Next Year

In a word… uncertain.  I’ve spent awhile thinking that I probably had a job… especially since my principal told me that I had a 97% chance of still having my job.  At least, he told me that a few months ago.

Today I had my meeting with him in preparation of my formal observation.  While we were talking, he asked me if I was at a different school how comfortable I would be doing lesson plans, writing objectives, and writing demonstrations of learnings (DOLs).  It was so uncomfortable and awkward.  I didn’t know if was round-about trying to tell me that I wouldn’t have a job or was trying to say that there wouldn’t be any Social Studies at my school.  There is another Social Studies teacher at my school who started here after me, but is amazing, and I feel as though my principal may have been hinting that my job rests on whether or not she accepts the job. 

I am not friends with limbo.  I am not a fan of having my future in other people’s hands.  As a child, my parents constantly raised me to be determined and achieve whatever I set out to do.  And so, that is how I have lived my life.  I graduated from high school and went to college.  I finished my B. A. and then started right into my Masters program.  I worked multiple jobs for years to work my way through college and then until I got a full time teaching position.  Now I’m realizing that finding a social studies teaching position in our current climate may be next to impossible.  So even though I’m refining my resume and asking my people to write letters of recommendations for me, I am also pondering what else can I do with my life.  I have spent SO long in school, and student teaching, and substituting in order to be a teacher.  I can’t even imagine trying to do all that for another job.  I know I am very capable of doing plenty of other jobs, but I don’t have the same love behind those jobs.  I love teaching.  There is the potential for us to have a lot of change in our lives right now… there is a lot of uncertainty…

“Don't waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour's duties will be the best preparation for the hours and ages that will follow it.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson