Hit The Button

Helen heading to an interview Friday morning

Helen finally "hit the button" (applied for a transfer) a couple weeks ago. Of course, like most things associated with the education system, the process is, shall we say, lacking.

 

Instead of it being a discrete process, "hitting the button" notifies her administrators so she had to stress about that and then work on smoothing things over so they don't hold it against her. The transfer window is only open for a couple weeks and the teachers haven't even declared whether or not they intend to renew their contracts yet, so the schools Helen is targeting aren't even sure if they will have open slots. Why not do the transfers after you know who is coming back? As one administrator told her, "Yeah, the whole process isn't really in the teacher's favor." What in the education system is?

 

So Helen has had to go through all the stressful gyrations of a job search while doing her normal stressful job.

Update: Helen got the transfer! She had a couple interviews. One of the schools sent an administrator to observe her teaching. But going into Friday, the last day for transfers, she still had not heard anything. The school that observed her finally sent a "decided to go with another candidate" email that morning. She didn't really get a warm fuzzy feeling from that school, but rejection is tough and she was bummed, but had resigned herself to returning to the same school. But then at the last hour, she got an email and a call from the other school. They said they didn't have a science opening, but they really wanted her and were going to move some things around to make it happen. There was a lot of stress in the process, but it all worked out and she got to go to the school she really wanted.