Victories

My biggest victory this month? Getting a job!! Better yet? It’s a teaching job! 

Yes, you are now reading the blog post of a senior English teacher Moore High School. Yippeeeeeeee!!!!! :-) 

It all happened so fast that I truly did not have time to write a blog post about it or even to soak up the news. As of a few days ago I was still catching glimpses of myself in the mirror and thinking to myself, “Senior English? Yeah, that’s right! Holy shish-kabobs!”. 

Here’s the story...I interviewed for a job at an alternative school in Norman. It went well, and I had worked with the director before during my Literacy Coach job (she was an assistant principal there). Sometimes it is about who you know, and I hoped that our having worked together would give me an edge over other interviewees. About a week went by before I heard from the school again - only this time, it was from a brand new director! A principal had left one middle school in town and the director who I’d interviewed with was now the head principal there and now this new guy wanted me to come in for another interview since the last lady had left my name as a recommendation. Basically, the administrators in town had done their best deck-of-cards impression and shuffled around. (Surprise!) Anyway, I went in to interview with the new director and the counselor. They tried to throw me some curve balls but I did pretty well. That was on a Wednesday... I came home and overanalyzed my interview performance only to have my thoughts get interrupted by a phone call - Moore High wanted me to interview! I was sure that they had forgotten all about me. I’d sent in my application well over a month ago and hadn’t heard a thing. 

Friday afternoon I interviewed and it was fantastic! The principal and I honestly seemed to share similar viewpoints on education. We must have talked for almost 45 minutes, but it went by fast because it went so well! He even saw it as a good thing that all my experience was with middle schoolers. I’d assumed that my work with younger kids would be a liability; I haven’t been in a high school since I was that age. Instead, he told me he appreciated that middle school teachers always plan for every single minute of the class period. We can’t give those kids two free minutes at the end of the period unless we want to see complete pandemonium. They are just too squirrely to be trusted with unstructured time, bless their hearts. Anyway, he knew that for me to teach high schoolers would mean the kids would work hard for all 55 minutes. 

Monday afternoon rolls around. Now, keep in mind that I had been praying hard for a job, any job. Of course, after the Moore High interview went so well - if I was really honest with myself - I preferred that job. I even specifically asked God to make sure that Moore High would call me back first, since I would feel better about immediately accepting that job. What happened? You guessed it. The alternative school called. 

It felt like I was holding a pair of deuces at a poker table with the high rollers, completely out of my league, and the guys with their cigars and Rolexes had just decided to raise the bet. At what point should I just lay the cards on the table? Shouldn’t I just accept the job offered to me? The bird in the hand was supposedly more valuable than the two in the Moore High bush. Wouldn’t that have been the responsible thing to do? It was a huge gamble. Moreover, my husband was out of the country for work. It’s not like I could immediately get the advice I needed. Welp, it was time to put on my big girl panties, as my mentor teacher would say.

I was honest. I told the director that I was still waiting to hear back from another school and I also wanted to talk with my husband first before accepting a position. He was very understanding, and I told him I could call to touch base the next day. Once my husband got home later that night, we weighed the pros and cons of each job. They were completely different jobs, for one thing. Aside from teaching some students, they did not resemble each other at all. 

The alternative school job? An enormous challenge even for an experienced teacher, which I am not. I would have had to teach all core subjects to the same 10-12 students who I would see all almost all day....Yeah...They would have a little over an hour for lunch and art class when I could “probably do some planning”, in the words of the director. It would be a planning nightmare as well as an unfair break for the students - there are about a gazillion people who could teach math better than me, for instance.

The high school job? One subject, 140 students throughout the day, a high school that kids take pride in, and an excellent group of teachers to support me throughout my first year of teaching. Granted, my knowledge of the British literature that’s typically taught in senior English is very limited. I mostly studied American literature at OU. I’ll need a refresher on some things and will definitely still have my hands full. Still, I wanted this job sooooo bad.

I kept calling Moore High but of course they were doing some training seminar thing and no one was even available to answer the phone. I called the alternative school back and let them know that I still hadn’t heard. He was so understanding about it that I wondered if I was making a mistake. Maybe I could handle the job in this alternative setting? I went back and forth on this seesaw probably every hour. Anyway, I gave the school and myself a deadline. I would let him know either way by Wednesday afternoon, about a day and a half for Moore High to call me.

Of course, a bit later, the Moore High principal called to say that he wasn’t considering anyone else but me for the position. He just wanted to call my references first before formally offering the job. He would let me know by Wednesday evening...evening, as in, after the afternoon time that I had promised to call the super nice, generous and patient director at the alternative school! 

I called on Wednesday at the appointed time and let him know that honestly, I just needed a little more time. He was totally cool. He wanted me to know my options and seemed to respect my situation. About an hour and a half later, Moore High offered me the job that I gleefully accepted. After a little jumping up and down and shouting “senior English!!” at the top of my lungs, I let the family and the Facebook world know. 

The next morning I called to politely decline the alternative school. I still have to write that director a heartfelt thank you note! He really could have been a jerk about it if he wanted to and said he couldn’t afford to wait on me. I’m very grateful.

I’ll report to Moore High tomorrow morning and get to work. Meeting teachers, (hopefully) setting up my classroom unless I have to travel, learning about the curriculum, and lots more. The students arrive on Thursday, so I have lots of decisions and planning to do these next few days. With a very supportive family behind me, I know I can do what needs doing. 

I’ll do my best to keep posting on here. There’s actually more I want to say about victories, but that’s for another post. Now to go pack my lunch for tomorrow... Wish me luck!! :-)

Yes, I Still Have Some Fingernails Left...

