Given that layoffs in the district in which I teach take effect in June, my last day at my current job will most likely be either this coming Thursday or this coming Friday, though it is not out of the realm of possibilities that I might have to stop in to my classroom in order to pick up a few of my materials sometime the following week. We'll see.
Once it's all said and done, I will have some time on my hands, some of which I will obviously use in the search for another job. That being said, I also intend to work on my blog-site a bit more often than I have of late. This most likely means, among other things, that a slight shift in paradigm is in the works. This is to suggest that I am considering writing about a wider variety of topics than I have in the past.
Again, we'll see. That's how things are for me these days--work and hope, wait and see. It's true that in a more ideal world things could be better than that, but it's also true that they could be far worse than that. So things aren't really so bad, after all.
For that--and, as always, for the fact that Mrs. Hasslington is in my life--I am truly thankful.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Saturday, May 23, 2009
A Note On (The Lack Of) Recent Posts....
Hello, folks. You may have noticed that I have not posted anything for the past few weeks. This is because I am in the process of attempting to secure employment for next autumn. (My present job will be ending soon.)
I will most likely return to writing and posting my thoughts on this site sometime in the not-too-distant future. Thanks for your time and consideration, and I hope all is well with you during these difficult economic times.
I will most likely return to writing and posting my thoughts on this site sometime in the not-too-distant future. Thanks for your time and consideration, and I hope all is well with you during these difficult economic times.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Don't Worry About Your Inevitable Worrying. That Way, When You Worry, You Won't Worry So Much About It.
The status of the international economy, it seems, has affected my status as a member of the workforce, at least for the time being.
I say this because I am either at or quite near the top pay grade for a teacher in the state of Minnesota--I'm at an "MA + 60," which means a Master's Degree plus at least another sixty post-graduate academic credit hours. That being said, I was informed this past week that I will be out of work as of the end of this school year. At present, I teach Academic Reading to struggling high school-aged readers, which I can do with my existing English teaching certification if I am also in the process of acquiring a Reading teaching certification. (I am indeed in the process of acquiring that second certification.)
Yet it became clear to certain folks in the district in which I work that renewing my contract each semester during the year-long certification process would have been rather expensive in comparison to hiring a younger worker just out of his or her university experience and renewing his or her contract (while he or she finishes the Reading certification) over the same period of time.
Hence, the younger worker was hired, and I am being let go. This is clearly a blow from a personal monetary standpoint--which is a huge concern, obviously--but it also stings because I enjoy my job. (I'll bet that if I disliked my job, I'd have been offered it indefinitely--isn't that just the way of things?...)
I've got a job interview lined-up for later this week--this one for an English teaching position in the same district--so we'll see how that goes. Yet I can't help but think that my academic background is going to be a barrier to acquiring a long-term teaching position in Minnesota, given the status of the economy and the fact that in Minnesota a given district must by law pay teachers what their academic credentials demand--as well as what their teaching background demands. (Private schools can get around some of this, but they tend to pay considerably lower wages than publicly-financed schools--and their health care packages can be rickety in comparison, as well.) One can see, then, why in the state of Minnesota a law that is supposed to protect highly-qualified teachers' pay standards often encourages districts to pass-over those folks in favor of newly qualified teachers when the economy sags.
(At present, I'm in the odd position of waxing nostalgic regarding the fact that publicly-financed schools in England often ignored teachers' advanced degrees, which meant that they didn't necessarily pay teachers quite what they were "worth," but they didn't tend to shy away from hiring highly-qualified candidates, either. I had no problems getting jobs when I lived there, though the cost of living in England is on average far higher than it is in most of the U.S....)
At any rate, this scenario is not my fault and it is not the fault of the newly qualified teacher who will be taking over my position. It is also not the fault of the people who work in this district's Human Resources department, though I tend to dislike the unjustifiably inflated egos often displayed by human resource workers. (By the way, I say let's either call it "Personnel" again, or simply mothball the H.R. fleet. Who's with me?...)
At any rate, like a lot of people in this financially-unstable era, I've been worrying about things more often than I might normally do. This has prompted me to "create" a still-rough-around-the-edges philosophy of worrying in the last week or so--I put "create" in quotation marks because I know it's probably been said in various forms many times before, and therefore I'm not really the originator, as it were. Anyway, it goes like this (and, yes, I know that I lazily substituted "they" for "him or her," so try not to get worked-up about that):
1.) Don't tell someone who is worrying about something that they shouldn't worry about that thing, because then they'll worry about why you're dissuading them from worrying. It'll simply make things worse, at least in the short run.
