More interviews in my socks.

Lockdown progress report for May 29, 2020

Total words: 1,188 (not done though, just taking a break)
Manuscript total: 89,919

I had my fourth interview for the same school yesterday — I did two middle school interviews and two high school interviews.

I went into yesterday’s interview feeling pretty good about my chances. After all, the high school principal ended my first h.s. interview by saying, “Rachel, you should know that we at [name of school, I’ll call it “F”] are very impressed with you, and so is the middle school.”

I took that as a pretty good sign. I did my student teaching at F in the fall, so I know the school, know the staff. My interactions with the middle school had been limited, so it was good to hear that my two m.s. interviews seemed to have gone well.

It was also good to hear that the m.s. had clearly been talking to the h.s. about me. It gave me hope, and I so I went into the interview crossing my fingers that maybe, just maaaaayyyybeeee, I hadn’t heard back from the m.s. yet because the powers-that-be at F were just trying to decide which school to place me at.

Plot twist

But just like every good novel includes an “all hope is lost” moment where it seems our protagonist is doomed, my interview yesterday also included an unexpected plot twist that blindsided me. I don’t know if it was quite to the level of “all hope is lost,” but — well, I’ll let you see for yourself:

When I interviewed the second time for the m.s., they told me that normally, they would have me come in and teach a class of kids, but instead of doing that, they wanted me to create a lesson plan and walk them through it. I wasn’t going to be role playing, just creating the lesson and answering their questions about it.

Cool. No problem. I felt like I nailed it.

So when the high school also asked me to do a “demo lesson” for my second interview there, I assumed it would be the same thing.

And what is it Mom taught me about making assumptions??

It makes an “ass” out of “u” and “me”

Try to imagine my abject shock when the h.s. principal said to me, “Okay, you’ll have exactly twenty minutes. We’re doing a lot of these today, so don’t be offended if I cut you off when the timer goes off. Ready? I’m going to start letting the kids in [to the Zoom call] now.”

Wait a second. Did you just say kids??

Well, yes. Didn’t you get the email?

The email didn’t say kids.

Yeah, you’re going to be teaching a demo lesson to kids.

But…

Ohhhhhh, I know why you’re confused. You just did the middle school interview and they didn’t do it this way.

Exactly.

Okay, well, take a deep breath. I’m letting the kids in. You’ve got 20 minutes. Go.

And so I found myself scrambling on the spot to boil down my two hour lesson plan (because F is on a two-hour A/B block schedule) into twenty minutes, on Zoom, for about six h.s. kids I’d never met.

Love (and unemployment) in the age of coronavirus

The interview was not a total dumpster fire. That’s the best thing I can say about it. I’m hoping what they come away with is that I am adaptable and flexible even under stress.

I hope.

I was pretty emotionally off-kilter the rest of the day yesterday. Of all the job applications I’ve put in, F is the only school that has hit me up for an interview — and probably they’ve only done so because I am already a known quantity.

Under normal circumstances, bombing my final interview at F and not getting either my dream h.s. job or my “I can live with it” m.s. job would not be the end of the world. There are plenty of fish in the sea, and there are plenty of secondary English positions in a county the size of San Diego.

But the problem is we aren’t under normal circumstances and the Sea of San Diego is all but dried up.

There are a few jobs way up north — Oceanside, Escondido, Carlsbad — but I live way down south. Those schools would be an hour+ commute for me. So far, I haven’t applied for those jobs. I’ve applied to jobs with a half-hour commute or less.

But there are only about six of those jobs.

I’m not joking or exaggerating. There are literally about six.

Even if I expand what I’m willing to apply for (and I probably will if nothing works out with F), it only adds about six more jobs.

The problem is that state budgets have been eviscerated by the coronavirus economic crisis (do you like the word “eviscerated”? I just used it in a sentence in my draft of Empress of Dorsa!). There’s probably not a public school in the country that won’t face intense budget cuts for 2020/21.

Meanwhile, where I live, the local school district laid off over 200 teachers BEFORE coronavirus was ever “a thing” due to their own budget crisis.

Any guesses about who might have been included within those 200 teachers?

If you guessed the inestimable LT, the love-of-my-life-despite-the-fact-that-we-are-admittedly-in-a-weird-place-right-now, you would be right. This time last year, she narrowly missed a different round of layoffs and was moved from a m.s. she hated to a h.s. she loved.

But alas, when she gave up her tenure in San Diego Unified to work in the same school district as her kids, she had no idea that two years later, she’d be begging San Diego to give her a job again — any job — after being laid off from the new district.

We talked about it yesterday for a while — how weird it is to be in the position of competing against one another for the same very few jobs that are out there.

She didn’t apply to F, she said. She wouldn’t. (Although her student teacher did, and interviewed at F one day before I did.)

But she applied everywhere else. We compared notes, discovered that we’ve applied to all the same places.

And neither of us have gotten called for any interviews.

Six jobs and 200 teachers

In other words, I am competing not only with LT’s two student teachers from this past year, but also LT herself and her decade+ of teaching experience (and another 199 experienced teachers besides) for the same half-dozen job openings.

What kind of chance does that work out to — a half-dozen openings with 200 competitors?

I teach English, not math, but I think it means I have about a 3 percent chance at being one of the people who gets a job.

So in considering all this, you might better understand why I felt so bereft after yesterday’s potentially disastrous / partial dumpster fire job interview: If I don’t get one of the positions at F, I might very well just not get a position for the upcoming school year at all.

And it’s not like substituting is looking like a viable short-term back-up plan anymore, either. With most of the schools in the area planning on either a merely partial re-opening or else sticking to 100 percent distance learning come fall, I doubt they will even be using many subs.

Which is why I’m mentally preparing to turn myself into a full-time writer.

One person’s bad news is another’s good news, and bad news for me might be good news for my readers. Although I’m not the pessimistic type to throw my hands in the air and assume “all hope is lost” on the job front, I am a realistic type who makes contingency plans for my contingency plans.

In this case, I’ve been thinking about how I might live for another school year if I have no choice but to rely solely upon my author income yet again. I can tell you there will be nothing comfortable about it. And definitely don’t ask me how I will even begin to start paying back my student loans. But if I have to make it work, then I will make it work.

The upside for you might be reading Empress of Dorsa (and more) a lot sooner than any of us expected.