Private English Lesson Inquiries

Couple of things:

1. You report that you have no work permit.
2. Your friends/neighbors are pressuring you to teach.
3. You're wondering now what to charge--but you say "more like volunteering".

The bottom line is that for you, working is illegal. Some INM offices have said that even volunteering is illegal without a work permit.

If it were me, I would not risk the consequences of charging for teaching, nor would I "volunteer" in a public place like La Michoacana. I might volunteer to help out a student at my home, but working without a work permit is too risky, IMHO.

People who tutor English for a living might charge in the general area of 300 to 500 pesos per hour (if I’m not out of date with current prices). La Isla, am I right?

If I were in your position, with your type of “clients,” I would probably consider something between 100 and 200 per hour. Maybe a bit less per person if you end up having two or three students at the same time. Of course then every time one of them doesn’t show up, you’d be earning a lot less.

If you do it on an informal, volunteer-vibe basis, I guess you won’t be getting too stressed about no-shows and cancelled lessons that you cleared your schedule for. I found that this can be a big problem, and was one of the main reasons I couldn’t get seriously into giving these sorts of lessons. Hopefully it will work out better for you than it did for me.

Three hundred to five hundred pesos an hour - if only that were the case! I have many years of experience teaching English as both a foreign (EFL) and a second language (ESL) and right now charge $200 an hour.

If you have no training in teaching foreign languages (I began as a Spanish teacher), I would charge no more than $100 an hour, maybe a little less.

No-shows and last-minute cancellations drive me up the wall. Luckily, the few students I have don't do that, and if they have to cancel at the last minute, they know that they owe me for that class. By the way, I teach in my apartment and work only with adults who are at least a mid-intermediate level.

"The bottom line is that for you, working is illegal. Some INM offices have said that even volunteering is illegal without a work permit."

This has been true for many years. As far back as the old FM3s and FM2s.

I wouldn't think there would be any problem with a little one-on-one with the neighbor. Neighbors help each other here all the time.

I was referring to larger organizations where you might handle money. For a number of years we have volunteered with a local NGO and control part of their funds. Each year at renewal time they had to provide a letter for INM that stated we were volunteering and not being paid. This isn't a large NGO either. It's a moot point now with our RP cards.

Three hundred to five hundred pesos an hour - if only that were the case! I have many years of experience teaching English as both a foreign (EFL) and a second language (ESL) and right now charge $200 an hour.

If you have no training in teaching foreign languages (I began as a Spanish teacher), I would charge no more than $100 an hour, maybe a little less.

No-shows and last-minute cancellations drive me up the wall. Luckily, the few students I have don't do that, and if they have to cancel at the last minute, they know that they owe me for that class. By the way, I teach in my apartment and work only with adults who are at least a mid-intermediate level.

Here is a little more about my experience, in particular as it relates to getting permission on one’s visa to work: As has happened with you, people I met were thrilled to find a native English speaker to coach them. However, I didn’t have any experience in teaching, and I didn’t find in myself any natural talent. Even though I put lots of work into lesson preparation, the students soon faded away when they discovered that having a native English teacher didn’t magically incalculate them with the language – they still had to do work to learn. But I was working with university students and young adults, not kids.

However, on one occasion somebody asked me to translate a text and I discovered that I did have the preparation and talent to do it well, and that I wanted to do more of this type of work. I began to pursue translating jobs, and was able to get work permission on that basis: first with a university employer, and then, when they dropped the translation project they had me working on, I changed my work permission to independent status.

If you find that you like teaching and coaching English, you could look into doing an English teacher training course – maybe in a few years when the girls are in school – that is the kind of qualification that could get you work permission*. On the other hand, by then you might soon qualify for Mexican nationality: another way to have permission to work without problems.

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*Possibly. Now that the immigration rules have changed so that people coming to teach English have to make the application at the Mexican consulate in their home country, who knows? It isn’t clear how this would work for someone already in Mexico as a family dependent of a Mexican national.

In Reply To

Thank you for the helpful input! I was honest with her (an am with myself) that being just being an native english speaker doesnt mean you would be a great teacher.

I guess the hesitancy about teaching in our home is... How do you know people that come into your home are truly there only for English lessons? Are all your students be referral, or random people like my case that hear your accent and ask you where you are from?

I didnt even allow stranger in my home in the States, so this isnt a paranoia about Mexico thing. Its more of a "I have two young children at home" thing.

In Reply To

Of course, being a native English speaker doesn't make you an effective teacher, though many people think it does. But if you are aware of language to some extent, then being a native speaker can make you a useful tutor, who can offer help with conversation practice, pronunciation and acquisition of common vocabulary and idioms. Also, if you've learned Spanish in a classroom situation, that can help you teach English to Spanish-speakers, which is partly how I got my start as an ESL/EFL teacher.

As far as being leery of inviting strangers to your home for English classes, that makes a lot of sense. My students have come to me through online ads I've placed or through recommendations of friends or other student. In a couple of cases, they were friends or neighbors. I've never had any of the many people I run into in my neighborhood who ask where I'm from and then express an interest in studying English with me actually do so. I've come to the conclusion for many Mexicans telling a native English-speaker you've just met that you need to learn English and want to take classes with them is either wishful thinking or just a matter of showing polite interest in who you are.

Anyway, when I get an online inquiry about English classes, the first meeting is never in my house. I arrange to meet the prospective student at a café in my barrio, and we have a long chat for two reasons: so I can make an informal assessment of the person's English level and to see what kind of person he or she is and if we'll get along. With one-on-one classes, the latter is very important. So far my method has worked out just fine. Of course, I've honed these skills by suffering through many dates with guys I've met on internet dating websites :-) !

I hope these comments help.