I can’t lie about it.  When I really think about it, when I let myself, my job frightens me.  It is, in a way, the opposite of what I really want to do, which is be grounded in a place and be a part of a functioning and self-sustaining community, to whatever degree that is possible in this day and age.  Instead I am teaching English to people whose eyes are turned always north, who are, many of them, in the process of turning their backs on this community, this place, in one way or another.

            Some of the people I teach, and some of the people I teach with—those my husband and I call the golden-streeters, as in “American streets are paved with gold”—are turning their backs on this place, this country, in a very deliberate way: they constantly compare Mexico and the United States, and find Mexico pathetically lacking, the U.S. a land of wonders and comforts and sophistication.  They do not listen when I casually say, many people in the U.S. are unhappy and dissatisfied, and just about everyone I know there who is not in school is out of work.  They don’t care.  They want out.  They want smooth, pothole-free streets, fertilized lawns, private swimming pools, and wireless internet everywhere.  These are not, by any means, the desperate poor.  They have resources here; they can afford pricey private English lessons; they will cross that border legally.  But cross it they will. 

            In all fairness, the golden-streeters are the minority.  Many students are studying English because their jobs require it—so they are not so much turning their own backs as having them turned by their assorted employers.  And many more are studying with the hopes of visiting or joining family members in the U.S.  I’m not judging them, though maybe it sounds like it.  If I’m judging anyone, I’m judging myself.  Who am I to come to Mexico and help send people north, participate in the process of orienting people and companies more and more towards the country I’ve left behind? 

            In my first week of teacher training, my fellow trainee was a man named Omar, a single father who had worked in the U.S. for a decade, and learned to speak excellent English on construction sites and in factories (despite experiences with, for example, a boss who replaced every noun with ‘shit’, as in “Give me that shit,” or “What is this shit?”—or a coworker who found his English incomprehensible until he learned to replace, for example, “There isn’t any” with “There ain’t none.”).  Last year he decided to come back, study medicine, and give something back to his country besides remittances—to give his time and energy and presence.  I wanted to hug him when he said that. 

            He need the teaching job, with its flexible schedule and decent salary, badly, to keep his three boys dressed and fed, to pay his tuition, and still have time to attend classes and study himself.  On the third day of training, I came back from lunch and found him gone.  The trainer—a golden-streeter of high degree—calmly informed me that Omar had been “asked to leave.”  His English, apparently, while more fluent and natural than the trainer’s, was too colloquial—“too many ‘gonnas’”, the trainer informed me. I ventured that the students might benefit from hearing English the way it’s actually spoken. 

            “Well,” he opined, “that might be how people DO speak, but it’s not the way they SHOULD speak.” 

            All that said, here I am.  The kind of sad thing about all this is that, despite my misgivings, I’m good at this job.  I grow more confident every day, standing in front of a classroom.  I’m learning something about how to teach, how to be with people--and that is no small thing, for someone as naturally introverted as I am.  I’ll carry something useful with me when I leave (not like my #1 worst and most ridiculous job, constructing designer dog crates, or my second worst and most ridiculous job, working the counter at Smoothie King). 

            So, am I selling out?  Am I enabling a phenomenon that I am philosophically and politically and personally opposed to?  Or am I simply teaching people how to say, “These are not ducks; they’re chickens,” how to pronounce the ‘schwa’ sound, how to use auxiliary verbs, and nothing more and nothing less?  Can I go so far as to say, I’m teaching people how to communicate with more of their fellow citizens of Earth?

             The money I earn will help finance our escape from this city and this lifestyle, and the confidence I gain in teaching and talking to people will help me in future pursuits that will be more aligned with my beliefs and hopes…does it cancel out?  I seem to be the only one who’s worrying about these things.  And I can’t teach Nahuatl. 

            So, do I just shut up and teach?