Into The Home Stretch: Reflection #1

I am now into the home stretch of my Costa Rican Experience.

It's time to do some reflecting on the whole experience before heading back to Toronto on Saturday.

I'll be taking a direct Air Canada flight from San Jose to Toronto.

There is something immensely comforting about flying back to Canada on our national airline.

And the comfort level is even higher when the fare is the lowest available, even including flight arrangements with stop-overs in various US cities.

Options

Looking back, it seems that the best place to start reflecting is the series of posts before I left for Costa Rica.

On January 14, I wrote about the prospect of facing too many options, emphasizing teaching English.

If you have been following my blog, you know that I did get a job teaching business English. Although the required 4-month commitment ends on June 16, my last class was on May 31.

From a financial perspective, teaching English was less successful than I had hoped.

Based on my pre-departure research, I anticipated about 20 hours of teaching each week.

When I was hired, I was promised a minimum of 8 hours weekly (at an hourly rate of 4100 colones...or about $7.50, a good rate for an experienced teacher).

As it turned out, I'm not sure I ever had a full 8-hour week. Most were in the range of 0-4 hours of teaching.

It also turned out that each hour of teaching required about 1½ hours of preparation, travel and administrative time. This meant that each 2-hour class, for which I was paid about $15.00, consumed about 5 hours worth of time.

Thus, my effective hourly rate was about $3.00, which is what a maid in a 5-star Costa Rican hotel might earn.

However, financial and bus travel considerations aside, teaching was a very positive and rich learning experience.

Surprise #1

Two aspects of teaching that really surprised me.

Hired to teach business English in a third-world or developing country, I had expected the students to be roughly comparable to high school graduates.

I could not have been more mistaken.

My two students were among the brightest and most capable people I have ever met... anywhere.

One has two MBAs and runs a company with about 200 employees that generates about $25 million dollars in sales annually.

The other is an electrical engineer, about to start on his MBA, who is about half way towards his sales goal of $50 million for the current fiscal year.

On a daily basis, each of these individuals interacts in English, with other senior business executives from North & South America, Europe & Asia, sometimes with, and sometimes without, the assistance of interpreters.

Their success is in no way dependent upon their living and working in Costa Rica. Both would be equally successful anywhere in the corporate world.

Surprise #2

The second surprise was how woefully inadequate and inappropriate the teaching format and resources were.

As a perfect example of how to teach children, the proscribed approach was rich with 'say after me' repetitions, exercises, classroom drills, workbooks, quizzes and tests. Arghh!!

Published in 2006...in England no less...the text book is a magazine-comic book hybrid, probably most suited to junior high school students.

The accompanying CD even includes pop songs with sing-along lyrics printed in the book. I know that karaoke is the favourite bar activity here (yet another reason to avoid bars!!) but this is totally ridiculous.

Lots of people in the world of ESL seem blissfully ignorant of the reality of Andragogy (the art and science of helping adults learn): helping adults learn is a lot different than teaching children.

As often happens, a totally unrelated conversation offered a possible insight into the use of inappropriate teaching resources.

Being Grateful

Last Thursday, in conversation with Anita, the hostess of the Casa Buena Vista where I was staying, she told me about Steven Segal's offer to help the Costa Rica police with their martial arts training.

From there it was a short step to the arrogance that many foreigners display in their offers of assistance to third world or developing countries such as Costa Rica.

Anita, herself a foreigner and also a 35-year resident of CR, said many foreigners think that they are smarter and more qualified than Costa Ricans.

She suggested that this mindset leads them to believe that Costa Ricans should be grateful for whatever help comes their way.

I confess that as a foreigner this was my mindset when I started teaching English.

Happily, my first class with my first student put an end to it.

Not everyone in Costa Rica...or other developing countries for that matter...is a smiling souvenir-seller.

A New Option

The world of adult education is rich with alternative approaches to helping adults learn English.

One of the best would be coaching...not structured classroom teaching. And online, on demand...not in person, in structured classes.

Hmmmm...now there is an interesting new business opportunity to ponder on Saturday's flight.