My Teacher Story Linky

Today I am linking up with Carrie at Being Ladylike to share the story of how I first came to the classroom! 

 Here's the story of how I landed in my first teaching job and how I ended up in the job I have today.  I student taught during the fall of my senior year in a fourth grade class in central Illinois near Illinois Wesleyan, the liberal arts college I was attending.  I had originally wanted to teach second or third grade, but after my first day in fourth grade, I was completely hooked.  I knew this was the grade for me!  Student teaching was an amazing experience for me and was truly one of the highlights of college.  I finished student teaching and felt 100% prepared to embark on my first teaching job.

My Student Teaching Classroom

LOVED student teaching!

In the spring of 2009, I was finishing my last semester in college and frantically applying for teaching jobs anywhere within a 1 hour drive of my parents' house in the Chicago suburbs.  I would open Google Maps in one side of my screen, zoom into the Chicago area, and look for names of different suburbs.  In the other side of the screen, I would google the suburbs to find their school districts then record them in a spreadsheet of "districts to apply."  That spreadsheet got pretty lengthy!!  I remember sitting at my favorite coffee house with another ed major friend and filling out application after application.  Exhausting!

My fellow ed majors and I attended a few job fairs, waiting in loooong lines to give our resumes to predominantly disinterested HR reps, answer a few screening questions, and be told that their districts had "no openings."  In my experience, the job fairs were a gigantic waste of time!  I don't know anyone who was actually hired at one, but maybe other fairs were different than the ones I attended.  In March, I got called by a school district two towns over from my home town and was asked to set up a screening interview.  I was so nervous when I showed up!  This interview was pretty intimidating--two principals asked me a series of about 40 rapid-fire questions with minimal time in between.  When I asked a clarification question about one, they responded that they could only repeat the question without providing any other information.  Yikes!!  I remember walking out with absolutely no clue as to how I'd done!  A few weeks later, though, I got a letter saying that I'd passed the screening and would be added to their "preferred applicant pool."  Step 1 complete!

In mid April, I got a call for my first building interview at a school in that district.  I interviewed there twice before they ended up hiring a student teacher from the building, but the good news is that the principal passed my name along to two other principals in the district.  I interviewed at both the same day the next week--the first went decently, and the second was a complete TRAINWRECK.  They had asked me to come in and teach a lesson COLD to a group of *rowdy* 5th graders.  After that, we did a panel interview.  By that point I was so exhausted by the frustrating lesson that I rushed through the interview, talking a mile a minute, just trying to get it done because I was sure I wasn't getting this job.  That afternoon, the first school called me and said they were hiring someone else, and I was a little bummed out as I was sure that if I were to get one of the jobs it would be that one.  Lo and behold though, that night I missed a call and had a voicemail waiting for me from school #2, the interview I bombed.  They were offering me a job!  I needed some time to think about it because I had also applied to the Peace Corps at the time, but a few days later I accepted my first job teaching 5th grade.  Phew!

Thanks Mom & Dad!

Me & Katy, my ed major BFF

I graduated two weeks later with a secure job, ready to take on my first year teaching.

My first bulletin board :)

 My first year was all sorts of awful, but I made it through and things got waaaay better.  That is, until they were not so great anymore.  I taught in that position for three years before we got a new principal who cleaned house and RIFed a few non-tenured teachers.  I was devastated at the time, but in the end everything worked out better than I could have hoped.  

My boxed-up 5th grade classroom...onto the next adventure!

Time to dust off that interview suit...

I had originally thought that I would take this fresh start as an opportunity to look for jobs out of state, but in April I interviewed for a position at a school in our district teachig 3/4 multiage, my DREAM age group.  The principal who had originally hired me had moved to that building, and when he offered me the position, it just felt right.  Last year I made my debut as a 3rd/4th teacher, and the year was a breath of fresh air after teaching 5th grade at my challenging first school, and I finished the year knowing that everything had happened for a reason.  I'm pumped to be in the same position this year!

My 3/4 classroom :)

Link up with Carrie to share your teacher story!