I’m a teacher by training. After spending several years working in the private sector and then as a work-at-home-mother, I decided I’d like to go back to my original career choice, and applied to the public school board here in Calgary.
I’ll be straight with you, I was nervous. It had been a long time since I’d qualified as a teacher, and although teaching qualifications don’t expire (as long as you keep paying your licence fees to the various provincial bodies), you can’t just expect to walk back into a classroom after being away for so many years. I spent several months studying and updating my qualifications, but I was still nervous. I was afraid my application package would make its way onto some recruiter’s desk, be subjected to several minutes of hearty laughter, and then dropped into the circular file. But as if to prove my mother right (“studying French will help you get a job”), I was asked to come in for an interview for a French teaching position. Apprehensively, I researched, prepped, and finally went to my interview. A week or so later, I was thrilled to get a letter congratulating me on being hired! Woot!
Except I didn’t really have a job; and by job I mean a get up every day Monday to Friday and go to the same place and teach the same kids and get paid for it kinda job. The same thing happened recently, when I applied to the Toronto District School Board: a letter of congratulation, “you’re hired!”, and then, basically, “good luck getting a job”. You see, I’ve been “hired” by two different school boards, but that doesn’t mean I actually have a job as a teacher. What happens is that I’ve been deemed “eligible to hire”, a screening process which, as far as I can tell, is unique to the field of teaching. Many school boards employ a similar process: they interview and “hire” a number of teachers, and then fill any teaching vacancies from this pool of pre-qualified applicants. The remainder are usually the people who make up the occasional teaching pool (otherwise known as substitute or supply teachers).
It may seem like a smart plan, but if you’re the unlucky applicant who happens to love the profession and really, really wants to work, it totally sucks. In some school boards, once you’ve made the initial cut, you are eligible to apply for any vacant teaching jobs, but the Calgary Board of Education doesn’t post open jobs. The teacher staffing office recommends certain candidates directly to principals, who can then contact these candidates for interviews. Which means you have to majorly suck up to the folks at the teacher staffing office if you want to get an interview, and even then nothing is guaranteed. (Trust me: I’ve been sucking up pretty hard.)
So here we are, less than a week away from the first day of school, and I’m feeling down about it for the first time in many years. Sure, it’s great that the kids are going back: I just wish I were going back, too. But I won’t be, because I’ve been hired…I just don’t have a job.
Bummer!
If you want a job in Northern Ontario I’m sure you could get into French Immersion teaching, they’re desperate for teachers with FSL – might need part 3 though.