I have had a unique journey to be where I am at now as an English teacher. As I look back on this journey, sometimes through what I thought was a professional hell, I realize that every single rejection, acceptance, and person I met have brought me to where I am today.
I was the first person in my family to go to college, and I had no idea what I was doing when I chose a major. I was the enigma of a jock and nerd combined, graduating top of my class and having a love for academics and anything that required a ball or competition. Knowing nothing, I decided to major in physical education. I figured I would be a genius by minoring in health as well, because that would make me incredibly marketable. I breezed though college, doing well in my education classes, finishing top in my physical education classes, and graduation Magna Cum Laude. I figured I was golden with a stellar GPA and solid references. Who wouldn't want to hire a smart P.E. teacher? Little did I know this was a position that was more about who you knew than how well you did in school. Immediately after college, I began going to interviews for P.E. jobs. The first interview I went to, I wasn't hired because I didn't have my WSI, a license to teach swimming. I figured it didn't matter, I was fresh out of college, living in a small town with limited options, so I worked 2 part-time jobs, one as a fitness specialist and the other at a YMCA as the youth sports coordinator. I worked these jobs for a year while my wife went to grad school, then we decided to move back home to Indy for a better job market for both of us. We moved back in June of '04, and I was ready to find a job for the upcoming school year. I went on roughly 15 interviews that summer, only to be turned down for every single one for one reason or another. I had a couple very close shots, one where it was debated for 3 hours over me or a student teacher, but no jobs came. I finally decided it would be a good idea to get my foot in the door in a school district, and contacted a family friend who was a principal. She made a call, and got me an interview with a gentleman who could get me a job working as a special education aide in a high school. I absolutely loathed my adapted P.E. class in college, but I my efforts to invent a money tree were not working, so I needed a job. I went on the interview, and I was offered a job at Franklin Central High School as an instructional assistant working with students with emotional disabilities. With much apprehension, I took the job. A week later I called the gentleman back to get more specifics about the position, and he forgot he offered me the job. Yes, that actually happened. He forgot he offered me the job, and gave it to a guy the school was "hot to trot". After our conversation, he recalled offering me the job, and said he would see what he could do for me. He recommended me to interview with a woman who hired for another township. She had a position open at Perry Meridian High School working in a classroom with students with severe disabilities. I truly was terrified to take this job, but I needed money and a foot in the proverbial door, so I took the job and slid my foot in.
A couple days before school started, I noticed there was a JV soccer coach opening at Southport High School, which is in the same district as Perry Meridian, and their main rival. I had no loyalties at this time, and soccer had always been my own personal drug, so I applied for the job and sent my resume to the AD. He passed it along to the head coach, who called me and told me he would interview me the first day of school after school on the soccer field. I had no idea what to expect, so I packed a bag with my boots and soccer gear and took it to school on the first day. I don't remember much about my first day at Perry Meridian, but I do remember absolute fear about what my job would entail. I was terrified to work with students with severe disabilities, and he classroom teacher could see the fear in my eyes. I told her I would learn and handle it, just please bare with me. After school, I drove to Southport to interview with the head soccer coach. I walked out the field, only to be greeted by players asking if I was the new JV coach. I said I was here for an interview, and if they knew where the coach was. The coach came out, and I believe the interview went something along the lines of "Do you have your gear with you? Good, go put it on, we have work to do." Thus began my employment at Southport High School in the fall of '04 as the JV soccer coach.
I worked a semester at Perry as an instructional aide, and I learned to love that job and those kids. Those 19 weeks were incredibly crucial in my development as a person and a teacher, and I gained so much confidence in myself and a love for a population of students I at one time feared. Even though I had learned to love my job, the $70 a day I was earning wasn't quite what I was hoping to earn, so I continued to look for teaching jobs. A P.E. job came open at Beech Grove High School at the start of the second semester, and I interview and was offered the job within hours. There was a chance the job would be cut at the end of the year, but I figured taking the job and gaining experience was worth the chance. I took the job, and taught P.E. for one semester, which is so far the only semester I have used what I spent thousands of dollars on in college. The job was cut at the semester, and I was back to square one looking for a job. After teaching P.E. for a semester, I wasn't sure it was what I wanted to do because it honestly bored me out of my flipping mind. I went on another dozen or so interviews that summer, only to be beat out by the superintendent's nephew, a transfer from another building, and yada yada yada. With the school year approaching, I was literally out of options. Bill, who was the head soccer coach at Southport, wanted me back the next year as his assistant, and spoke to the assistant principal at Southport about finding a position for me at the school. I was offered a job as the permanent building substitute teacher, which I accepted because it allowed me to continue coaching, and it kept my foot wedged in that door I had heard so much about.
