Around the same time I finally decided to become an educator, some major developments were taking place in the school district where I lived with my parents. School board drama and the hiring of an unqualified superintendent had resulted in the entire district losing its accreditation. (I was unsurprised at this development, as I had also attended school in this same district and was in my senior year when its accreditation was threatened due to poor academic performance.) Loss of accreditation meant many things–from high school diplomas and credits not counting towards college admission to the legitimacy of teacher seniority being questioned. Parents immediately began moving out of the county in an attempt to transfer their children to neighboring districts that were still accredited. Many teachers in the district, who realized that their years of experience would potentially be discounted if they decided to teach in other districts and their vested retirement was in jeopardy, handed in their resignation letters en masse.
By the time the dust had settled, hundreds of teaching vacancies littered the district website. Imagine navigating to the online site of a job vacancy for your dream company, and inscribed at the head of the job description in bold is: Contact the principal at 555-1234 to schedule immediate interviews!! As I perused scores of vacancies, the same bold message appeared at the top of each job. This is too good to be true, I thought to myself. It was almost too much for me to handle at the moment. I had just successfully made it past the probationary period at my current job, and my company had created a job position just for me. Despite the low hourly wages and lack of decent benefits, I felt secure there. I liked most of the people I worked with, and I felt guilty about the possibility of leaving a company that I felt had done so much for me to stay employed with them. (My young, naive self saw “job hopping” as a terrible sin, even if it was to a position with better pay, benefits, and stability.) I figured I’d give myself a couple years at my current job, and start applying and interviewing for teaching jobs during the summer of the following year.
A mere few months after I was made permanent at my job, fate took me in another direction. It was August of 2008, and the school year had just started at my local school district. I was doing some clerical work in my office when my cell phone rang. The caller ID showed an unfamiliar number. I usually ignore calls from numbers I do not recognize, but curiosity must have gotten the better of me because I decided to answer this time. On the other line was a woman who identified herself as a special education coordinator. She wanted to interview me for the vision teacher vacancy. We agreed on an interview time for the very next afternoon. After I ended the call, only one thought crossed my mind: What the hell is a vision teacher?
I had only completed a few applications on that district site, and I had never bothered to call any of those principals. I was not planning to start seriously applying until the following school year. Yet here I was being offered an interview—for a job for which I never applied! I wondered how desperate this district was in filling those teacher vacancies. And I was about to find out…
The next afternoon, I rushed to the bathroom after clocking out to change into my interview clothes and headed to my car to make the half hour trek to the school where the interview was taking place. With the burgeoning Atlanta rush hour traffic, I barely made it on time.
When I entered the room to interview, I was greeted by the coordinator who called me, Ms. Smith, and another teacher, Ms. Jones, who prompted me to sit down. Although I still had no idea what a “vision teacher” was, I was determined to put my best foot forward in this interview…
“So do you have your VI certification?’ Ms. Smith asked.
“My what?” I responded incredulously.
The conversation that ensued was something that seemed far removed from a traditional job interview. However, I did find out that a “vision teacher” was actually a teacher of students who were blind or visually impaired. I also found out that the certification needed for teaching in this capacity was a visual impairment, or VI, teaching certification. At the time of my interview, there was no alternative teacher preparation program where one could gain their certification while teaching full time…
At that moment, all of this translated into a waste of time, energy and gas money in my mind. I also wondered how Ms. Smith found my information and why she contacted me in the first place.
One productive moment in the “interview” was when Ms. Smith gave me information on the next TAPP session. TAPP is the name of the alternative teacher preparation program for people wanting to switch to a career as an educator in the state of Georgia. It is a two-year program that allows an individual with a minimum of a bachelor’s degree to earn their certification while working full-time as a teacher. At the time, it was the most popular route that a career-switcher like myself would take, as it would allow me to get my teacher certification while earning a stable income. And not having to wait a couple of years to pursue my dream was icing on the cake.
While initially disappointed and knowing there was no way in hell I would be considered for that vision teacher job opportunity, I felt that the meeting with these two ladies served its purpose. I went ahead and registered for the next TAPP informational session, which was scheduled to happen the following month.
On a warm August evening about a week after my “fiasco” of an interview, I was resting at home after a long day at work when another unfamiliar number came across my phone caller ID. Since I did not recognize the number, and it was nighttime, I decided to let the call go to voicemail. After a couple of minutes, the voicemail alert blared, and I decided to see who was trying to call me…
“Hello, this is Ms. Jones. I wanted to follow up with you about our interview last week…”
I almost fell out of my chair in disbelief as I scrambled to call her back. There was no way they were going to offer me that job…
As fate would have it, the sheer desperation due to the loss of accreditation in my district had permeated the visual impairment department. Ms. Jones herself, fearing that her retirement would be affected due to the accreditation crisis, had decided to take an early retirement. Some of the other teachers were either close to retirement themselves or were seriously considering resignation. Despite her imminent departure from the district, Ms. Jones decided to help to find suitable candidates to help fill the potential vacancies.
Or perhaps “suitable” isn’t the best word to use, since she was reaching out to an uncertified candidate like myself on a weekday evening asking if I were still interested in the opportunity. As luck would have it, a visual impairment teaching certification program based at Florida State University was being offered to aspiring educators with graduate-level courses that were a fraction of the cost of most college courses. The classes were being offered in person in a satellite building in metro-Atlanta, and within two years or so, I would have my teacher certification. Even though I truly had no clue what I was really getting myself into, I accepted the opportunity without hesitation.
The next step would be for me to apply for the certification program and pay the low-cost tuition. The process did take several weeks, but I was eventually accepted into the program and began taking my classes. I finally got my official job offer a couple weeks later, and promptly gave my job at the time my two weeks notice. In November 2008 at the age of 23, I began my teaching journey as a special education teacher to students who were blind and visually impaired.
I was finally working my dream job in a field I had never even considered. I finally felt like I had accomplished something in my professional journey after months of low-paying, temporary, and dead-end gigs. I did not realize that the rollercoaster ride that was my teaching career had just begun…