I was once an ESL teacher—for one day. That's right, I taught English as a Second Language for exactly one day. The story behind this is not as strange as it may appear. It started when my wife, who was teaching a class too large and too mixed with different levels of students, asked me to get involved. So, I did. What I discovered taught me two things. One is that my wife is a braver man than I am and two, that teaching ESL in the country of Mexico is a nightmare.

My dear wife has from time to time engaged in teaching ESL while we have been here in Mexico. Sometimes it was because we needed a few extra pesos for some special thing that was coming up. Sometimes it was just to have something to do in a country where, when one is a gringo, there is not much you can do but be a gringo. You cannot make a living at doing this. The best you can hope for is a few extra pesos each week.

This latest ESL teaching gig of my wife's has involved her busing to the other side of Mexican creation to get to a small, private school whose director is a woman who, although she is only recently thirty-five years old, claims to have been in "this business" for more than seventeen years. That's interesting, wouldn't you say?

This woman, the director, has more diplomas on the wall than an American lawyer and yet she has no—that is none, nada, zilch—curriculum for this school. I think, but really cannot remember (as husbands are wont to do) that my wife told all this to me at one time. While walking one day, between dodging speeding taxicabs and doggie doo-doo littered sidewalks, I think my beloved told me all this but it didn't register.

So, one Friday, the wife comes home and says,

"Director La-La is expecting you to come to teach on Monday".

"Say what?"

"Oh won't you be a sport? I need the help".

What had happened was there were kids mixed into the class of adults. The adults were there for TOEFL test preparation. My wife is certified to prepare someone to take the TOEFL exam. But, since it was only her teaching, the director mixed some beginning level children into the class. This would not do.

Wanting to be pleasing to my trooper-wife, I agreed to come with her and give it a go. I would take the kids so the wife could continue with her adults.

I do not like rude-awakenings. They are abrupt. They are annoying. They are painful.

After an exhausting hour with a ten-year-old and a twelve-year-old, I sat down with the director of the school and asked,

"Where is the curriculum?"

"The what?"

"The curriculum, the books, the lesson plans, the stuff I should do to teach these kids English as a Second Language!"

"Oh, that! You don't need that. Just do recipes with them, play some games, make some posters, but keep them happy!"

I felt my right hand rising slowly to the bottom of my chin to push closed my widely-opened mouth. The Director of the school told this to me as she was touching up her makeup before attending a meeting. The look of incredulity that surely registered on my disbelieving face didn't faze her because her makeup repair

was more important than my shock. Also, the pesos the parents of these students plunked down for make-them-happy lessons meant more to her than having a curriculum.

I would love to tell you that this has to be an isolated incident. In fact, I want to be able to tell you that this is the only ESL school in which my wife has worked that has taken the position,

"We are here to make them happy and to hell with teaching them English."

But, I would be lying to you.

As incredulous as this is going to sound, the last school in which my wife worked, here in Guanajuato, the Director of that school also measured success in teaching the paying students was with the "make them happy" yardstick. And this is absolutely going to test your credulity: The first school my wife taught in did the same thing!

All three schools gauged success according to whether the students were happy. Happiness, get ready for this, was determined by the lack of complaints. It did not matter what the complaints were. If a student complained the teacher was giving too much homework, too little homework, or that it was too boring, then the mere fact that a complaint was lodged meant that he or she was not happy.

Here was the clincher complaint: This is too boring.

Now, here were three schools, all lacking curricula, and "this is too boring!" Do you think so? The class is a little boring when the school provides absolutely no means by which the teachers are to teach and the students are to learn what they are paying for—ENGLISH?

I cannot tell you whether what my poor wife (and I for one day) has had to endure is true of all the ESL schools in Mexico. I simply do not know. But, in Guanajuato, in three of the most popular ESL schools facilities in this city, it is true.

The owners of these schools take money for students to learn English as a Second Language and what the owner is interested in is that you, "do recipes with them, play some games, make some posters, but keep them happy."

Well, I stayed one day. I kept them happy for one hour. When I awoke this morning, I told my wife I could not go back. She smiled, sighed, assured me she understood and wasn't mad, and left at her usual hour to go teach a bunch of Mexicans some ESL.

Did I mention that my wife is a braver man than I!

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