Life is Like a Piece of Macadamia Encrusted Halibut

Little moments in the 8th grade math class at Irving Elementary:

"I went trick or treating at your house! You said you were watching Scream!" says last year's seventh grader who recognized me this weekend. His knowledge of my home was the reason I woke up on Sunday morning to check for eggs. My worry was completely unfounded. He was mostly excited to tell me two facts about my Halloween of which I was already well aware. In case I'd somehow managed to forget.

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While helping a current 7th grade boy answer a word problem about honey bees:
Student: I'm not trying to be racist or nothing, but where are you from?
Me: Michigan. Why?
Student: I don't know why, but you sound like you're from a farm or the country or something.

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A tall, bald, white fellow (who is the exact image I have in my head of a high school basketball coach) comes to talk to the class about his selective enrollment high school. He acts tough and tells them he's going to keep it real. He tells them he was just like them. I appreciate his talk well enough, but somewhere along the line he gets lost in a cloudy metaphor for life involving food. Something about picking off the dollar menu versus eating steak. He ends this line of statements with, "I, personally, enjoy eating macadamia nut encrusted halibut. It's really delicious."

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After a shortened period with my second group of eighth graders, I dismiss the class. With a tone of sarcasm in my voice I tell them that although our time was brief, I enjoyed their company immensely and that I would miss them greatly. Straight faced and completely serious a floppy haired boy approaches me, "They always do that every year. The whole year they talk about how the eighth grade class is the worst class they've ever had. And then when it comes time for graduation they cry and go on about how much they will miss us."

The Unexpected

Walking into a school to substitute can be very intimidating. Even if you've been to the school before, it's hard to know what to expect. There are a number of questions that you will be unable to answer until you are there, in front of the classroom experiencing it head on.

What grade will I be teaching? Will the teacher have left lesson plans? If there are lesson plans, will they be enough? If there aren't lesson plans, what should I have them do? Will the class be rowdy or will they listen? Can I take the class out for recess? When are my prep periods? Where is the cafeteria? Gym? Lunch tickets? Keys to the room?

Even when I try to prepare myself, I am almost always thrown for a loop.

Case in point: Last week, I spent the first day of school teaching kindergarten. Without lesson plans left for me or even a vague knowledge that I would be teaching kindergarten, I entered Room 118 to teach the first full day of school that 21 5-year-olds would ever experience. Yikes!

As it turns out, I love teaching kindergarten. Even without any idea of what to do when I first walked in the door, Monday went terrifically and I was asked to come back for the rest of the week.

Throughout the week, we sang songs and danced. We practiced the ABCs and counted to a hundred. We read stories and told stories and we took time to "share". We built with blocks and played with puzzles and simply colored. And when recess rolled around, we PLAYED!

One of my favorite moments of the week occurred on Friday when I accidentally and spontaneously caused all 21 students in my class to turn into robots. One of the boys mentioned something about robots and I just couldn't stop myself from doing a little robot dance. Before I knew it, Joey was chasing his classmates around repeating, "I am a robot. I am a robot. I am a robot." When he caught up to one of them he would "push their button and turn them on" and another robot chaser would be born. When it was time to go inside I had to press a secret button on the playground wall to turn them all back into kindergartners!

In that classroom it felt incredible to be around so much excitement about learning and fascination with all things. It made me happy to be silly and creative and have the students eat it up without eyes rolling.

I also came face to face with an important reality about students that even from their first day of kindergarten, there is a HUGE difference in ability from child to child. While some students colored rain and dirt on their cut-out flower sheet because that's what flowers need to grow, others had a difficult time holding crayons correctly or colored everything green. The gap that I saw all the time in fourth grade starts so early, and teaching kindergarten would give me a great opportunity to help some of the students really get the extra help they need early, before it gets too difficult.

This is the first time I've really thought this, but I just might end up teaching kindergarten yet!

Wake Up Call

It's 6:30 in the morning. A woman I have never met is calling me again. She is about to tell me something incredibly important and through a sleepy haze, I must remember it all.

