Mexico Rewind: Part 1

As my time in Mexico draws further away in the rear view mirror, I find myself in a weird situation. I still miss Monterrey. I miss the people there. I miss the culture, the late nights, the challenges - I told someone tonight that I'd be over around 9:00pm. When I was still sitting in my house at 10:15pm, they said they were going to bed. I can't even get off "show-up-two-hours-late-and-you're-still-early" mode.

Each cracked, smokey, thick, country-drawl voice I hear, each geriatric grandma complaining about their food, the weather, or how bad their goiter is, every snot nosed, spoiled, punk-ass kid running around, the constant texting and cell phone usage I see, how the "Mexican" section in our local grocery store was so atrocious I literally had to stop myself from crying, with it's "authentic Mexican" food that's about as authentic as Italian food served by Puerto Ricans - all of it. It all makes me realize that I'm standing at a crossroads, except there aren't actually any roads and a map of this mess would be about as useful as reading used toilet paper.

I said last time that I stopped writing because I couldn't say the things that were happening with my life, mainly the school in which I worked. Well, now I can. So here come the stories:

Let's spend today on the school. At first glance, as my early blogs and pictures indicated, the school seemed too good to be true. Moving to a foreign country, one that is supposedly treats teachers as slave labor with no concern for their well-being, with a wonderfully caring administration who will provide all teachers with any necessary materials and be there for us all the time?

(Hold it. Hold it. Almost there. Short pause. Here it comes...)

Hardy-fucking-har.

Pardon the language, but 95% of any disdain I have for Mexico and Monterrey comes directly from my experiences teaching. When our training sessions involved finding the correlation between scenes from EVERY Harry Potter movie and how we can help our students succeed, I should have known. ("Umm, maybe we can use our magical powers to turn the students into genius' and teach them quidditch if they suck at soccer?") But, we were showered with praise and free food, nice clickable pens and fancy folders, new classrooms and the strong family feeling the school wants its teachers to have.

I spent the first three weeks without teacher edition textbooks. Jeff, who I came to Mexico with, to this day, still does not have his teacher edition textbooks. We were run through hours and hours of constructivist seminars, only to have any and all ideas even remotely resembling constructivism thrown out the window from day one. Our classrooms were made of thin brick and windows. Between each classroom, at the top of the wall, was a foot gap. At times, I would be screaming for my students to shut up, only to find they were completely quiet and instead a group of students sometimes three classrooms down were simply talking loudly. There is no copy machine. One printer for the whole school. No way to get supplies except ask for them and receive them usually three weeks later (I once wrote on the dry erase boards in permanent marker simply because the school would not just give me on dry erase marker and I was at the point where I could care less).

In July, all of us sent our information in to have our work visas processed. August. September. October. Finally, one gloriously repetitive day, I was dragged from my classroom and shoved in a supply closet with seven other teachers because immigration had come and all of us would have been deported had they found us, simply because the school did not process our visas in a timely fashion. Actually, timely fashion would be an understatement. My dead grandmother could have processed my visa faster than this school even attempted to, and she would have been more successful (it would have also scared the shit out of everyone involved, because she's probably a little dusty by now). After almost two hours hiding in a cramped closet, like I was on the Underground Railroad or something, the school opened the door and announced, "You can go back to teaching now." Ex-squeeze the fuck out of me? What did you say? We were one loud fart or sneeze from a deportation record and you don't even apologize? If this was only the worst incident.

Teachers were fired for no reason and given no compensation. Other teachers missed weeks of school and were welcomed back with open arms, while others missed one day and were threatened with their jobs. There are no vacation days, no sick days, no missed days. You're sick? Too bad. The only way you can get out of school and still get your money is to get a doctor's note. I haven't had to have a doctor's note since I was in fifth grade, and now as an adult, I am docked pay because I missed a day with a migraine? What, is George Clooney going to come by and diagnose me with something that you medically cannot find or prove?

I was grabbed by the arm, told I was rude for not manning the right drink station at an event that ruined one weekend and was unpaid, and was constantly interrupted while teaching for useless announcements. Kids were pulled out of my class to do worthless projects that only existed to make the school look good to the parents, because in the grand scheme of things, that's all that mattered - we were pushed around, treated like shit, lied to and blown off, cheated out of money and time, and the only effort that was ever put in around the school came when someone knew a parent would be watching.

The school killed my desire to ever teach. The students rarely cared or did homework. Parents rarely gave a shit. I was told not to fail students, just give them lots of extra credit before report cards. We had to open car doors for kids and walk them to their cars after school, like I was playing Morgan Freeman in Driving Miss Daisy.

There's more. Much more. Other fun stories will come. I haven't even scratched the surface in regards to our "company housing," another "too-good-to-be-true" story.

Anyways, the fun, drunken, classic Barton stories are soon to come. But I can't help but feel like despite my constant fondness and want to be in Mexico, I need to remind myself that rarely did things smell like roses. In fact, in regards to the school, it usually smelled like a giant, atomic turd. Yeah, that's about right...