March 2, 2006

• Don’t Believe Fortune Cookies

  (March 1st) Time, time, time, what has become of me?… I am growing immensely frustrated because I feel as if I don’t have any time at all. I thought that after finishing student teaching, or at least after getting my license application finished and submitted, I would have some time, and room, to breathe. It hasn’t happened. The very same day I turned in my application, I started the grading job, and it has eaten up much more time than I thought it would. Plus, I never expected that Target would want me to work full-time, but such has been the case, and I could hardly turn it down, especially after four months with no income. The grading I can do at home, so it would seem that it wouldn’t be that big of a deal– until you witness the chaos that is this house. I live here with my wife, my mother-in-law, and four children: girls aged 13 and 8, and twin boys who will turn 7 on Sunday (March 5th), one of whom is autistic, plus three dogs, including a high-maintenance Bichon Frise puppy, and one very independent cat. Then there’s me, who is most certainly not a born multi-tasker and needs quiet to get work done.

  
  

   

  
  

  Of course, right now, the kids are at school, the wife is at work, the dogs are napping, and what’s my excuse? This would be simple work avoidance, folks. Not just that, though– I am desperate to write something. So much so that I have resorted to pen-and-paper journaling the past two nights at bedtime, which is just not something I do.

  
  

   

  
  

  (Now March 2nd) I find that I just wrote most of what I wanted to share here in an e-mail to my mom, so the following is copy-and-paste; forgive any redudancy with the text above.

  
  

   

  
  

  (Entering e-mail land) I just continue to be so busy because I have a second job, grading essays for the school where I student-taught. It’s a “work-from-home” kind of project but I never anticipated that Target would want me to work 40 hours a week when I came back, so now I find every hour of every day filled and almost zero downtime– for example, I have a stack of mail that has accumulated, unopened, since the beginning of the year, and just don’t get to do little things like organize all my papers or clean house or write, which I was hoping I’d have a little bit of free time to do now that I’m not in school.

  
  

  
  

  So, the lack of time has me frustrated, and so far I’m feeling discouraged about the job search, but it’s still early. I applied for my license on January 24th and now just have to wait to get the real, physical document in the mail; they say it typically takes 8-10 weeks. I went to my first job fair of the season last Saturday. There were 35 districts represented there, mostly from the Denver metro area, some from more remote counties in the mountains. I managed to wait in line for three of them– three of the biggest ones, which naturally had the longest lines. By the time I got through the third line, all the available interview slots had been filled across the board. I went to my #1 choice first, and they didn’t offer me an interview, but the other two did. Still, these were more like “preliminary screenings” than real interviews, since they don’t even have jobs posted yet; that doesn’t really get going until late March and April, when individual schools determine what their needs for the next year will be.

  
  

  Mom, let me tell you the reality: there is a “teacher shortage” pretty much nationwide, but it’s only in certain areas– most commonly math, science, foreign language, and special education. These are called “high-need” areas because there are many more openings than qualified candidates. My area, however, is English/language arts, and I’m also qualified (based on my college credit) to teach social studies. Unfortunately, these two subjects have, by far, the most candidates; you could almost say English and social studies teachers are a dime a dozen. Sometimes the “shortage” is also created by geographic location: inner-city schools, whether in Atlanta or Denver or anywhere else, suffer from the same general problems and, consequently, lack good teachers– because they don’t want to work there. Meanwhile, in the affluent (and, usually, white) suburbs, there’s a surplus of applicants because those are the most desirable jobs. The quality of public schools is almost directly proportional to the value of real estate in the attending neighborhoods. That’s not fair, but it’s a fact. All schools are not created equal because the majority of school funding from taxes derives from property taxes, and, obviously, the more expensive your house, the higher your property tax, and the more you’re paying toward your neighboorhood schools.

  
  

  A secondary cultural effect of affluence is that middle (and above)-class parents tend to value education more than lower-socioeconomic parents. This effect is largely due to a vicious cycle that works to keep poor people poor in this country; there’s been many a book written about it, but I don’t have time or space to go into detail explaining it here. The end result is that if their parents really care and get involved, students tend to care more themselves and work harder in school to succeed, because they’re expected to succeed (such expectations– not any alleged racial superiority in intelligence or ability– are the reason why Asian-American students, as a group, academically perform much better than any other minority and even white students on the whole).

  
  

  Douglas County, one of my top choice districts, is the most affluent and fastest-growing county in the metro area. The job fair was hosted by one of their high schools and I interviewed with the principal of a brand-new high school, opening this August. He was frank with me: I’m a small fish in a big pond. It would be great, he said, if I could also teach business or computers or math in addition to English. Without that kind of “exceptional” qualification, and no previous experience, there’s little, if anything, to distinguish me, at least on paper, from a thousand other applicants. Last year, Douglas had about 350 openings districtwide– and over 6,000 applicants. That’s the kind of competition I’m facing. But, I’m trying to remain optimistic. It is, indeed, still early in the game.

  
  

  (Now coming back from e-mail land) On a brighter note, despite mutual illness, we had one superbly fun highlight last week– the Bon Jovi concert Thursday night. That show was spectacular, in the true sense of the word. I couldn’t give a damn what any critic says, those guys still rock. They were supposed to be my first concert way back in 1988, but I got sick. Well, I was sick this time as well but that didn’t stop me from standing and singing along through the two-plus hours, even if I was falling asleep before they came on stage. I also don’t care if a large part of the attraction was focused on, ahem, female fans. That’s all well and good, but, in the immortal words of Twisted Sister, I (just) want to rock. In two weeks we’re hitting the road to Las Vegas for the wedding of one of Maria’s best friends. Sin City was the site of our own wedding 2½ years ago and I’m just glad to have the excuse to go back; plus there’s that magic pair of words: ROAD TRIP! Even if it is mostly through desert …

  
  

   

  • 4:08 pm
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