jecht wrote:
Does anyone know how to mentally deal with not getting a job despite putting in 70 applications and about 10-15 hours a week of grinding since April? Fiancée is very depressed but still working hard to find a job during her months off this summer after getting her MA.
She graduated from Ohio Northern in 2014 with BA in early childhood, got her reading endorsement and taught at a Catholic school for a few years in Zanesville. She's originally from Dublin. Paid like crap, but she worked to get her RESA done and then got a job in Columbus at another Catholic school. She then got a MA in reading intervention at Otterbein over a 3-year period. Unless those are crappy schools for education?!
In 2014, when she applied to public schools they told her she wasn't experienced enough.
Now, she's applied to public schools with a master's and 7 years of experience and she's being told she's either too expensive, or she doesn't get any kind of feedback at all.
1) She doesn't have Orton-Gillingham (reading intervention certification) but that's the only thing I can think of. I talked to her about that and Wilson and she'll look into getting those.
2) Should she get a doctorate? That may help. At least with her MA she'll go from 42k to 50k at her current Catholic school (unionized) but it's still less than public schools.
Public schools in Columbus in the suburbs are THE jobs to get--get them young and ride the stability to your 60s with a pension and great benefits and salary after years of work. She looked at rural, charter, and Columbus city schools but she couldn't even get those or chose not to get them (A charter school offered her a role at 43k, 1k more than her current salary, but no recognition for her MA). She interviewed at that one and it was ghetto and disorganized, plus the principal ignored her for the most part.
It's just depressing b/c she interviewed with Grove City/SW Schools and they got her in the door with a screening interview, then never heard from again. Same with Olentangy up north.
I even told her to reach out to Jeff Maddox at Worthington but that went nowhere. I think part of the issue is that OSU is jacking up the system with a glut of cheap teachers. Westerville, same thing.
She even has connections at big schools (her district where she originally graduated from, Dublin Coffman, even got her an interview with the principal at one of the schools but that didn't work). So she's not against networking and such either.
I empathize with all you teachers out there trying to land big roles. My hope is my career takes off and she can work part-time as a reading teacher if nothing else works out, and she can be on my insurance, etc. At least the Diocese has full benefits. But Catholic schools only work if the spouse has a great job--I'm trying to do my job in the mortgage industry to get us to where we need to be, so there's less pressure on her to find THE great job. She is worried about having to work a second job if she needs to, but if she has to she can--it's the worst economy since 1981!
My experience in relationships is that women want someone to listen rather than bury them with advice. It might be better to back off and let her figure it out.