Standing Still

It’s spring, which means teaching positions for the next school year are opening up, and people are announcing they got those positions, and will be leaving.

At this time last year I was interviewing for a few jobs that I was not offered. It was a difficult time. I had big plans for how I was going to work hard this past school year to be ready to interview again this spring. I had actionable items in every category: improving my Spanish, compiling a portfolio of my work, networking at a series of language educator trainings.

I’m sure you can guess what I’m going to do next. I accomplished absolutely NONE of those things. I am no better off than I was a year ago, at least not in the “eligible for a new job” arena.

To be fair, I did attempt a couple of those action items. I bought books to prepare for the foreign language tests, and started working through them with my tutor in Guatemala (via Skype). But I realized very quickly that I had farther to go than I anticipated, so I gave up on the idea of taking the test this year. I’ll need more than just test preparation to score high on a fluency test – I need to spend a long period of time in a Spanish speaking country before I’m ready. Yes my time of extensive study in Ecuador helped, but I need to live abroad to get my speaking skills where they need to be.

I also tried to sign up for the trainings, but not until two of them were over, and without realizing it was a package of 5 trainings throughout the year. I thought they were five separate sessions, but I was wrong and I learned that too late. I am now on the mailing list to receive a reminder to sign up as soon as registration opens (I was checking it obsessively in late August but it wasn’t up and by the time I remembered again it was early October and too late).

And the portfolio, well, the not-having-my-own-classroom situation was so overwhelming that without the trainings to inspire me to try new ideas, I ended up coasting on my past lesson plans. I was barely able to execute those in the five different rooms, on two different campuses, so yeah, scanning them and categorizing them into a portfolio just wasn’t going to happen.

The reality is, this past academic year was so much harder than I was expecting when I tried to pull myself out of a pit of professional despair last spring with my kick-ass, three-pronged plan to become a competitive candidate this year. I didn’t know I wasn’t going to have my own classroom, or that PTA would be so thoroughly all-encompassing, of that my in-laws wouldn’t be here to help with the kids.

I’m trying to remember all that, and most moments I’ve accepting of the fact that I’m not in a place to try to get a new job this year. But it can be hard.

There are big changes happening at my district. Our principal, along with four others, are leaving. In a small district with only eight schools, that is a MASSIVE change in leadership (over half!). One principal is going back to teaching, a hope he’s had for a while, but the other four have been poached by our past superintendent, who left in October to lead a much bigger district 30 minutes to the south. I was worried our principal would apply to be the superintendent of our district, so I should have known he’d leave for greener pastures if they were offered to him.

Our AP has only been at our school for one year, and that was only her first year ever in an administrative position, so I don’t think they’ll move her up. But with four principal positions opening up, who knows. I’m most worried they will move her to an elementary school, which would leave us with a new principal AND a new AP, a situation we’ve been in TWICE in the past three years.

We also just got our new superintendent, and no ones knows much about her yet. Who knows how she is going to navigate all these crazy changes.

It just sucks to watch everyone moving on to bigger and better things, knowing there is every chance I will retire from teaching at this district after giving it almost 40 years of my life, and the entirety of my professional tenure.

I’m trying to focus on the positive, that I have plans to take my kids to a Spanish-speaking country this summer, which is the first step in my long-term plan of living abroad for a year. If I do stay at my district until that happens, I might be able to take a year leave with a job to come back to. That would be AMAZING. Of course, they could refuse my request, as they’ve done to so many others. It would be a fucking bullshit move, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they pulled it. I would feel angry and betrayed, after almost 20 years of service for them to deny me the opportunity to improve professionally. That anger and betrayal will also make it easier to stomach the uncertainty of finding a new job. Hopefully after a year in a Spanish speaking country I’ll actually be eligible for other positions.

So I guess I’m back to playing the long game. I’ll keep my job and my tenure, but I’ll attend the trainings for new ideas and networking. I’ll add big, impressive projects to my portfolio slowly, so that hopefully, when the time comes, I’ll be ready to get the job of my dreams.