A Tale of Encouragement

I finished two days of new teacher induction meetings today and tomorrow marks my first full faculty professional development day of my actual teaching career. (I did them as a building sub and student teacher but anyway.) I wanted to take this opportunity to share my highs and lows of the job search for anyone who is searching, beginning to search, or just worried about what finding a job will mean. For the sake of putting it into perspective, I live in South Eastern Pennsylvania, an area with notoriously great paying public school districts. There are a ridiculous amount of colleges offering teaching degrees as well, making the market pretty competitive unless you want to work in Philadelphia. If you look at the demographics of "new teachers" in many school districts, the percentage of teachers with less than 3 years experience usually falls between 3-10%. (A side note here, Covid-19 and hybrid teaching models surely are inflating this, as there are a crazy amount of LTS positions open. However, the full contract positions are seemingly elusive.)

So a bit of back story before I get to my point. After student teaching, I was hired as a full-time building sub at that same charter school. My start date was January 2, 2020. On March 2nd, I was told I would be taking over as a pregnancy LTS for a personal finance class and as many of us in the North East know March 12, 2020 is a sort of D-Day for us. I ended up teaching the full semester online and was quite successful given the circumstances.

Ok, first tip for aspiring teachers: when stuff is going ok, ask your principals for references. Because I felt I was doing a good job (and to respect their insane workload) I waited until after the semester to ask my immediate supervisor who was the vice-principal of the school and the outgoing principal. In hind sight, I should have asked earlier because all along I was applying for jobs. Having multiple administrator's references will make a difference in your application. I started applying for anticipated openings started in March. At that time my references were: student teaching host, student teaching coach, academic advisor/professor from my degree program. It wasn't until May "real" openings started slowly, slowly, and still using those three references. June came and went and thankfully by mid-month, I had switched up my reference portfolio to include the principal and vice principal from my school plus my advisor/professor. It is worth noting not once did I hear anything from anyone during this time. Actually, I think mid-June is when the rejection emails started coming in.

I'm not going to lie, by the first few weeks of July I was depressed and loathing any time my phone beeped to check my email. I was truly in a bad spot and severely frustrated. What was I doing wrong? I did everything I was supposed to. I branched out and got a few certifications, had all the right references, and had a pretty solid resume in both teaching and relatable professional experience. Second tip: you can only control what you can control. At this time school districts had no idea how they were conducting Fall 2020, funds were up in the air, and cuts were being made. Vacancies left by retiring or leaving teachers perhaps were not even being filled. Nevertheless, I was really down. I took the rejection or silence, personally.

All the while, I made sure to keep track of where I applied and who I heard from. Here is a copy of that spreadsheet minus the actual schools. Since you're reading this, you kind of know how the story ends. The other interview you'll notice was from the school I was currently employed as a sub. Red means rejected, gray italics means anticipated slots, no color means never heard back, and green means yes. You'll notice, the majority of rejections, never even extended that courtesy.

The hit TV show,The Office, has a bit of lore to it which is quite interesting. It was only bid upon by one network. Only one network wanted to take a chance in producing a pilot.

By the 2nd week in July I was really feeling grim. I had taken to long distance walks during the day to get my body moving and to get my mind off of failure. All the while, I would begrudgingly open my bookmarks and view the openings page for every school district in the surrounding five counties. One day a middle school ELA and Social Studies job opened up. I balked. "Middle School" I thought, "and ELA too. Can I even pull that off?" For some reason, I applied. I remember the application being a lot less fussy than some, for which I was thankful. A few days later, I was on my walk and about a block from my house when I checked my email: "Interview Request" in the subject line. I made a bee line home. Holy crap, I just landed an interview. I was so teary and thankful someone just gave me a chance. That is all I wanted, a chance.

Indeed, I had my interview on July 23rd and felt really great about it. I had prepared the crap out of the lesson walk through and told my husband immediately after that I felt there wasn't anything else I could have done. About 7 minutes after I logged off the Zoom call, the principal called me straight away. I was recommended for hire.

Suddenly, this one interview became my Office. This one lone bidder, who just wanted to give me a chance, instantly flipped my world upside down. This is a district with less than 6% less than 3 year teacher staff, and a school with less than 2%.

The moral of the story? If you see a job and you are feeling like ehhhh can I do it? Apply. I do recommend having a specific criteria on where you want to apply and certain general areas you wish to pursue, but truly, do not try to be too picky. I almost didn't apply to my one chance. Apply, apply, apply.

I hate promoting myself. I hate talking about myself. I don't have the greatest self-esteem. Apply , apply, apply.

After going through the first two days of new teacher induction, I really feel like I won the lottery. We are all in a crazy spot right now. This is a crazy trial by fire for seasoned teachers, let alone first year teachers. Everyone so far has been so helpful and supportive. This school year is going to be crazy, but I am so thankful for my one bidder. I love My Office.