The Road Goes Ever On and On...

I hadn't been in an interview in half a decade, and it had been nearly 15 years since I'd interviewed somewhere unfamiliar.  Due to the nature of schools, switching jobs is often pretty easy if you stay in the same building, so you can fall out of practice in going to new places.

I was terrified.

I was worried that my tattoos would show, or that my once-vibrant purple hair looked sloppy, or that my dress was rumpled and unprofessional.  Was my eyeliner still there? What if my eyes started to water? Every scenario of Interview Failure replayed on loop in my head as I waited in that cramped front office in April.  I had tripped over a wrinkle in the entryway rug on my way into the building, twisting my knee just enough to make it throb.  Was this a sign from the Universe?  Thoughts spun, and I watched the clock tick closer to my meeting.

But as I waited, I remembered something:  I didn't need this job switch.  I had a full year to make a decision. In fact, this school needed me.  And if I was too much for them, with my colorful hair, loud voice, big body, tattoos and opinions - then that would be on them.  Their loss. 

When the admin assistant led me down a silent hallway to the interview, I was calmer.  For the first time in my life, I headed into an interview as close to my full self as I'd ever been in public.  If it went poorly, I wouldn't ever need to see them again.  And I knew: it wouldn't go poorly because I am a great teacher.

A rock star.

A delightful weirdo.

***

I was offered the job by the superintendent on my birthday, over a zoom call while sitting in my school library between classes.  I accepted, signed off, closed the lid of my school laptop, and just stood in the room that had seen so much of my life - so many mistakes, joys, frustrations, learning opportunities, celebrations, and on.  I realized that I had just slammed a massive list of tasks onto myself for the next six months or more.  I would be leaving nearly fifteen years of experience behind.  Fifteen years of teacher stuff!  Fifteen years of accumulated sick time I'd rarely taken! Fifteen years of seniority in a district that scooped me up as a newly graduated educator.  Fifteen years of increasing demands on my time and unpaid labor.  Fifteen years of threatening my job security. Fifteen years of a revolving door of principals and superintendents.

It was time to go.  I was ready. I needed to believe that I was ready, because I had a lot of packing and planning to do.  

***

In August, I finally got to set up my classroom and library.  I wasn't surprised by many of the quirks because my predecessor had let me shadow for a day in June.  There were some unexpected frustrations to be had in the form of two large boxes of brand new unprocessed, uncatalogued books, and a decidedly niche organization system that I'd eventually have to reconfigure.  But on the whole, I was excited to start fresh.  I knew there would be systems to learn, colleagues to feel out, and more names to learn than my brain could probably handle, but I also had a huge teaching space, a well-weeded collection, the opportunity to go fully local with the November Book Fair, and whispers of a more flexible budget than I'd originally been told.  

So, I got to work.