I’ve bitten my fingernails since I was a little kid. Who knows how these things even start? Now that I’m older it’s simply a hard habit to break, so I might go a couple months without biting them and then pick it up again, maybe as a response to stress or just something to do absent-mindedly for no reason at all. I also bite the skin around my nails, crack my knuckles, and bounce my knees and feet while sitting down. Most people find these nervous habits quite annoying, so I try to curb them when I’m not alone. Of course, now that my husband is out of town for work for a bit, no one is around to help me stop. :)

Have I mentioned I’m so glad to have a husband who loves me unconditionally? Even with all my craziness? I’m very blessed, from my incredible family to my relatively good health and everything in between.

However...and there has to be a ‘however’, because who writes a blog post to state that all is well in the world? Who does any sort of writing to say that everything’s fine? In writing, there has to be some sort of problem. Something must be considered or analyzed or mulled over. A character must encounter an obstacle in a fiction novel. Even in an excellently written nonfiction article, there must be a problem to be resolved from the outset. We take a journey with the author to find the answer. Thomas Newkirk makes this argument in his article ‘How We Really Comprehend Nonfiction’ in the March edition of Educational Leadership. (I’d put a link to the article here, but you have to be a member to view the full text on www.ascd.org). 

Anyway, the ‘however‘ in this case is that it’s mid-July and I am still unemployed. I enjoyed my brief time as a Literacy Coach here in Norman, but the funding for the position ran out. I was left to find new work, along with other Literacy Coaches at different middle schools in Norman. I knew going into the job that this was a distinct possibility, if not an inevitability; the principal was clear from the start that funding was low. This knowledge hasn’t been much of a comfort, though. The past few months have been a new lesson for this teacher in steadily rising agony, self-doubt, and obsession. My nails have been bitten down to the quick and I’m questioning every action and non-action I take: Should I call this district again about job openings or will I seem pushy? Should I email that principal again to make sure she hasn’t forgotten me, or will the email just get buried in her inbox? At the end of the summer, I would just love to teach. I would especially love to teach middle school kids and help them become skilled readers and writers. At the least, I certainly want to teach kids to look for the problem in a text, the “itch to scratch” that Newkirk describes. After all, if they can identify and comprehend the central conflict in the text they are doing pretty well. 

I guess it really started last fall, and I found it funny to read an old blog post from March 15th, in which I described the feeling of a jobless applicant running on a wheel that seems to go nowhere: “Once my student teaching wrapped up, I spent time with family and spent time job searching. To say that it was maddening would be an extreme understatement. The waiting, the wondering, the overanalyzing of every minuscule detail of the search-apply-interview process – it was driving me crazy. Then out of nowhere, another job popped up, I interviewed, and got it! Now I am a Literacy Resource Teacher at a middle school in town...” Of course in that post I was the giddy teacher who had found a job and could get off the wheel for a bit. Now I am right back on:

I’ve now been on a total of seven interviews since last fall. One was successful in getting me the short-lived job as a Literacy Coach. One was early in the morning and God only knows what I said with my without the aid of coffee - that was bad. In another one, the administrators already had a particular person in mind for the job and my interviewing was just a courtesy, really. Another went really, really well! I sounded intelligent, the administrators nodded in agreement to the things I said, and I walked away feeling very optimistic. Then I lost out on that job to someone with more experience. In another interview, the principal stepped out of the room twice to take phone calls. While he was occupied, I had to talk to the school counselor/secretary. (It’s a small school and some people wear multiple hats). She told me how much she couldn’t stand middle school kids and couldn’t believe I enjoyed it. As politely as I could, I told her I loved working with that age group and left it at that. 

I’ve been rejected via phone call, letter, and face-to-face. I’ve been rejected by simply not hearing back from people at all and seeing the listing disappear from the job board like a mirage. I feel like I have “paid my dues”, as they say. I know I don’t have much experience, but I’m dedicated to working hard and learning more about my craft everyday. I’m also a qualified applicant who went to a good university and I’m thisclose to finishing my Masters degree. By the way, when people talk about the economy and the public sector jobs being in a dismal state...I’m the sort of person they’re talking about. I’m stuck waiting by the phone and hoping I didn’t accidentally turn it off or something:

Early episode of Friends, Season 1 Episode 20, The One With the Evil Orthodontist

If my only concern was making a buck, I wouldn’t be so worried, but what’s really at stake here is much bigger: my health insurance. My husband does freelance work, so he can’t get insurance through an employer. And, once I got the Literacy Coach job in February, I got off of my parent’s health insurance and onto the best plan that was offered to me by the school district. Most of my paycheck went toward that insurance and will continue to until my contract is officially up in August. Not only is it great coverage that I want to continue, but I simply have to have something. 

I am not the kind of person who can go without insurance. My life is dependent on the infusions of Remicade that I get roughly every two months from my rheumatologist. Remicade is an enormously expensive biologic medication I take for my Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA), and it’s keeping me in remission. I know this because I tried going without the Remicade in 2010, at which point my left knee became inflamed to more than three times its normal size. Things have gotten back to normal now that I’ve recovered from this flareup, but it was a necessary reminder of what can happen so easily if I let my disease go untreated. I know I can’t afford Remicade without insurance, unless I want to quickly accumulate a lot of debt. Bottom line: I’ll take a job anywhere with good health insurance if I can’t get a teaching job very, very soon. 

I went on an interview last Thursday and I think it went well. If I got it, I would be teaching at an alternative school here in Norman. It would be a great learning experience for me and quite the challenge. The administrator said she would “let me know either way” sometime early this week. Now that it’s after five o’clock on this Monday evening, I’ll hope for her call tomorrow. So, yes, I still have some hope - and some fingernails - left as I continue the job search. Please wish me luck, and send me prayers, good vibes, or whatever you like. I’ll keep you posted. Thanks for listening. :)