Teaching in Mexico

It’s been some months, so it was time to host another outing for the foreign teachers working in Mexico City.

This time ’round, we chose the Franz Mayer Museum in the Historic Center of Mexico City.

Frommer’s Review

One of the capital’s foremost museums, the Franz Mayer Museum opened in 1986 in a beautifully restored 16th-century building on Plaza de la Santa Veracruz on the north side of La Alameda. The extraordinary 10,000-piece collection of antiques, mostly Mexican objects from the 16th through 19th centuries, was amassed by one man: Franz Mayer. A German immigrant, he adopted Mexico as his home in 1905 and grew rich here. Before his death in 1975, Mayer bequeathed the collection to the country and arranged for its permanent display through a trust with the Banco Nacional. The pieces, mostly utilitarian objects (as opposed to pure art objects), include inlaid and richly carved furniture; an enormous collection of Talavera pottery; gold and silver religious pieces; sculptures; tapestries; rare watches and clocks (the oldest is a 1680 lantern clock); wrought iron; old-master paintings from Europe and Mexico; and 770 Don Quixote volumes, many of which are rare editions or typographically unique. There’s so much here that it may take two visits to absorb it. In the central courtyard, a pleasant cafe serves coffee and light snacks.

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Bear with me…I sometimes think I can write, and lately, Haiku has captured my interest. Here are some of my own scrawlings, based not so much on teaching abroad, but more of life in Mexico City…

The first series comes from frequent rides on Mexico City’s subway system.

Balderas tuna can

Shuffle poke is that my hand?

Or yours on my bum

———————-

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With Innovative English…part time hours for a qualified native-speaking teacher.  Mostly business English classes.

Email me at guy@innovative-english.com

It’s been a long time now that I’ve lost patience with people who cringe when talking about Mexico City. All the stories I’ve ever heard about how dangerous and ugly this city is have always been told by people who’ve never actually been here. I just laugh and keep the jewel to myself.

Except, of course, for the times I go about the city with my camera.

The city’s Culture Ministry has recently placed a new art exhibit along Reforma Avenue. I’ve shot previous exhibitions of painted cows and artistic bells, but this time around, artists were commissioned to create benches with the theme of the Park Bench Conversation running through the whole series.

It’s amazing how many types of weird bench they came up with. I took over 40 shots but still didn’t capture the whole exhibit, spread out over 2 or 3 kilometers of this broad, tree-lined boulevard.

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Sundays are my favorite days in Mexico. Sundays are all about family, futbol, absolutely and completely forgetting about work, and copious amounts of good food.

Mexico City is hustle and bustle from Monday to Saturday…traffic, noise, and go go go, but on Sunday, you can hear a pin drop. Chapultepec Park is a common family spot, as are futbol matches at Estadio Azteca, and Sunday brunches, at home or up at the city lake in the park.

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If you are American and travel abroad a lot, you probably already have a passport. However, if you don’t have one, know that Homeland Security in 2004 made changes that are now coming into effect.

Based on reports from a number of sources, here are the rule changes. This is important to those who are considering traveling to close neighbours like Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean.

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I’ve been writing up a state-by-state look at teaching in Mexico, trying to bring together several years’ worth of discussion topics over at Dave’s ESL Cafe Mexico forum. Many of the regular posters over there have given out a wealth of advice and job information which is sometimes hard to find. This entry is a way to bring it all together in a more easily searched format.

thank you, www.stayxs.com

Here’s a state-by-state look at Mexico – a work in progress.

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The website slogan says it all…

Truth and Justice in TEFL World

TEFLWatch.org has been providing warnings, advice, and a voice to TEFLers around the world since January 2006. The TEFL world has a lot to be ashamed of, from nasty recruiters, to shoddy schools, to complete shams and fraud. TEFL Watch’s mission statement sums up why such a website is needed:

TEFLWatch is a site for and by teachers. TEFLWatch aims to provide a place on the internet where teachers can freely discuss issues affecting their careers and report on both good and bad schools, agencies and recruiters. TEFLWatch is pro-teacher and will support teachers in all instances where treatment of teachers is unethical, unjust, immoral or illegal. TEFLWatch will always offer all schools and other employers a right of reply, but will routinely report any attempted threats or intimidations to our general readership.

Let’s get an in-depth look at TEFL Watch. I interviewed moderator and co-administrator, “Eugene”, of TEFL Watch.

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Ever what wonder what’s in store for you in a TEFL course? I regularly capture our TEFL students’ efforts in the practical teaching component on video to be able to offer post-class feedback to the students. For your viewing pleasure, I’ve made a series of clips from one such class available here.

Each clip (13 in total) is about 3 minutes long and moves through the typical stages of a class as studied in our TEFL program in Mexico City. This is Roche, learning how to do it.

Video Clip 1 at You Tube
Each video may take some time to load…be patient.

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