his computer time, my son didn’t want to work anymore. He said he “hated” the job. It was SO BORING. I told him that I would take him home right after school then. That wasn’t enough motivation. I said he would need to tell the girl whose party he was supposed to grace with his presence that he could not participate in the quinceanera because he didn’t have any money for the formal attire required. OK MOM I’LL GO TO WORK!

His arguments for not working were valid. He is only 14, and none of his friends have jobs. He doesn’t like it. It is pretty slow for the most part. He would rather work for himself. I said that would be great! Did he have any start-up money for his business? Nope, well, then he’d have to work at a ho-hum job until then. I reminded him how many hours I was currently working and he said that was different because I was a mom and it was my responsibility, but he was a kid and didn’t have to. So I replied that because I was a mom, I should be home baking cookies instead of working and as a male, he needed to be gainfully employed, that is if we were going to talk about stereotypes and all.

So now his hours are on Monday and Wednesday only so that he can continue with the guitar classes and begin the dance classes. I told him to stick it out until December and then we would talk again. He whined and moaned about that, but I think he’s going to try.

In the short time that he’s been working there, he has already made an impression on the local clientele. A teenage girl, maybe 16 or 17, stopped to pick up some supplies, clearly expecting to be waited on by someone else. When my son asked her what she needed, she sputtered and choked. He asked her again, and she mumbled and blushed. The third attempt allowed her to spit out her paper needs and my son packed them up in a bag. She then circled the block 3 times casting furtive, longing looks his way. He asked me why she acted like that when he had done nothing to provoke the response. I told him that teenage girls all go a bit crazy and act like that and he should just be kind when they are rendered speechless in his presence. I also told him he should be thankful that she didn’t run into a light pole. (See Knockout)

I expect as word gets out, business will be booming Mondays and Wednesdays between 4:30 and 7:30. Don’t you?

working boy

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September 19, 2016 · 7:00 am

Juggling all the eggs in one basket

small-poppins

So it’s been just over a month since the beginning of the school year and my schedule has me running around like a chicken with its head cut off. This year, at the school I work at, I’ve had the owners hire a second English teacher to cover the kindergarten classes and first grade. I continue to teach second grade through sixth grade. I thought it would free up my time some so I didn’t feel like I was dying at the end of each day like last year when I taught 2 kindergarten classes and five elementary classes (I combined some of the groups into mammoth groups to accommodate the school day and my availability). However, although I’ve given up some tasks, I have taken up others.

Instead of teaching kindergarten, I designed the curriculum and textbooks that the kindergarten will be using for all 4 levels, maternal, first, second and third grade. That took more than a few hours of my already limited time. I like doing that sort of work, but it doesn’t compare to the joy of teaching the little lovely happy souls ages 2-6.

The curriculum is already in place for first grade, but it’s been challenging to bring the new teacher up to speed. She’s had more experience at teaching kindergarten than elementary and the additional requirements that come with elementary teaching include things like diagnostic tests, parent meetings, grading with numbers rather than excellent, very good, good, regular, deficient and so on and new to her. Plus, the textbook we use comes with video and computer game components and she’s not really tech savvy. I’m glad that she’s open to learning these things, but it means more work for me at the moment.

Then there’s the pay. I’ve been making less money for more work each year I work in the Mexican school system. When I started, I made 85 pesos per hour and had 8 weeks off in the summer. Now I make 70 pesos per hour and have 4 weeks off in the summer. Of course, everything else has gone up in price during that time. Tortillas used to cost 6 pesos per kilo, now they are 13 pesos per kilo. And the peso had devalued to 19 per US dollar what seems like permanently now.

I’m also supposed to get a provisional teaching license from Guanajuato. Because of all these educational reforms, I’ll need to take the official exam too. The thing is, everybody knows the system is rigged. Several teachers I know that took the exam last year and passed, this year took the same exam and didn’t. What’s up with that? The list of requirements SEP requests keeps getting longer and longer and each required document has a price. So is it really worth it when I make $68.75 USD per week?

mototeacher

Then there are my private and Saturday classes. Since I’ve been working online, I decided to only teach private classes on Wednesday and Thursday during the week. I only kept my long-term students. However, lately, students have been canceling left and right. I have 7 classes scheduled for those two days, last week, I only taught 4. The same thing happens on Saturday. I have 4 scheduled for Saturdays, last week I only taught 1. If I were depending on these “regular” classes for my weekly income, we’d surely starve to death. Not to mention I haven’t raised my prices since I started. I still only charge $50 pesos per class, per student, per hour. That’s $2.64 USD per hour.

Camille Online

You might think that my online classes are my salvation. After all, they pay in US dollars. However, I’ve had internet connection issues this month. One day, my internet dropped just for a minute. I was able to return to the class, but my audio wasn’t working. The tech person instructed me to restart my computer, so I did. Only when I did, Windows 10 decided it needed to do updates. My computer was out of commission for over an hour while they installed. Then another day, the internet went out 10 minutes before my scheduled shift, in the entire town. It returned the moment my shift was over. Then, I’m only scheduled for about 10 hours per week, although Labor day weekend vacation requests bumped my schedule up to 15 hours. It’s not enough to live on, dollars or not. Plus, if the internet continues to be so unreliable, I’m pretty sure I’ll get fired.

