An Eventful Week

On Monday, when I checked my phone after work, I had three missed calls and a text message from a girl for whom I had bent over backwards over the summer.

A friend of mine down here had to go back home because her mom got cancer, and she would be leaving behind her job. Her job was teaching 3rd through 6th grade English at an affluent private school. I shadowed her for two days, taught a class, and then went back to the school another day to teach another class. You see, they had two people going through this "interview" process and couldn't decide who to hire. And so I spent 3 days more or less working at the school, unpaid.

My friend went back to the US and I still hadn't heard about the job. I was going to go back to the US for my cousin's wedding and to see family, and had to book tickets. So I called my friend's co-worker, the English coordinator for the school, to ask about the job situation and explained my situation. This was about three or four weeks after my friend had returned home. The girl told me that everything was fine, to do what I had to do, and if it overlapped with school things it wasn't a big deal. She made it sound like I had the job, and they just had to confirm it.

Then I ran into her on the street a few days later and she told me they gave the other girl the job.

I was kind of pissed. I went back to the US, and literally days after I got back to Guanajuato I found the job at the preschool. So, needless to say I was pretty surprised to see the missed calls from her. And out of curiosity I called back.

The girl they had hired instead of me ran away. She sent an email to the English coordinator saying she wouldn't be there, and disappeared. So the English coordinator called me.

At first I was a little annoyed that they would think that I was just hanging around without anything going on. I met with the girl to talk to her, and to hear the details. Maybe I would be able to finagle a raise at the preschool...

I met her at a cafe close to my house, and was pretty surprised that she was really nice, and seemed like she genuinely wanted me to come and work at the school. So that was nice. But the main incentive was that they would pay me twice as much for something much more organized, with less hours.

I went back to the preschool the next day, and pretty much had a horrible day. One of a series. I was still getting over my cold, I had to yell, the kids were a mess and out of control. All in all, a normal day. But I was fed up, and at least I had another option. I called the English coordinator back at the other school, and told her I'd be taking the job. And I told the academic coordinator at the preschool that I was sick and would be going to the doctor. Then I called her later and told her that the doctor didn't know what was wrong, but wanted to do some more tests. And the next day I called again, and told her that they should probably find a new English teacher, since I wasn't sure what was going on with my health.

I felt kind of bad for doing the same thing to them that the girl I was replacing had done in the first place, but not bad enough, given the circumstances, to not do it.

So now I have a new job. I had my first official day on Friday, and it went pretty well. The classes are much shorter - 50 minutes each - which is really easy to fill after having an hour and 50 minutes to fill at the preschool. And the kids know how to behave. It's partly the age difference but it's also the fact that this place is, well, a real school. Not some kind of real life experiment in educational philosophy. I think I much prefer this.