Gmail

A few months ago, it finally occurred to me that, perhaps, my personal email address (involving the word princess) might not be the most professional email address that potential employers could see in any given day, so I opened a free Google Mail account using a variation of my name and initials.

I input that email into my profile on Ed-Join (a site for California public school jobs) and hoped like crazy that I'd get something positive from it.

Here's the thing--getting a "non-reelect" isn't necessarily a death knell for a teacher, but it's certainly a black mark on the record. The fact that mine wasn't exactly deserved is, well, my opinion. An administrator who has never met me has no reason to believe I'm not a weak teacher, except for my strong recommendation letters.

With California's economy as it's been and my own lowered expectations for myself on the job front, added to the fact that I haven't had an interview for a teaching position since last September (and let me just insert to this run-on sentence that even Target declined to grant me an interview)...well, is it any wonder I wasn't really expecting all of the applications I've filled out on Ed-Join to be looked at twice? Especially with so many teachers out of work for pure budget reasons...not because one supervisor didn't like their style.

Anyway, I opened this Gmail account and I try to make myself check it every few days. Sometimes I lapse because honestly, it's so disheartening to see one message after the next telling me I haven't been selected for an interview, or just an empty inbox glaring at me.

I logged in tonight after applying for another job and found an email from a school district in Palo Alto. It's about 85 miles from Stockton, just south of San Francisco.


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Hey, there are no guarantees here. It's not like I'm suddenly up and moving west (closer to the ocean...oooohh). But getting an interview is such a boost to my confidence. I know I can go into this interview and show them I'm a great candidate for the position (elementary music, my absolute favorite). I'm so excited to have an interview, to still feel like someone, somewhere thinks I'm a good candidate. Good enough, at least, to meet in person.

I'm reasonably sure that the competition for a job like this will be pretty fierce. There are too many laid-off teachers. One job I interviewed for last summer had over 60 applicants and only 12 were selected for interviews (believe me, I was flattered to be one of them). So my hopes aren't sky-high, here, I'm just delighted to get an interview. It's a positive step, and a huge confidence-booster.

Wish me luck!