Hi everyone! It is now the middle of August, as you may have noticed, and I have not found a job! I was out of town for a while and had no access to the Internet, and I was hoping that, upon my return to civilization, K12jobspot would be filled with jobs needing to be filled! But there only turned out to be about five new special ed teaching job posts in my area. (I applied to all of them.) You know what there are a ton of? Aide jobs! Every district calls it something else... teacher's aides, teaching assistants, paraprofessionals, associate teachers, superhero's sidekick, etc, but they are all basically the same job description, and every district is looking for them. It's almost as if districts are saving money by hiring more assistants, who can do a lot of the same work a teacher would do, but for way less pay. For instance, they could probably justify having larger classes, if they could give each teacher an aide or two. I'm not certain this is the case. It's just a theory.
But anyways, here I am, beginning to panic! I was just on summer vacation with my cousin, who also has a teaching degree. He got his Master's degree a year ago, and he spent the entire school year trying to make ends meet by subbing and working part time in a book store, because he couldn't find a teaching job. This summer he finally managed to score a teaching job, thank goodness! But I don't think I could do what he did. I'd be too nervous to sub... it would be like every day was my first day of work! Kind of like "50 First Dates," only it would be "350 First Days."
I'm highly qualified. I have a great resume and great references. (I've actually been told this by a few potential employers.) The only thing I don't really have is experience... but how am I going to get experience without a job? I already have plenty of aide experience. What I need is teaching experience.
You may remember that a lot of the things have happened for me at the last minute, this past year. I got my first student teaching placement at the last minute. Then, I got a ten-week student teaching placement, only to be rejected from it after they realized I wasn't a reading specialist. I didn't receive an actual student teaching placement until the Friday before I was supposed to start! And this summer, I searched frantically for a job, and had almost given up, when I suddenly got hired over the phone for the ESY aide job that started less than a week later. So my only hope is that, like everything else, a wonderful teaching position will just fall into my lap at the last minute! Otherwise, seriously, I have no idea what I'll do.
Send positive vibes my way, everyone!
