A bridge to success
Ex-Chicagoan gives Mexican kids leg up with English fluency at his non-profit school
By Marla Dickerson
Tribune Newspapers: Los Angeles Times
Published April 11, 2007
PUERTO VALLARTA, Mexico -- A few years after retiring to this Pacific resort city, American David Bender was bored with golf. His new hobby, he decided, would be tackling Mexico's income inequality. He would do it by teaching English to Mexican children.
Mexico didn't ask for his help. And the former Chicago advertising executive knew nothing about running a school. But Bender saw working families hungry for affordable English-language instruction and upward mobility for their children.
Credit a seasoned adman for knowing his market.
In less than 5 years, Colegio Mexico-Americano has become the largest school in Puerto Vallarta. The non-profit's tuition is 70 percent less than that of the city's priciest bilingual academy. Enrollment has grown to 1,135 pupils and students, with dozens on the waiting list.
Friends who thought Bender had gone off the deep end were correct in one respect; the private institution boasts Puerto Vallarta's only Olympic-size swimming pool.
Not bad for a project that began in August 2002 with a few preschoolers learning their ABCs. It is vindication for Bender, 71, a preacher's son who never lost faith when the current campus was a weed-choked vacant lot with no funding and plenty of doubters.
"We saw a tremendous need," Bender said. "We are trying to build a middle class in Mexico."
Some might chafe at the notion of an American who speaks little Spanish presuming to remake Mexican society. But the school's enthusiastic reception here speaks of parents' desire for their children to learn English in a town where most of the good jobs require it.
There are few developing nations with more to gain by teaching its citizens English. About 85 percent of Mexico's exports go to the United States. Americans and Canadians constitute the majority of its international visitors. More than 400,000 Mexicans migrate illegally to the U.S. each year in search of work. The money these expatriates send home -- $23 billion last year -- is a pillar of Mexico's economy.
But while Hispanic nations such as Costa Rica and Chile have seized on English fluency as a key to global competitiveness, Mexico has done little to prepare its youngsters. The state requires just three hours a week of English instruction for three years during Mexico's equivalent of junior high school, often by teachers who don't speak the language well.
"Pencil. Window. Door. It was useless," said Jose de Jesus Alcantar Delgado, a Puerto Vallarta workman recalling his rudimentary lessons. Lack of fluency has kept him from higher-paying employment in the city's air-conditioned resorts.
Experts blame scarce resources, an inflexible teachers union and widespread resentment of U.S. hegemony. But Puerto Vallarta mother Kenia Salazar Torres isn't buying it. English is standard in elite academies where the children of Mexico's wealthy matriculate. Salazar wants the same chance for her three boys.
Her oldest son, Jose Rodolfo, 9, has a partial scholarship to Colegio Mexico-Americano. Salazar earns the rest by rising before dawn to prepare refried beans for local markets. Her husband, Arturo, is a ticket seller at the bus station.
Such stories keep Bender focused on his second career.
Raised in Pittsburgh, the grandson of a German immigrant farmer and son of an evangelical minister, Bender parlayed a magazine writing contest into a college scholarship. He got into advertising, eventually starting his own agency, Chicago-based Bender Browning Dolby & Sanderson. Bender prospered. He and his wife, Gloria, moved into an oceanfront home near Puerto Vallarta in 2000. It was time to slow down, enjoy the good life.
Conversations with the mostly Mexican congregation of his local church, the New Dawn Christian Center, led to the idea of launching a secular, non-profit, bilingual school that working-class families could afford.
By Marla Dickerson
Tribune Newspapers: Los Angeles Times
Published April 11, 2007
PUERTO VALLARTA, Mexico -- A few years after retiring to this Pacific resort city, American David Bender was bored with golf. His new hobby, he decided, would be tackling Mexico's income inequality. He would do it by teaching English to Mexican children.
Mexico didn't ask for his help. And the former Chicago advertising executive knew nothing about running a school. But Bender saw working families hungry for affordable English-language instruction and upward mobility for their children.
Credit a seasoned adman for knowing his market.
In less than 5 years, Colegio Mexico-Americano has become the largest school in Puerto Vallarta. The non-profit's tuition is 70 percent less than that of the city's priciest bilingual academy. Enrollment has grown to 1,135 pupils and students, with dozens on the waiting list.
Friends who thought Bender had gone off the deep end were correct in one respect; the private institution boasts Puerto Vallarta's only Olympic-size swimming pool.
Not bad for a project that began in August 2002 with a few preschoolers learning their ABCs. It is vindication for Bender, 71, a preacher's son who never lost faith when the current campus was a weed-choked vacant lot with no funding and plenty of doubters.
"We saw a tremendous need," Bender said. "We are trying to build a middle class in Mexico."
Some might chafe at the notion of an American who speaks little Spanish presuming to remake Mexican society. But the school's enthusiastic reception here speaks of parents' desire for their children to learn English in a town where most of the good jobs require it.
There are few developing nations with more to gain by teaching its citizens English. About 85 percent of Mexico's exports go to the United States. Americans and Canadians constitute the majority of its international visitors. More than 400,000 Mexicans migrate illegally to the U.S. each year in search of work. The money these expatriates send home -- $23 billion last year -- is a pillar of Mexico's economy.
But while Hispanic nations such as Costa Rica and Chile have seized on English fluency as a key to global competitiveness, Mexico has done little to prepare its youngsters. The state requires just three hours a week of English instruction for three years during Mexico's equivalent of junior high school, often by teachers who don't speak the language well.
"Pencil. Window. Door. It was useless," said Jose de Jesus Alcantar Delgado, a Puerto Vallarta workman recalling his rudimentary lessons. Lack of fluency has kept him from higher-paying employment in the city's air-conditioned resorts.
Experts blame scarce resources, an inflexible teachers union and widespread resentment of U.S. hegemony. But Puerto Vallarta mother Kenia Salazar Torres isn't buying it. English is standard in elite academies where the children of Mexico's wealthy matriculate. Salazar wants the same chance for her three boys.
Her oldest son, Jose Rodolfo, 9, has a partial scholarship to Colegio Mexico-Americano. Salazar earns the rest by rising before dawn to prepare refried beans for local markets. Her husband, Arturo, is a ticket seller at the bus station.
Such stories keep Bender focused on his second career.
Raised in Pittsburgh, the grandson of a German immigrant farmer and son of an evangelical minister, Bender parlayed a magazine writing contest into a college scholarship. He got into advertising, eventually starting his own agency, Chicago-based Bender Browning Dolby & Sanderson. Bender prospered. He and his wife, Gloria, moved into an oceanfront home near Puerto Vallarta in 2000. It was time to slow down, enjoy the good life.
Conversations with the mostly Mexican congregation of his local church, the New Dawn Christian Center, led to the idea of launching a secular, non-profit, bilingual school that working-class families could afford.
Bender spearheaded a fundraising effort, hitting up friends in the U.S. for money to clear a junkyard and build three classrooms on rented land. Colegio Mexico-Americano opened its doors with 35 preschoolers and the goal of adding a grade every year through high school.
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