Anyone want to hire a very tall math teacher?
2005-04-03 at 1:26 p.m.
Well. Job searching. Very high on the suck-o-meter.Wednesday and Thursday I went to a job fair for educators. I had to get a sub (and is THAT saga ever a separate entry) and then I had to get semi-dressed up and go prostitute myself in the name of getting a monthly paycheck.
I didn't know what to expect but whooooo. Now, I've been to Job Fairs before. Back in my Previous Life (TM), I went to a job fair for the financial industry. You could cut the air with a knife it was so tense. You could smell the Fuck I'd Better Be a Better Candidate Than You as if folks had sprayed it on like an Axe commercial. But it was at a hotel ballroom and all covered with genteel layer of Tahari suits and Tumi briefcases. It was round after round of meeting two white men at a tablecloth-covered folding table and attempting to look cool while they peppered you with questions like, "How would you calculate how many gas stations there are in the country?" It was twenty-somethings toting leather folders and sitting ramrod straight while they attempted not to swear.
This? This was just madness.
The educator's job fair was at the Oregon Convention Center, and it was more like a flop-sweat-smelling education convention than like a job fair. Two hundred school districts had booths--and they were from almost everywhere. Los Angeles, the Bering Straights, Kansas City (yeah, that was a pretty inactive booth). But they were definitely also from all over Portland.
They had booths set up with banners toting their mission statements* and InFocus projectors showing images of Bennetton students (all multi-culti) smiling with the glow of knowledge as they worked at computers or conducted science experiments or cleaned the sides of highways or something.
And in front of each booth? Lines. Snaking lines of twentysomethings and thirtysometings snaking wearing a veneer of patience as each applicant waited to find out if that school district were hiring an English/health/socialstudies/whatever teacher.
Usually only to get to the head of the line and have someone ask, "Are you on EdZapp?"
EdZapp is the education industry's Monster.com. Where--here's my favorite part--applicants must pay to be able to look at specific school districts' information. Where we can upload all of our necessary information: license number, transcripts, references, whatever. Where school districts can consider--and reject--us without ever seeing our faces.
The conversation would usually go like this. After waiting for, say, half an hour, I'd get to the head of the line, where a man or woman would ask me, "So, how can I help you?"
"Hi! My name is Kari Hay, and I'm currently teaching at [my school] on a temporary contract. I was wondering if you were going to have any math positions open at your high school next year."
Nine times out of ten, the response was, "No, but I'll still take your resume!"
The tenth time, it would go like this:
"Math? Yes! Do you speak Spanish?"
Grrr. There is not, apparently, much call for French-speaking math teachers here in the Pacific Northwest.
Anyway, after spending five straight hours standing on my feet on concrete floors, talking to, oh, over a dozen different school districts, I have maybe three that will consider me. Whee! Lucky me! But only, of course, if I get all my stuff up on EdZapp.
*Mission statements? I've always had a faint disregard for mission statements because it's a rare, bold mission statement that sounds at ALL different from every other goddamn mission statement in the world. At an interview prep workshop, a district head honcho told us to look up mission statements to learn more about a district, but PUH-LEASE. You can't tell one district from another by their mission statement! "We believe every child can learn through a cooperation of teachers, parents and community" blah blah BLAH. Feh.
0 people had something to say