Mexico City - School Report Question and Answers

Like most other English-speaking schools in Mexico City, it is a for-profit school with an owner and board of directors. The school has many excellent teachers. Unfortunately, there remain issues in the administration. I find that this school is not collaborative, has little trust among all stakeholders, and the curriculum comes from so many sources that it is not working. I also find that the parent communication remains lacking. The lack of collaboration and conversation happens not only between the teachers of both languages but also with each level of leaders and the rest of the school. This causes a huge issue in not only how much the students learn but also how deep their understanding can be with so little collaboration among them. I view this to be a deep systemic issue. I believe that part of this is due to the fact that this school is a for-profit school and run by an owner and a group of board members who understand how to run a business but little about running a school. In Mexico City, there are very few private schools our English speaking students can attend that are non-profit. Within the school, I also find there is a general lack of trust. This school is a bilingual school. In theory, this would mean that the students are learning the curriculum in both English and Spanish. However, the school has so many different curriculum standards from various sources that they are conflicting; it makes planning and understanding what the actual focus and mission and vision of the school confusing. The school has chosen to adopt the Common Core State standards, the Mexican SEP standards, and is also an IB school. The SEP standards are not written anywhere in English, and no one has translated them. The Common Core Standards are in Spanish, however, the Spanish teachers are dictated by the SEP standards and the country's strict control of how they are implemented. The English teachers teach to the Common Core standards, which are written at a much deeper level of learning. It is more like two different schools. They have math in English class and math in Spanish class, but they are very different in what they are taught and the expectations. On top of all of this, the IB must be addressed and all the boxes checked for keeping the IB stamp on the school. This creates much frustration and misunderstanding into what the students and teachers' focus should be on. - Oct 2020