I haven’t come up with any good solutions yet. I’ve committed to this schedule until December, then I’ll have to reevaluate the value of my time. Suggestions anyone?

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August 15, 2016 · 7:00 am

Online teaching–Trial by fire

Camille Online

Me, hard at work by Clau Guzes

I waited anxiously over the weekend for my “onboarding” email to arrive. Finally, I received an email welcoming me aboard with the first training module attached. There were 6 training sessions in all and I didn’t have any problems reading and completing the “exams” over the period of two days. Each session took me about 45 minutes. I was compensated for my time.

Then a few days later, I received my meet and greet invitation. This was a required group session headed by my new instruction coach but also paid. That’s what I’m talking about!

I also watched ALL the example classes on YouTube to see how things worked. I was a little concerned though that the model teacher incorrectly corrected a student’s use of the word funnier. The teacher said he should use the word funner. FUNNER? Who uses that? Isn’t it more fun? Well, I guess I could do just as well as that guy.

I tried diligently during the week to pick up an extra class before I was officially on the schedule to get some practice in, but there wasn’t anything available. Finally, Friday came with my new schedule. I had 27 hours–WAY more than I was expecting. Furthermore, I was scheduled at all hours of the day and night, including hours when I was supposed to be teaching at the school. I panicked a bit and sent frantic messages to my instruction coach. I only requested changes to the 6 hours that overlapped my other job, figuring I would find a way to work the other ones. It wouldn’t do to be whiny the first week. I also mentioned that the hours I was scheduled were not hours that I had indicated that I would be available. Apparently, someone messed up when doing the scheduling. Those 6 hours were removed from my schedule and I was assured that the next week all my hours would be within the availability schedule I had submitted.

My first class was Sunday night at 11:30 pm. Then I had another one at 2 am. I didn’t think I could risk napping between classes since I was supposed to sign on 10 minutes before the shift to catch the JOIN button. So I didn’t.

I was nervous, to say the least. I really wanted it to go well, but I still felt underprepared, even after all the training sessions. I had to remember to log in, test my audio, allow microphone use for students, check in with them, see if I could resolve technical issues and teach the class. The topics were assigned and each class had multiple activities already set up, so I just had to direct the class and pick and choose the slides I thought would get the most interaction from the students. This took the hassle of planning out of the picture, which considering I plan 6 elementary classes and 3 kindergarten classes a day, was a nice reprieve.

There were 4 students in my first class. One student wanted to only listen in, which was fine. There was one student I never did get a response from, so I assumed she too was just listening in. Juan was from Venezuela and Maria was from Veracruz, Mexico and this was her first class.

I thought it went pretty well. After a bit of hesitation on Maria’s part when she began, both students were fully engaged during the class. The class was 45 minutes. Then I had time enough to do the student feedback before joining another class.

I was also supposed to fill out a self-evaluation form after my first class, which I did. I thought I needed work on the interactive tools and resolving audio problems, which I made my goal for the next class.

In the next class, there were some audio problems. The student, Marco, could hear me but could not use his microphone. It seemed he had a new headset and his computer wasn’t reading the microphone. I tried to help him set it up with the troubleshooting tip sheet I had received at the meet and greet. I probably wasted too much time trying to do that. Finally, I suggested that he type his responses in the chat box and I would go over the material so that he could hear it.

He was also very engaged. It was so nice to have students that were very motivated to learn and use their English. There are days in the elementary school that I just want to pull my hair out. The enthusiasm with these classes was very comparable to the kindergarten classes I teach. It was awesome!

And so and so forth. I had every type of class thrown at me throughout the night. Conversation, group, private, grammar, beginners, intermediates, advanced students. You name it, I had it.

I must have read the topic chart incorrectly because I was constantly surprised at the theme I was given upon entering class. So I pretty much had to wing it, every single class. Talk about teaching on the fly!

In between classes, I checked the google time chronometer obsessively. All classes are scheduled for Eastern Standard Time, and well, I don’t live in Eastern Standard Time so I had to make adjustments and calculations. Even with all that, I still somehow managed to miss a class. Oops.

I also must have had an out of body experience. Somehow I joined a class that I was already teaching. Or at least that’s what it appeared on the screen. I think maybe that was the class I had missed and the monitor jumped in under my name to teach it. Maybe.

I had a class or two where students didn’t show up. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I sat there in the empty virtual classroom and twiddled my virtual thumbs. All righty then. On the other hand, I virtually met people from all around the world, Uraguay, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Mexico, Venezuela, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Guatemala, El Salvador and so on. It was amazing!

The night stretched into day. I never did get to bed. I finished my last class at 6 am (7 am EST) then piddled around in my classroom until my first elementary class started at 8:30. I knew that if I went to bed, I’d NEVER get up. I taught all my elementary and kindergarten classes and finished at 1:30. At 2 pm (3 pm EST) there was yet another training class. It was compensated thus so totally worth the effort I made to prop my eyelids open. My final class online was from 3:30 to 4:30 pm (4:30 to 5:30 EST) and then I was free to collapse into my bed. Whew!

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