Teacher Job Search Rollercoaster

I’m Looking

            While I have a job as a substitute teacher, I think most teachers understand the desire to have a full-time teaching job. In addition to having consistent hours and a regular paycheck, you know where you are going to be every single day. With subbing you don’t know, who you’re going to be teaching, what grade you’re going to be teaching, and if you sub in multiple districts, you don’t even necessarily know what district you are going to be teaching in. Although the variety can be exciting, it can also be incredibly disorienting. As most people can attest to when they were in school, students are always more likely to act out when a substitute is present than with a regular teacher. Suddenly, angel students start slacking off, the goofballs because terrors and the terrors nightmares.

The Frantic Search

This isn’t to say they are bad kids; they just like pushing buttons and don’t like doing work. Really who can blame them? I don’t want to do work a lot of the time either. But for all those reasons and more I’ve been really searching for a full-time teaching job. If you’ve ever gone through this process, you also were probably subscribed to a bunch of automated email lists sending you job postings. If you’re really dedicated to certain schools, you might have a list of their employment urls to click on and check every other day. Then when there’s finally a job to apply for you have to dig up your clearances, make new ones, dust off references, update your resume, and write a cover letter. You might be asked to fill out a teaching survey, write your teaching philosophy, or answer a timed writing prompt as though you yourself are still a student.

Applying

Perhaps the school district is more traditional and they only advertise in the newspaper. Maybe they are so selective they only pick people they know or the school board members know. You might drive to educational career fairs. Send out paper applications. I’ve had several schools only accept paper applications and I’ve had numerous problems with the post office. Since this job search process is so important to me, I have four times taken the time to drive my paper applications to the school district personally so as to avoid them becoming lost in transit and arriving late.

 Waiting and Follow Up

Once you’ve submitted tens of applications and your email inbox is filled with confirmation emails with the headline “Thank you for submitting your application to ______ School District” it’s time to wait. You wait and hope that every time your phone buzzes it’s not another spam call, but that it’s the school of your dreams, or the third best school on your list…or at this point any school. You check your voicemail religiously to see if you missed any calls. There’s a missed call! “Hi Julia I’m calling you about your preapproved business loan…” That would be great, but I don’t have a business, and I’m not looking to take out any more loans. It would be funny, and sometimes is, if it wasn’t so discouraging.

Interviews?

So you send follow up emails inquiring as to the status of your application, and you leave voicemails inquiring about the timeline by which you should hear back regarding interviews. Maybe you get an interview! You brush up on your interview skills, since you don’t want to be like me and wing an interview (LINK). Maybe it goes ok. Maybe you bomb it. Either way it’s back to waiting and applying and following up. Thanking people for their time and the opportunity to apply. Every time I drive back from dropping off an application or coming home from an interview, I imagine what it would be like to work there. What would it be like to drive this route every day next year?

The Emotional Toll

Maybe you get some great feedback from one of your interviews and they said they think you will make a great teacher, or that they could tell you are very enthusiastic. You try not to get discouraged, but loans and grocery bills won’t pay themselves. The couple of people who you’ve talked (complained) about your job search process to, ask you how things are going and you update them and try to stay positive. Some days you feel like you’re going to get a call any second. Some days you wonder if going into teaching was a huge mistake. You wonder if your resume is trash and consider starting from scratch. You wonder if you ruined your chances, by answering that one question that way. You wonder whether the look in the interviewer’s eyes was pity, interest, or something else entirely.

Some Advice and Hope

No one promised job searching would be easy, but sheesh is it draining. The best advice I can give to people is to keep trying. Keep sending out applications. Reward yourself when you send out one you’ve been dreading. This way you can give yourself at least a small break from the anxiety. Schedule how often you look at job search websites. This will keep you from being the first to submit an application, but this isn’t as important as keeping yourself mentally stable.

What About You?

 Are you looking for a job right now? How do you deal with the stress? Do you have any advice for dealing with the emotional rollercoaster? Got any horror stories? Success stories? Let me know in the comments.

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Image Credit: "Rollercoaster" by Kristin Kokkersvold