I am facing a lot of loose ends in my life right now, and it’s just downright frightening.
I am officially jobless. I resigned from my position in my school district, not just my school. Although I am glad that I made the move to Georgia – I don’t regret it at all – I was frustrated and disappointed with the way this school, and possibly the district, was run. I knew I was spoiled in my first teaching position in California, but I hadn’t realized to what extent before moving out here. This is not to say that I didn’t learn a lot from my experience here in Georgia. I was forced to step it up as a teacher, or as I like to refer to it, step out of my comfort zone.
This last school year alone, I became a trainer of a writing program and trained the whole staff, was a mentor teacher to a brand new teacher, dove into the new Georgia performance standards and rearrange them into a teacher-friendly format for my fellow teachers, participated in a panel discussion regarding does not meet/meets/exceeds indicators for the CRCT (standardized tests for Georgia), participated in several committees, and improved myself as a teacher by researching different techniques on differentiation and classroom management. See, not all was bad. It was a busy year, but I feel like a better teacher.
I knew around Christmastime that I was going to move back towards home. Through a series of events, I even knew where I was going to move and start the new chapter in my life – Naperville, Illinois. So I started looking at the area and found their school districts, researched them online, and waited patiently for them to post their open positions for 2006-2007. I’ve begun my certification in Illinois. I’m ready to go. However, the certification process is intense, the teacher market in northern Illinois is not even close to being like the one in Georgia – it’s a competitive sport up there in the north!
Long story short, it is July 6th, and I am still jobless. I’ve sent out many resumes (think dozens here, dozens!), completed online applications, sent e-mails to principals, and even called Human Resources to inquire about the best way to “get noticed” in the district. I’ve had one phone interview. Loose end #1.
I am homeless. Well, at the end of July I will be homeless. Okay, not homeless in the sense that I have absolutely nowhere to go or to live; I can always move home to Mom and Dad. However, who wants to do that? And even if I was okay with moving back with Mom and Dad temporarily, what would I do? How would I earn money? How long would I be there? Would it never end? Don’t get me wrong; I love my parents dearly. I am thirty-seven years old, though. (Shhhhhhh… don’t tell anyone!) I haven’t lived with my parents for many many years. I have a very independent lifestyle and would feel very stifled living, even temporarily, with my parents.
So, if not my parents, who else might give me shelter? Surely my best friend in the whole world who is single and has an extra bedroom would let me stay with her. Yeah. Not so much. When I hinted at the possibility, she just paused and said, “Well, couldn’t you stay with your parents?” Obviously she doesn’t love me, right? Heh. While I was stunned, I couldn’t blame her. [I must make a point right here that if she were the one needing a place, I would give up my second bedroom/massage room in a heartbeat. So there.]
Okay, so those options are no longer options. Even if I did stay with the parents or the best friend, it still doesn’t solve the problem of what I would do while there. I am really looking to live in northern Illinois, which is about an hour-and-a-half south of friends and family. It’s time to move home, but it’s not time to move home, if you know what I mean. So another option is to move to the area of interest, rent a room (cuz rent is way expensive there), share an apartment, and hope that something comes up in the month that I’d be living there before school starts. Loose end #2.
Or I could hope for a substitute teaching position that would give me a chance to try out the schools and hopefully get my foot in the door for a full-time position next year. I’ve taught for eight years. It’s difficult to wrap my mind around the idea of subbing. Subbing! But, there are advantages to subbing: no faculty meetings, no report card grading, not getting involved in school politics, no piles of homework and class work to correct (unless a long-term position), a variety of classes, checking out the schools/teachers/principals that I would want/not want to work with, and if I don’t like the area, I can find somewhere else. Of course there are disadvantages, too: no contract, work based on other people being out, unorganized teachers who may or may not leave lesson plans, difficult classes that might be hard to manage in a six-hour timeframe, traveling through the city from one school to another, and maybe not having any health benefits. But what’s another year in the scheme of life, right? Loose end #3.
Those are pretty big loose ends.
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