"Ms. Zurawski," she says my name slowly as a question, and it makes me sad to think she has forgotten me with just a summer apart, "Are you available to sub today?"

"I sure am!" I mumble, attempting to portray positivity and excitement despite the hour, because it must be tiring to cold call substitute teachers all morning.

She tells me the school name, its address, and a start time and with that our familiar morning ritual is complete.

Though it is only August, Chicago Public Schools has begun it's new "Track-E" year round schedule. And so, substitute teaching begins again!

Suspended Animation

I'm feeling pretty discouraged by my current situation. Today I went to the library to return some books and rather quickly found myself on the sixth floor enjoying the teacher resource section. I found some really interesting books including one entitled, "Should We Burn Babar?". It is a collection of essays about children's literature and "the power of stories in education." The essay I started reading is about classic stories that (beloved though they may be) include outdated messages in need of challenge. I am completely intrigued by this essay, and I am completely devouring this book.

So I'm reading this book and getting all fired up about educational questions and I'm thinking about how much I want to get into the classroom and teach. I feel like in a classroom I have the great potential to be a more entusiastic, more creative version of myself. I legitimately care so much about my students and their progress and seeing them finally "get it". And when I start thinking about how much I love teaching, I am filled with the frustration of my unemployment. Try as I might to send resumes, I have heard nothing. Despite my great efforts and my labouring over the exact phrasing of a cover letter, no one seems to want me. I just wish there was some way for potential employers to know that I really am exactly what they are looking for.


While at the library, I also checked out two other books. Books that I don't really want to read. Books that cause me to cringe with an undeniable feeling of failure in simply checking them out.
"Mastering the Art of Substitute Teaching" and "The Subsititute Teaching Survival Guide"

This is not what I want my life to be again this year. I do not want to have another year of standing still while my friends complete their second year of teaching. But what more can I do?

Cover Letter Frustration

Today a new e-bulletin newsletter came out and among the number of posts for which I do not qualify (Why didn't I get my math endorsement? Why don't I speak Spanish or Mandarin?!) I found the PERFECT position. 5th and 6th grade Language Arts teacher. In a community school. Which claims their mission to "effectively respond to the academic, artistic, social and emotional needs of all students". Yeah, that's right not just academics, but creative and social intelligence too! And...they use the phrase, "global society"! I don't know how this school could be more what I am looking for.

I know I should be feeling incredibly excited (and I am), but I am also feeling physically ill as I sit in front of my computer thinking about my cover letter. What string of pretty words will be the ones that will make a principal stop for a second and say, "Ah, yes! She's the one we've been looking for!"?

In my heart I know that if I were to receive an interview for a teaching position, I would have an incredible chance at getting hired. When I talk about teaching or successful lessons or students I just won't ever forget, my excitement and passion is papalble. Anyone who talked to me about the subject for 5 minues would know that I care. So much. If I could just get an interview!

Unfortunately, this places an inflated importance on the written documents I am sending. Therefore, I am stuck wondering how I can make myself stick out long enough to get that interview.

And so I write for five minutes and then edit because this statement or that one fails to communicate the right message. When I am done editing only half of the sentences I wrote are there, the rest defeated by backspace.

The longer I take toiling over the specific words and phrasing, the more resumes are being sent to the principal at my perfect school!

The Search Intensifies

Confession: I accidentally missed the second CPS Career Fair. After chickening out of the last one, I psyched myself up and was determined to go into the next one prepared and full of confidence. On Sunday, I investigated the date sure that it was at the end of July and found out that it already occurred. June 30th. I missed it by 5 days. While I know that this is not the end of the world, it is a considerable setback. Even though career fairs are crowded and full of people just like me all looking for a job, the major benefit of going is receiving the list of schools that are currently seeking new employees.

I have no such list.

I am holding strong without one though.

Yesterday I made my first major step in the job search. Previously, I turned in a resume at a few school, specifically ones in which I frequently subbed. So far, this tactic has failed to produce any leads.

