Job adventures

It seems like every year I have drama with jobs. I know that this just happens the first few years of teaching, until you get tenure. On top of that, trying to move from half-time to full-time in the current economic situation is difficult, to say the least. But, this last bit of drama has been frustrating and ire-inducing.

A month ago, I applied to be in the Spanish applicant pool for the immersion program, and was granting an interview yesterday. It looks like around 20 people are being interviewed in the district for a total of 7 job openings in immersion. All of those jobs are either at the school where I am currently teaching, or at another school down the street from our house. I would prefer the second school, but either school would be fine.

Anyway, as I mentioned earlier, they are being very annoying this year as regard to Spanish, and made me take a written Spanish test, on top of the oral Spanish test, on top of the other three tests I have taken in Spanish in the last two years. It seems like all they care about is if you are a native Spanish speaker. They are not giving all of the native Spanish speakers five million tests in English, because apparently that isn't as important. In not so many words, the principal has made it clear that he really only wants native speakers. I don't think I could even prove that it was discrimination, but that has been made clear to me and a few other people I know.

The interview yesterday went sort of ok. The principals at the interview didn't look at my portfolio, not one of them opened the portfolio. I had to teach them a lesson, and had brought actual samples of student work on the same lesson I taught them. No one looked at the papers I brought of student work. I brought the article that was written about me in the Oakland Tribune, and no one looked at that. And, one of the principals didn't even follow the instructions for the lesson. Overall, it was actually a frustrating experience.

Last night, one of the teachers who is leaving my school called me to let me know that they were actually doing interviews at my school today for the position I want. Now, how that even works logistically is beyond me, because the district interviews were yesterday, but I clearly had not been invited to these interviews.

Today, I talked to my principal to request that I be invited to the interviews. Clearly he had been looking at all of the applicant papers when I walked into his office. He didn't mention anything about the interviews until I let him knew that I was aware of them and requested to be interviewed. He said, ok, and when I signed up it was clear that they had already scheduled all of the other interviews, and they were just squeezing me in at the end.

I wish I could teach somewhere where people could look past the fact that I am not a native Spanish speaker and see that I am a good teacher. I consistently help students improve their scores on their state exams, I am engaging, I have high standards for all of my students and am an asset to any program. This year has really helped me gain confidence in my teaching abilities. Being in other teachers' classrooms for three hours every day has been very eye opening.

Whatever happens, I know I'll be fine and I am so lucky to have such an amazing community of family and friends. Hopefully things will work themselves out or I will be able to find a position at another school or maybe even teaching in English. Who knows, but I know that I hate the spring roller coaster ride of job switching and this spring is proving to be particularly difficult.