Facing Reality When Reality Bites
I lost the job to someone who had more background teaching the courses that the position was for. I know it should make me feel better that I was qualified and I interviewed well. But it doesn’t. The job market sucks right now–even for teachers. Especially for teachers of English in a city that has 6 colleges that pump out new teachers each year. I was optimistic for a period of time, until I realized that a lot of the openings listed were not actual openings but only perceived openings. Many districts have begun hiring teachers on one-year contracts and so each year those positions come up again as open–even though there was a teacher who was in the position last year and is probably re-interviewing for the position again. It’s frustrating when you look at a situation and it looks promising–lots of openings etc, and then the openings tend to be simple formalities. UGH!
I know I should feel okay that I at least have my part time job at the college teaching and that if I teach two classes each semester it will cover our portion of Noah’s school. But I really want to get back to full-time teaching and the market is so tight and there are so many new teachers who need jobs as well as the teachers from the disticts that are cutting jobs due to lack of $$$.
I will keep applying and keep pounding the pavement and looking for jobs in all the places I can and use all the connections I have. I am at least happy that hubby got a small raise this year and that his employer–Wells Fargo–posted a profit for the first quarter of the year. His job is certainly one less thing I need to worry about.
2 Interviews–0 Jobs
enough said.
Too Educated
The economy sucks and many school districts need to hire teachers but also need to “hire cheap” which means those without 4 years experience and without a Master’s degree. It seems that in this educational environment where the focus is on highly-qualified individuals that it means not too highly qualified. I am very highly qualified. I hold both a BA and MA in English and my certification.
Public schools here and across the country for the most part have set payscales based on education and years of experience. Well, my MA makes me more expensive and pretty soon I will be an MA+15 which makes me even more expensive. It sucks because there are some districts with lot of openings but many of them have “hire cheap” policies and that leaves me out cold. It frickin’ sucks. Because I feel confident saying that if you put me in a room with 10 other candidates, I am the best choice. I am not bashful to say that I am a kick ass teacher.
I want to get back in the classroom more than anything. But the fact that I have a subject area advanced degree and teach at the college level–I am pricing myself out of my choosen job market and it sucks.
Small Success
I am now a firm believer in the whole “they’ll do it when they are ready.” Noah is ready for potty-training. He is a total ace now–I know I’m going to pay for saying this (not only because I am in class while writing this post) but because that’s just the way that the universe works. He’s gone two days now and has used the potty chair all day. We still haven’t pooped on the potty chair–he really wanted to today–he came to me twice when he started to poop and we sat on the toilet but he froze…”Mommy, I don’t know how to do it.” It’s cute. He then freaked himself out a bit and then held it in and was uncomfortable for soccer.
Let me just say that soccer practice for him is hilarious–I’ll write more about that later with some pictures. He certainly moves to the beat of his own drum. But I am happy and feeling much more confident that he will be successfully potty trained by starting school in August.
Keep all the advice coming. You all have great wisdom and I love gleaning wonderful tidbits from you.
Embracing Imperfection 