It’s been forever since I’ve posted, mainly because preparing for the job fair took up so much of my time. So: job fair details!
We
settled in on Thursday night, got some dinner, went to the orientation, met a
few people. We started feeling very confident due to the presence of idiots at
the orientation (one woman yapping to her friend the whole time, lots of people
asking really stupid questions). We slept well and got ready for the big day
Friday morning.
Picture
a large hotel ballroom, with tables all around the perimeter. Each table had
1-3 people behind it, with a large poster-sized paper on the wall behind them.
The paper had the school’s name printed on top, then the available jobs written
below it in marker. There were so many schools there that they had two separate
sessions of this. People would go up to the tables of schools they were
interested in, chat with the director for a few minutes, then sign up for
interviews. Very speed-dating.
We
walked into the first session, and saw… a lot of white space on those posters.
We walked around and around the room in disbelief, hoping things would change.
There was just nothing available (unless you were an elementary teacher, then
it was open season). It wasn’t as disappointing as finding a lot of jobs and
having people reject us, but still a bummer. By the end of two job-posting
sessions, we ended up with two scheduled interviews. One was with a school in
Costa Rica, a place we hadn’t considered, but they had jobs and I felt like we
clicked with the director right away. Costa Rica? Why not? The other interview
was with Vietnam, which would be our second interview with that school. They
had two English and two science jobs there! That doubled our odds. Surely we
were in!
We
were contacted by a third school in India. The three admins were impressed with
our information, and wanted to talk to us. We were apprehensive about the India
part, but the school looked beautiful and all three of the administrators were
fantastic. We set up an interview time for the next day.
At
this point, we had literally nothing to do for the rest of the day. Our
interviews were all scheduled for Saturday, and it was only noon on Friday. We
went to the hotel gym and tried to watch a movie on Netflix, to no avail due to
the hotel’s terrible Wi-Fi. Throughout the day (and Saturday), schools held
30-minute presentations which were sort of like sales pitches for their
schools; frustrating and odd to me, since most of them didn’t need selling. But
we went to some of them, and it dawned on me that I’m starting to want this as
much for the girls’ education as I do for my own career. Some of these schools
are incredible. Extracurriculars out the wazoo! Is educational asylum a thing?
Not that their education here is bad; they have truly excellent teachers. But I
can’t get past Sascha’s 15 minutes of lunch and 15 minutes of recess for the
whole school day. It makes me sick. This country has absolutely no regard for
the value of downtime, or anything else that can’t be measured by a
standardized test (which boils down to reading and math, reading and math,
reading and math). It’s not the teachers’ fault.
There
was a reception that night for all 500ish candidates, where we lasted about 20
minutes before tiring of the noise and crowd and futility. We went up to our
room to find two e-mails. One was from the India school. The science position
had changed, and was now AP Physics, which I’m not qualified to teach, so India
was out. The other was from Costa Rica. He only has so many places for
teachers’ kids, and earlier that day he had filled his limit. Unless we wanted
to shell out a third of our income to pay the girls’ tuition, Costa Rica was
out too. That was a bummer. The school looked really fun and relaxed, and we
were sure the guy would’ve hired us.
That
left us with one interview: Vietnam. 9 am.
We
got up an hour before our alarms. We got scrubbed up, fed, and back to our room
by 8. We spent the next hour drilling each other with possible interview questions,
thinking of the best possible answers. We quizzed each other on the school’s
mission and philosophies. I put a fresh top coat on my nails. I whitened my
teeth. I add all of this detail because it serves to illustrate the
pathetic-ness (?) of what happened next.
At
8:50, we went out to the elevators, quietly singing Ice Cube songs to each
other and feeling like we totally had this. We arrived at the room early and
paced the hallway slowly and confidently. Five minutes later, the director
opened the door. This was it!
“I
have some unfortunate news. I just got off the phone, and those positions have
now been filled.”
We
were so numb that we smiled and brushed it off like he had just asked us to
come back in an hour. “Oh sure, hey, no problem!” But I couldn’t feel my face
for the next two hours for as hard as it had been slapped. It’s still painful
to think about. But it wasn’t meant to be, and I have to accept that.
We
went to a few more presentations that day, which turned out to be very smart.
We introduced ourselves to a few school directors after the presentations,
which might end up helping us. The director of one of our top-choice schools
sent me an e-mail saying that he was glad we’d introduced ourselves, and he was
only sorry that he didn’t have positions to offer us. He and I wrote back a few
times, and he asked if he could help (!). I told him that we currently have
active applications in four schools, so if he knew any of those directors, just
convincing them to take a closer look at us would be tremendously helpful.
Anything to make us less anonymous.
Going
to the fair and meeting these people in person was priceless. We went to a presentation for one of the top schools in the world (really), and aside from
the two administrators, there was one other guy in the room. They scrapped
their presentation and just talked to us. It was fantastic. Inside my head
every once in a while I’d squeal that we had the guys from this A-list school
all to ourselves. Of course, turnover is so low there that they had no jobs,
but I bet they’ll remember us if the stars align and someone retires.
There
were two schools that I really had my heart set on, but I just did not mesh
with the directors. One of them has a General Science job listed. I went to
talk to him and he said coldly, “yeah, that’s actually Chemistry. Sorry about
that, that’s the way it goes sometimes” and he looked past me. I was so put off
by him that I almost physically recoiled. He looked fine on paper. Now I know
that I will never apply to that school as long as he is there, or anywhere else
he goes. The other school’s director was very sweet but seemed sort of harried
and distracted. I asked about the General Science job and he seemed confused,
his voice trailing off as he walked away. Yeah, not meant to be. (As of this
writing, both of those jobs are still open on the recruiting website. I know, I’m
shrugging too.)
So
at this point, we have three applications in to three different places:
Dusseldorf, Albania (just down the road from Montenegro!), and another school
in Bangkok. I’ve also written to Montenegro again to remind them that we’re
still interested, since they apparently have not filled those spots yet.
Jobs
will still open up, since it’s only February. All of those teachers who found
new jobs have to give notice where they work, which will open those positions. That kind
of reminds me of when I was having dating trouble in my 20s, and I decided I’d
just have to wait until all the good men were getting divorced in their 30s and then I’d get
my chance (which didn't happen, fortunately). Whatever gets us in, I guess.
The
crazy emotional up & down has been the hardest part. Worst-case scenario,
we’ll just try again next year. And we still love our jobs here, so that’s not
a bad consolation!
