A Big Fat Lie?

The more I keep searching for a job (online, which is my only tool at the moment), the more disenfranchised I get. I keep having that nagging thought that everyone @#$!ing lied to me throughout university. Particularly in the Education program.

School boards have a weird hiring policy. They don't take just anyone who waltzes by with qualifications. Really. Despite what newspapers and administration say. They have a list of people they put on the side during the year. When the need arises for a replacement, or something less permanent, they look at the list. The people on top are those who have more experience. The people in the middle are those who sorta have experience. The people on bottom are silly people like myself who decided to start teaching at this time.

And it doesn't even matter what you are qualified to teach. The one school board last month called me for a French teaching position. {I'm not even going to start on that one.)

I have two bachelors. My life is/was? geared towards using these two credentials (and the permit to teach that is hanging on my wall) to get my foot into some position for the betterment of society, through the instruction of the young 'uns. Seriously. It has been this way from as far back as I can remember having concious, non-idiotic, unselfish thoughts. Which didn't happen often, but did happen somewhat during early school years. [If you think I'm BSing this stuff, you should come by and rummage my box 'o crap in the basement.]

But now I am at the barricade. Not the crossroads. Not the freaking superhighway. Not even a stinking orange pylon in the middle of the gravel pit of a path. It's a freaking police barricade.

I contemplate. Surely, a province with supposedly a shortage of qualified mathematics and science teachers would be pounding at the door? And this province would also be crying softly in the corner for the wave upon wave of teachers retiring? And as such, there are even fewer new teachers who wish to isolate themselves in the rural regions of the motherland to teach her children?

All the stuff I pondered about above was fed to us during my several years in this B. Ed. I'm not saying that it couldn't be true. I'm reiterating that I feel like I've been led astray and everyone wanted me to go through this program just to give them an extra ten grand of my life. Or just to laugh at me.

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Digression

Everyone suffers through the teaching program. Some pretend they have everything under control. (A few are naturally talented and have no problems "whatsoever" but those are the exceptional ones.) Some have issues with how the system is set up currently. Some ultimately decide they never wanted to do this job. And then there's me.

My expectations going through this program was to "change myself," to a certain degree. Coming in, I was a lonely, depressed, shy, unassuming, wishy-washy student, readying herself for the real world. Coming out... well, let's say that I have somewhat lessened the extent of all these weaknesses. Maybe.

In the end, it was about growing up. And I learned my own lessons out of this experience. Life, death, love, betrayal, strength, weakness, joy, sorrow. (How do you compress all this in a few years? Or a cheesy teen novel?)

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It's a barricade because they want to weed out the ones who weren't paying attention in the fog. I was too busy "growing up" to notice how much I screwed up. It sounds teen angsty, but age doesn't matter. [I could point out a lot of acquaintances who haven't even begun to go through "puberty," and they're at the university level.]

So now that I'm out, into the "real world," I felt like I was pushed out of a fog into a dense forest. With rain. And no yellow plastic poncho. But a cute little hat, yes.

Anyone want to hire a newly qualified, permit-holding mathematics and physics teacher?