Back Story

7/5/09

As we embark on this journey we’re actually picking up at the end of what has been quite a long journey: Liane is now officially under contract as a school teacher (well, the contract actually hasn’t been delivered yet, but it’s as good as done). I’ve been shocked at how long and difficult the process has been. I still remain frustratingly amused at how they (the university -- IPFW) gladly accepted our money for the classes, but then became unable to deliver on some of the critical ones at the end, and then didn’t have a spot available for student teaching, as if it was a surprise that after five years in the course the person trying to obtain a teaching certificate actually needed to fulfill their requirements by getting a student teaching spot. Maybe that’s how they weed out the ones who aren’t truly devoted to it.

So she’s gone through one extra year of school to work out scheduling and availability issues with classes and student teaching. And as it turns out that was the easy part. There aren’t many jobs, especially in Social Studies. The state of Indiana has been pretty much broke for the last several years so all we hear about are teachers getting laid off, etc. On rare occasions jobs would surface, but very often she’d get no response whatsoever to inquiries (appallingly unprofessional). On one occasion she was told her application was one of roughly 400 to apply, most of whom were out of work teachers with much more experience. In order to be gainfully (and I use the term “gainfully” loosely here) employed she became a substitute teacher for a year, and then she obtained a full time teaching job in a town over two hours away, which required her to have a separate residence in which to stay during the week.

Finally last year she obtained a job at a school just under an hour away from us, in Warsaw, IN. After the initial interview the principle of the school asked her how it was that someone with her credentials was still on the market. Our thoughts exactly. I think there’s some potential commentary here on the state of education in this country, but that isn’t what this blog is about.

She got the job. Technically it was a temporary position due to some internal shuffling of positions they were working out. Initially we considered this just another step in the process of acquiring a job here in town (Fort Wayne), but she liked the school and the town enough to consider making it permanent, if they could work out a way to keep her. They really liked her and for the past few months had been trying to formulate a strategy that would keep her on board. It’s all very complicated with budgets and other teachers (who have seniority) moving around. Many times the teaching staff at schools isn’t completely firmed up until a few days before school starts. Crazy.

Ultimately it all worked out, although she’s mostly going to be teaching English (not her first choice), which requires that she finish her English minor at school. She’s been working on that over the summer.