My Two Cents (News and a Pet Peeve)

Hello All,

Two posts in one month! Go big or go home! LOL

Just an update: I had an interview today! (Yay!) First one since August. I think it went pretty well, and hopefully I will hear back from them with good news soon. The only thing that scares me is that it is a grade 1/2 position! I usually say that those grades are a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there! I think that it could be a fun experience though. And they do a lot of team teaching/collaborating, so I would have a bunch of support. That would be nice.

On to my pet peeve. As I think I've mentioned before, I have had a lot of experience in my (5 and a bit) years of teaching. Unfortunately, I've never had a full school year in one place, and I've had a few terms that were only 2-3 months long, and two of those I was only teaching half-time.

I overheard a girl talking in my night class a few weeks ago about how she is subbing because she's already had lots of terms, and she doesn't need any more "experience" just a job. Which got me thinking about how my experience is viewed by others. Then, at the interview today, the principal basically asked (in a nicer way than this) if the fact that I had so many jobs in different places was because there was something wrong with me. At first, I thought that this was a pretty unfair statement, as I feel like landing a permanent job is a lot more about being in the right place at the right time, rather than based on skill. On the other hand, I appreciated the fact that this principal was upfront about that thought, and gave me a chance to speak to this concern. Hopefully if (when) he calls my references, they will be able to say that they would hire me again, they just didn't have the ability to do so now.

I think it's really unfair that in this kind of "buyer's market" where lots of teachers are competing for few jobs, that I am going to be judged on teaching in several different schools in several different divisions. Some of the schools I worked at were shrinking due to lowered enrolment, some had people who had been on terms longer than I had, and some just didn't have any openings. That shouldn't paint me as an incompetent teacher.

Ah well. Glad to have gotten an interview, anyways. I always think that that is the hardest part of the battle. After getting the interview, getting the job should be easy! :)

Thanks for listening!

Life, the Universe, and Everything

Hey Everyone,

Here I am again, quite a while since my last post once more. I haven't been around since I haven't really had any positive teaching-related things to share, and I didn't want to be "that person" who fills up their space with negative things. I have a tendency to see more negativity in my life than positive, and I'm trying very hard to create more positivity around myself. That being said, I also wanted to give you a heads up as to what has been going on in my life the last little while.

So once again, I am without a job this year. This is so frustrating for me. A little bit of background, this is my sixth year of teaching. In those six years, I technically have 3+ years of experience, teaching in 6 different schools (in order, grade 6, 4, 6/7, 3, 5/6, 3/4), in 4 different school divisions, not to mention the subbing I've done in between some of those jobs (which range in time from 2 months to almost a full year).

I hate applying for what seems like hundreds of jobs (I counted, 46 for this school year) and hearing very little in return. I know that it is a tough market, and even getting interviews (2 of 46) is an accomplishment (when I got my 6/7 job a few years ago, they had 200 applicants and interviewed 3 people, and it's only gotten harder since then), but it doesn't feel that way. I just feel like a failure, somedays. I have two university degrees and I'm still stuck working evenings and weekends at my crappy part-time retail job.

I know at this point lots of people would be saying, "If it's so difficult and you feel so badly about yourself, why are you still trying?" I've asked myself this several times over the last few years as well, but the only answer I can come up with is, "what else can I do? This is all that I want." So I keep on truckin' and hoping that one day it will be me in the right place at the right time, who finally knows the 'right' people.

If you made it this far, thanks so much for sticking around and listening to my rant. One of the things that I am working on for my Special Ed. class is a resource for teachers of middle years math, so I hope to have some things to share, strategies for teaching some of the harder ideas in mathematics.

Talk soon!