2.) Similarly, don't tell them to "try" not to worry, because that's like telling someone to try not to think of the color red--it has the opposite effect from what one intends. So saying this is probably worse than saying #1, above.
3.) So I guess all you can do is acknowledge verbally that worrying is sometimes an inevitable part of life, and then follow this up by saying, "I've found a certain amount of personal success in not worrying so much about my inevitable worrying." That way, when they inevitably worry, it might not bother them quite as much as before.
Hey, that's probably a rather small victory, but in this worry-filled age, it might be an essential victory nonetheless.
At any rate, it seems to be working--a little bit--for me.
I say this because I am either at or quite near the top pay grade for a teacher in the state of Minnesota--I'm at an "MA + 60," which means a Master's Degree plus at least another sixty post-graduate academic credit hours. That being said, I was informed this past week that I will be out of work as of the end of this school year. At present, I teach Academic Reading to struggling high school-aged readers, which I can do with my existing English teaching certification if I am also in the process of acquiring a Reading teaching certification. (I am indeed in the process of acquiring that second certification.)
Yet it became clear to certain folks in the district in which I work that renewing my contract each semester during the year-long certification process would have been rather expensive in comparison to hiring a younger worker just out of his or her university experience and renewing his or her contract (while he or she finishes the Reading certification) over the same period of time.
Hence, the younger worker was hired, and I am being let go. This is clearly a blow from a personal monetary standpoint--which is a huge concern, obviously--but it also stings because I enjoy my job. (I'll bet that if I disliked my job, I'd have been offered it indefinitely--isn't that just the way of things?...)
I've got a job interview lined-up for later this week--this one for an English teaching position in the same district--so we'll see how that goes. Yet I can't help but think that my academic background is going to be a barrier to acquiring a long-term teaching position in Minnesota, given the status of the economy and the fact that in Minnesota a given district must by law pay teachers what their academic credentials demand--as well as what their teaching background demands. (Private schools can get around some of this, but they tend to pay considerably lower wages than publicly-financed schools--and their health care packages can be rickety in comparison, as well.) One can see, then, why in the state of Minnesota a law that is supposed to protect highly-qualified teachers' pay standards often encourages districts to pass-over those folks in favor of newly qualified teachers when the economy sags.
(At present, I'm in the odd position of waxing nostalgic regarding the fact that publicly-financed schools in England often ignored teachers' advanced degrees, which meant that they didn't necessarily pay teachers quite what they were "worth," but they didn't tend to shy away from hiring highly-qualified candidates, either. I had no problems getting jobs when I lived there, though the cost of living in England is on average far higher than it is in most of the U.S....)
At any rate, this scenario is not my fault and it is not the fault of the newly qualified teacher who will be taking over my position. It is also not the fault of the people who work in this district's Human Resources department, though I tend to dislike the unjustifiably inflated egos often displayed by human resource workers. (By the way, I say let's either call it "Personnel" again, or simply mothball the H.R. fleet. Who's with me?...)
At any rate, like a lot of people in this financially-unstable era, I've been worrying about things more often than I might normally do. This has prompted me to "create" a still-rough-around-the-edges philosophy of worrying in the last week or so--I put "create" in quotation marks because I know it's probably been said in various forms many times before, and therefore I'm not really the originator, as it were. Anyway, it goes like this (and, yes, I know that I lazily substituted "they" for "him or her," so try not to get worked-up about that):
1.) Don't tell someone who is worrying about something that they shouldn't worry about that thing, because then they'll worry about why you're dissuading them from worrying. It'll simply make things worse, at least in the short run.
2.) Similarly, don't tell them to "try" not to worry, because that's like telling someone to try not to think of the color red--it has the opposite effect from what one intends. So saying this is probably worse than saying #1, above.
3.) So I guess all you can do is acknowledge verbally that worrying is sometimes an inevitable part of life, and then follow this up by saying, "I've found a certain amount of personal success in not worrying so much about my inevitable worrying." That way, when they inevitably worry, it might not bother them quite as much as before.
Hey, that's probably a rather small victory, but in this worry-filled age, it might be an essential victory nonetheless.
At any rate, it seems to be working--a little bit--for me.
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