At the beginning of the second semester, the assistant principal called me into her office to discuss a job possibility. RISE Learning Center, a co-op in the township that serviced students with special needs, had an immediate opening for a teacher. The job would require me to return to school to receive my endorsement in teaching student with disabilities, but it would also bump me up to Master's level pay. I was extremely excited about the possibility of teaching again and making more than $70 dollars a day for a 180 days, so I prepared for my interview and gave it my best shot. This was my 26th interview I had been on since graduating college, and I was cautiously hopeful. I had my interview, and was allowed to sit in the classroom and observe for a day. I knew this was something I could do, and I went home and prayed for a miracle. A day later, on a Friday, the principal at RISE called me and offered me the job. I met with HR on Monday, and started teaching on Tuesday. Thus began my official teaching career in January of 2006.
My job at RISE consisted of teaching core subjects to students with severe emotional disabilities. What this really meant was surviving each day, counseling students with really jacked up home lives and pasts, and trying to get through some sort of academia each day. I fell in love with my job, and I was very excited to teach something that matters. I gravitated more towards teaching English to these students, just because that is my natural bent.
I continued to teach at RISE until the end of the 2009 school year. At the end of 2009, Perry township in essence took their students with emotional disabilities out of the RISE co-op, so my job was transferred from RISE to Perry township as part of the Alternative Educational Program. In 2007 I had been promoted to the varsity soccer coach at Southport High School, so this move to the AEP excited me since the AEP is literally directly across the street from Southport, and I was able to help develop a brand new program for my students with new technology and resources. My excitement dissipated over the course of the second year at the AEP as the promises of resources and changes disappeared like a ghost in a fog, and I thought about looking for a change. I had been teaching English for 4 years now, and I loved it. I had always been a bookworm growing up, and loved to write, so it was a natural fit. I was technically highly qualified to teach English, but as the law dictated, if I moved building or positions, I lost that designation. Thankfully, our state superintendent, in one of his only moves that I didn't find deplorable or asinine (and maybe it was still that way, but it benefited me, so I didn't really care) allowed teachers with a current teaching license to be licensed in another content area provided that they pass that content area test. Thanks to my photographic memory, passing tests had always been a speciality of mine, so I decided to sign up and take the secondary language arts Praxis II in the summer of 2011. I passed the test with relative ease, and immediately let the principal at Southport know I was now licensed to teach English. Unfortunately, with it being late in the summer, all English positions had already been filled, so I decided to keep continue at the AEP until something opened up.
In a crazy twist of events, I didn't have to wait very long. On the day before school started, actually on the bus ride to our first soccer game of that year, the principal at SHS called me and told me they had an English job open up at SHS and I would be moved over to the position the next day. I was in shock, and incredibly unprepared. Thankfully, some logistics had to be worked out, and I was told the job would be mine, but it would have to wait for some school board decisions due to contractual issues. I started my year at AEP, reluctantly informed my assistants of what was going down, and started to mentally prepare for my job at SHS. I was told it would probably be around mid-October when I was actually transferred over, but, as this whole crazy situation continued to play out, I was again smacked in the face with unexpected news one mid-September morning.
On the above mentioned morning, my AEP supervisor came in and told me congratulations and she was sad to be losing me, but she understand why I was leaving. At this point, under instruction for the assistant superintendent, I had told only 2 people of the pending move, and she wasn't one of them. I looked at her with bewilderment, and asked her what she was talking about. She said she heard was being transferred to Southport the next day, and I told her it would have been nice to know if someone would have informed me. I called the principal at SHS and asked her what was going on, and she confirmed that I was being transferred over the next day, and she was getting ready to call me to let me know. I mentally and physically recovered from the news, continued my last day at AEP, and started to prepare for my new journey at Southport.
Monday starts my tenth year as a member of the SHS staff and my third year as one of their teachers in the best department in the building. I doubt many people have taken this road or a similar one to their current teaching jobs, but it reassures my belief that I am where I am meant to be. There is truly no other job I would rather have, no other place I would rather work, and no other people I would rather work with, unless Stephen King, Jurgen Klinsmann, Sir Alex, or Pep Guardiola come calling. This is my journey; this is who I am.