My new strategy: 20 resumes sent to schools a day. 15 resumes to Chicago Public Schools. 5 resumes to Catholic or charter schools. If the CPS e-bulletin is updated I must apply for all schools for which I am qualified to teach. Regardless of location or snap judgments of school quality.

I have my substitute teacher map that shows the location of all of the schools in the area. Creating circles around my apartment's location, I applied yesterday to the 15 closest CPS schools. Today, the next 15. This will continue until all schools in my area receive my resume or I until get a job. Which ever comes first.

Introductions and Explanations

Round two of Ms. Zurawski's search for gainful employment has begun. This time I've decided to document the journey, hoping against precedent that this year's efforts will prove fruitful and I will soon be blogging my First Year of Teaching.

I graduated from Loyola University Chicago in May 2008 with my degree in Elementary Education and an Illinois Teaching Certificate in hand. Instead of looking for a job, I hopped on a plane and spent two months in Gulu, Uganda working for an education sponsorship program called the Dwan Madiki Partnership. There I met some amazing children and spent most of my time visiting and assessing local primary schools. I learned so much from this experience and will forever be grateful for it. However, there is little question that the summer spent away from resumes and job postings left me at a disadvantage when I finally returned to the search for a full time classroom. Try as I did to find something, I was unsuccessful and in October 2008 I started work as a substitute teacher for Chicago Public Schools.

While I could write a whole other blog about my experiences subbing, it is a post for another day. All I will say here is that despite appearances, subbing is not teaching. Instead, it is babysitting and crowd control and a horribly unfunny improv show. It is unpredictable and challenging and requires too much stern-voiced discipline. Missing from subbing is all of the joyous parts of being a teacher: building relationships with students, planning challenging and fun lessons, and seeing students succeed and grow over time.

In January of this year, I was saved from the inconsistency of substitute teaching when I was asked to sub full time for a woman on maternity leave. For a three month card marking, I taught a "gifted" third and forth grade class in a school with 89% of its population labeled "low-income" and 63% of its students meeting or exceeding state standards. Perhaps I will write more on these three months at a later date, but for now it is important to note that my time at this school was extremely challenging. Like a nerve-wracking end to a game of Jenga, so much was stacked against me and the support was spotty at best. I often left that school feeling defeated and as though I was wrong to think I could teach. Though I was told I would finish out the year there, the teacher came back early. I was told one day before Spring Break that when the vacation was over, so too would be my job. The minimal but existant progress that I tumultously built for three months ended just like that and I reluctantly went back to day-to-day subbing.

This year on the periphery of real classroom teaching had me constantly questioning my abilities as a teacher. As I caught up with my Loyola classmates, I heard stories of great success. While they faced many difficult challenges, my friends were employed at wonderful schools and were making amazing strides as they began their teaching careers. And then there was me: a failure in their midsts, unable to hold a job for long and unsuccessful in the jobs I could get.

This has been my mindset for the past few months as the school year came to a close and the job search again became relevant. Feeling unconfident and frustrated, I made only the smallest motions in the job search. I avoided what I figured would undoubtedly be a fruitless CPS career fair rationalizing that no one gets a job from a fair anyway. I weekly checked the e-bulletin job postings, but saw little I qualified for and gave up there. It is not that I did not want a job, I just continued to make excuses for inaction because it is easier not to try than to make an effort and be rejected. Or to be accepted into another miserable experience that I didn't want anyway.

While these feelings still linger in my mind, I had a change of heart after a recent trip to Washington D.C. I was there to lobby my representatives in congress for a bill concerning Northern Uganda. It was a huge event and 82 constituents from Illinois attended. In my group I spoke up to Senator Durbin's staffer and Representative Danny K. Davis. It may sound silly, but it was here that I was reminded that I am in fact well spoken and intelligent and have a lot to offer a school. This new confidence released a whole new feeling about what it will be like having a classroom in the fall. I remembered the times before this year when teaching truly ignited a spark in me. I remembered those few lessons this year that definitely proved I am not a failure and can (and do!) teach meaningful and engaging lessons.

Now, I have a new and refreshing outlook on the search for a full time classroom. I am excited for where this next phase will take me.