hebrew day school

so i found this ad in the tico times (which is the english language newspaper for costa rica) for a teacher at an american school in rohmorser (this is the neighborhood i live in). so i e-mail my resume and later the same day the woman e-mails me back that yes, she is still looking for a teacher. so i call her, we play a little phone tag, and yesterday morning we actually spoke. she asked me if i could meet with her at 2pm that afternoon and i said yes.

it turns out that this is not just an american school, it's a hebrew school. in fact it's a school that one of the instructors in my TEFL course mentioned. but i haven't been scared off, it's not like i'm teaching in hebrew or about judaism - i'd be teaching language arts, math and science. plus the pay is supposed to be pretty good and i would only have to work monday through friday, 8am-3:30pm.

i was a little early just like she asked me to be - because she had another appointment a half an hour after mine. but i waited over 45 minutes for her to show up (15 minutes early, she showed up 30 minutes late).

then i actually started talking with her... she asked me about discipline and i said that i felt i could be strict when neccesary, that children need boundries (which was the right answer) but she went off on how sometimes you hear kids saying things they shouldn't and you might want to just pretend you didn't hear, but you have a responsibility to do something about it... and then she was on about the right and wrong way to do things: hold a pencil, write certain letters, etc. for about 5 minutes. oh yes, and then my favorite part - how teachers are supposed to look. traditional. the dress code is slightly different for the non-hebrew teachers (hebrew women are supposed to cover their collarbones, elbows and knees). shirts should be crewneck. elbows don't have to be covered - but the sleeve should go to nearly the elbow, no short sleeves. no pants. skirts and dresses only. and of course they must cover the knee (and she went off on how when she was growing up her mother always told her that they had to cover the knee even when you sit down, that was the real test). and you can wear open toed shoes, but only if you wear panty hose. because it's not right for teachers to be showing their painted toenails and whatnot. no visible tattoos (pretty standard). no more than one earring in each ear (because if you start letting more, then next it's nose rings and....)

so i was completely inappropriately dressed for this interview. i was wearing open toed shoes - and no panty hose (i don't even own any because i HATE them), capris, my yin-yang was sticking out, my shirt was too low cut (and really, it's not, it's just a v-neck, and cleavage is not really a problem i have), and i was wearing too many earrings.

despite all this she still seemed like she might want to hire me (she's pretty desparate - school starts on the first of february). but i don't want the job anymore. this woman is insane. and a complete control freak about the teacher image. and holding pencils. and really she hardly asked me a thing about myself. plus she's under the delusion that if she e-mailed my references on friday afternoon that they would get back to her by saturday evening. clearly she's delusional.

and obviously i'm not taking the job. i'm in town now to print out some more copies of my resume and drop them at a couple of language schools. but for now i remain under-employed.