The Long and Winding Road, Part I

Most readers will probably remember when I got a job teaching math at a local tutoring service a few months ago. Most of you won't know what has happened since then, though. That's what today's post is all about.

The tutoring job I started in April went really well for about five weeks. At the end of May, beginning of June, some of my students started to discontinue their visits. This was not unexpected; the school year was ending. No problem, though. The company offers tutoring over the summer, and in the daytime, to boot. So the first week of June would be the last week of teaching evenings. That Tuesday I talked to the director to find out exactly what my schedule was going to be for the summer session. She said that things were still a little up in the air and that schedules hadn't been finalized yet. She only works in the Sandy center on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, so I agreed to check in with her in another couple of days.

Thursday evening came, and I saw no sign of the director. No big deal, she comes in on Fridays too, sometimes. But I didn't see her on Friday, either. Now I was concerned. I asked the administrative assistant about my schedule for the following week, and she didn't know anything. She told me to call on Monday morning. I wasn't satisfied with that answer, and asked for the director's home number, which—surprisingly—she gave me. Once I got the director on the phone, the issue was quickly resolved.

The reason she hadn't given me a schedule for summer session was that I wasn't going to have one.

Blame the lousy economy, I guess, but there weren't enough students enrolled for the (admittedly rather expensive) service for summer session to justify having two teachers. And since the other teacher had the edge in seniority (and superior content knowledge, frankly), she got the students. I got an unexpected summer vacation.

Without a summer assignment with the tutoring center, and with substitute teaching opportunities not easy to come by between early June and late August, I was effectively unemployed.

This, as it turns out, is where the story begins to get interesting.

For several weeks before this, I had been visiting LDS Employment Resource Services. I'd actually found the tutoring job through LDS Employment. During one of my visits there, the career coach I'd been working with had taken a look at my résumé and referred me to the service's weekly Professional Networking Meeting. I'd never actually gone to this meeting, but with the entire following week now unexpectedly available, I decided to go.

I arrived at the meeting around 8:30 on Monday morning, June 8th. I filled out a couple of forms and found a seat with around a hundred other potential job seekers. We heard a presentation from a local staffing agency representative and an inspirational message from one of the Employment Center staff. We were introduced to representatives from several local employers. Then we started hearing briefly from the various job seekers. Each of us did a "Me In 30 Seconds" presentation. (They put all the newbies, myself included, on the far end of the room so that we could hear other people's statements before having to do one ourselves.) After giving my "Me In 30 Seconds" statement, I headed back to my seat, pretty pleased with what I'd managed to put together.

Shortly—seconds, literally—after sitting down someone came over to talk to me. It was someone from one of the local school districts. She gave me a business card from the head of Human Resources from the district. She told me he'd like to talk to me.

I chatted with him for a few minutes after the meeting, and he gave me an idea where to start my job search in earnest. One important thing he did was to point me in the direction of Teachers-Teachers.com, a site that a lot of districts (including his) use for recruitment. He said to submit an application through that site, then to e-mail him so that he would know to look for it.

After that, I made my way upstairs to one of the small group meetings. In that meeting we talked about networking and power statements, as well as a new style for résumés. As I sat there and worked on my own résumé, one of the volunteers came over to help me. We talked a little about my experiences and education, and then she asked me the big question: What did I really want to do? I told her I was working toward becoming an educator, that I had a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry and was working on a Master of Arts in Teaching. She asked me if I knew about the state's Alternative Route to Licensure, a way for people who are not licensed as teachers to gain a provisional teaching license while they work to fulfill the requirements for full licensure. I told her that I knew about it and that I had even applied once, but given up pursuing it in favor of graduate school.

And then she told me something I had not known, something I wish I had known a long time ago: I could qualify for ARL while I was enrolled in a postgraduate licensure program. I had no idea.

If I had gained nothing else from my morning's investment of time and attention, this one nugget of information would have been more than worth it. There was a way that I could start teaching—now, potentially. This changed everything.

And that's enough for one night I think. More on the story tomorrow, Sunday at the latest.

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And now you can move on to Part II.