The year that I was 25, I worked as a teacher at a private school in Mexico. I taught history, geography, and literature to grades 7, 8 and 9 in an English immersion setting.
The fact that I got this job at all was pretty shocking. I had to my name a TEFL certificate, a year’s experience teaching EFL to adults, and two years of an art history degree.
In no way did any of that prepare me to deal with kids between the ages of 12 and 16. Suffice it to say that I’m not a disciplinarian. Like vultures, they sniffed that out immediately and spent the entire year walking all over me. I think I may have been the only one who absorbed anything about Mesopotamia that year. It was humbling. (And here I use “humbling” as a euphemism for “soul-destroying.”) Continue reading
My One Precious Life 