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July 01, 2006
day 7
June 30, 2006
day 6
June 29, 2006
day 5
June 28, 2006
day 4
June 27, 2006
day 3

I sent a text message to Jim, who went off today to beautiful Florida for the weekend.

"Guess who has an interview on Monday?"

Me! :) The last few days have been a whirlwind of activity, which has been a welcome change of pace. I went to my interview on Thursday, which was just a preliminary one, so it went well, but it is not like it snagged me a job or anything just yet. It was there that I found out that it may be easier to teach in VA than I had thought. So I have spent the last 24 hours making calls and writing emails to schools and district offices. The county I live in has decided to make the process a wee bit harder, and is having candidates call the schools, which I am fine with, but there is like a billion schools. Being the (anal) organizational genius that I am, I took all the information from the vacancies list and made a chart in Microsoft Word. It took forever because the listings were by cluster: 1-3, 4-6. I had to weed out duplicates and all sorts of nonsense. Then I had to cluster by town, and well, when it was finally finished it was nice. Very helpful when I started contacting schools. I decided that I would only call schools that reside in Jim's town. Those were my A list schools. Everyone else, I would email. This is good for a couple of reasons. Some schools are way out in the boondocks and I am not totally interested. If, in a week, there are some schools I am still somewhat interested in hearing from, I can call them. No biggie, right? Right.

I heard from one school in Alexandria almost instantly. I sent out my Alexandria emails at 2:30, and she called my cell at 2:40. It's for a 5th grade position, which of the three grades I want, that's the last of the list, but hey, beggars cannot be choosers, right? I did ask for some wait time when I called a school today and they said they were looking for a 6th grade teacher. 6th graders unnerve me. On the verge of teenage children are scary creatures. But we'll see. I said I would call the principal back on Monday, take the weekend to think about it.

Also, I called Baltimore this morning, to see what the heck is up with my application. It has been saying my application is incomplete for, like, ever. That's when the pressure was applied - to me! As I think I mentioned, way back in April, when I met a woman from the district, she gave me a conditional offer of employment. She gave me two forms, one I sign and return to decline the offer, one if I accept. I still have both, sitting in my professional portfolio. Anyway, the woman I spoke to today said that if I wanted to fast track my application, I should turn in my offer. Then they would not care what was missing from my application. I would be eligible for interviews right away. I expressed my concern that I did not want to accept and then end up with, like, 1st grade or something. She chuckled and said that there were so many openings, I would be able to get what I wanted.

This is what I wanted, right? The ability to pick my grade, finally know that I had my job, feel secure, yadda yadda. But I am not sure that Baltimore is what I want, especially not that I feel more confident about getting something somewhere else...especially something in Virginia. I have found other districts with comparable salaries, and most likely much less hassle. As much as the go-and-change-the-world person in me wants to work in an urban school, the reality is, it is undescribably hard. I still think about my darlings from my fall semester. They had hard lives, and they haven't even seen the worst of it yet. I remember my mentor telling me, when we were setting up the classroom, that of the boys we would have that year, at least half would either be in jail or be dead by 18.

So yeah, that's where I am at right now. Trying to beat the clock and find a job. I need to have a better picture of this by August 1st. If I am not going to Baltimore, I need to know soon, especially so I can get my deposit back from the apartment I picked out. *sigh*

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