The Job Description that Led to Quitting Teaching

This entry is part of a series explaining my departure from teaching. In previous entries I discussed my primary personal and professional reasons for leaving.

As I've mentioned before, last year was THE BEST teaching year for me ever. I was really happy with my school and my great kids, and was working hard to not only continue the awesome year but to make the following year even smoother by polishing up every lesson immediately afterward. You know, things like rather than make the quick notes about what to add/change/etc, I revised the lesson plans to include whatever spur-of-the-moment improvements I came up with, added the ideas I thought of later, and made sure whatever supplemental materials I created were edited/enhanced/laminated/color-coded/whatever and packaged conveniently for use next time.

So when my husband emailed a link to a job description to me asking "Is this something you'd be interested in?" I was really annoyed. Really, really annoyed. 

But during my lunch that day I had time to pull up the description and look it over, and had to begrudgingly admit that okay, maybe I was a little interested. The job was in the Instructional Technology dept at the local community college (the same one my husband works at) - essentially, teaching teachers how to use technology to enhance their classes. After looking it over and later drilling my husband for what additional details he had, I figured what's the harm in applying?

While I was definitely enjoying the year, I still knew that being a classroom teacher was probably not going to be my long-term plan (for all of the reasons that I discussed in my previous posts plus more); I was thinking maybe another two years, then it would be time to start seeking a support position, most likely related to my Reading Specialist degree. That this opportunity was coming a little earlier than expected, well, we plan and God laughs, right?

I received an invitation to interview shortly after applying. I actually enjoy interviews regardless (which I understand is somewhat of an oddity), but this one was extra fun because while I was truly interested in the job by the time it came around, I had nothing to lose - if it was offered to someone else and I had to continue teaching at my current school, I was perfectly fine with that.

Coincidentally, that interview was exactly a year ago. Today we conducted a training for dual credit instructors from the local high schools (including two districts that I have worked for), which has given me plenty of prompts for thinking about the differences between my teaching life and my current life. Tune in next time...