[scottw]

anecdotal teaching story...

my wife decided to go back to school and get another degree after our kids were born...she wanted to teach so she commuted part time an hour each way for several years to earn her degree...she graduated Summa Cum Laude with a stack of impressive recommendations from the schools that she student taught at and from her college instructors, she began applying to every opening within an hours commute and was unable to get interviews for permanent positions. She did daily subbing at various schools and had some long term sub jobs that produce more impressive letters of recommendation building her resume and continued to apply to openings but still not getting interviews for posted job interviews. After a couple of years of daily and long term subbing at various schools the end of summer was approaching and she was a little frustrated at the prospect of another school year spent subbing. She noticed an opening at a charter school and landed a job about a week before the beginning of the school year. It didn't pay a lot and the contracts were year to year but it was a job. She had a very succesful first year and was considered a model teacher, in her second year she was one of 4 teachers nominated for Teacher of the Year in the combined and enormous school district that her school is considered part of. There were two pretty attractive job openings posted this summer that she applied for, one happened to be a school system that she'd spent considerable time in during her student teaching and subbing days...she applied to both, never heard back from either except to read the reply notices that the jobs had been filled, in one case she had impressive letters of recommendation from both teachers and administrators within the schools system that she was applying to and could not get an interview. We would never suggest that she ought to get a job based on her resume because I'm sure the hiring is/was based on many factors, but you'd think she might have at least gotten an interview given her history. She had an experience at one particular school district where they put the long term sub applicants through a long interview process, she went though the process a couple of times for different openings because she really wanted to work and each time she came home upset and frustrated because she felt that the panel of interviewers were either rude or disinterested and that their decision was made well ahead of time, making the time that she invested to apply and drive to the interviews futile.