Beware the ides of March
dredpiratebunny reminded me that today is the Ides of March
In my mind the Ides of March will always be associated with teacher contract renewals. I used to be a High School English teacher. I had been lucky enough to get a job in the largest school district in New Hampshire. My first year in the classroom was really rough. Your first year you’re learning your job, figuring out how to control a classroom, and making all your lesson plans from scratch. I worked 80 hours a week on a slow week. I felt like I was constantly behind on either grading papers or lesson planning. But the second year was soooo much better. I was still writing a lot of new lessons, but there were also plenty from the year before that I was able to reuse. The workload was heavy, but didn’t feel nearly as crushing as the first year. I was really looking forward to my third year of teaching.
I wasn’t expecting it when I was summoned to the principal’s office on March 15th. I knew what that meant. I’d heard about it from the woman I’d had my teaching internship with. Teaching contracts are legally binding, but most school budgets aren’t finalized until July. Most school districts don’t want to renew all of their teacher contracts until they know that they have enough money in the budget to afford to hire everyone. So they engage in the necessary but unpleasant practice of laying off some teachers every March, and then hiring them back in July or August, after school budgets are approved.
There are two kinds of pink slips you can receive on the Ides of March. The first kind is a layoff, where you can be called back later in the year. The second kind of contract non-renewal is just a euphemism for “you’re fired.” I can’t remember exactly what the speech was that my principal gave me, but it was obviously from a script. I asked him to repeat what he’d said, and he said the exact same thing, and I still wasn’t sure if I was laid off or fired. So I flat out asked him, “Is there any chance that I’ll be hired back next year?”
“No.”
Most jobs when you get fired, you go clean out your desk and go home. Teaching is the only job I know of where you get fired and you still have to come into work. For three long months. If you’re smart, you don’t tell anyone that you were fired. Because if your students get wind of it, you’re totally screwed. So for three months I got up every morning and drove into school and acted as if my heart wasn’t broken and lied to my students about whether I’d be back next year. The ones that really broke my heart were the freshmen who wanted to request me for their sophomore English teacher. The last day of school, as I was cleaning out my desk, one of my students stopped by to say goodbye and I just lost it. I told her I couldn’t talk to her right now, and after she left I just put my head down on my desk and cried.
Feh. Maybe my current job isn’t the worse gig I’ve ever had.
In my mind the Ides of March will always be associated with teacher contract renewals. I used to be a High School English teacher. I had been lucky enough to get a job in the largest school district in New Hampshire. My first year in the classroom was really rough. Your first year you’re learning your job, figuring out how to control a classroom, and making all your lesson plans from scratch. I worked 80 hours a week on a slow week. I felt like I was constantly behind on either grading papers or lesson planning. But the second year was soooo much better. I was still writing a lot of new lessons, but there were also plenty from the year before that I was able to reuse. The workload was heavy, but didn’t feel nearly as crushing as the first year. I was really looking forward to my third year of teaching.
I wasn’t expecting it when I was summoned to the principal’s office on March 15th. I knew what that meant. I’d heard about it from the woman I’d had my teaching internship with. Teaching contracts are legally binding, but most school budgets aren’t finalized until July. Most school districts don’t want to renew all of their teacher contracts until they know that they have enough money in the budget to afford to hire everyone. So they engage in the necessary but unpleasant practice of laying off some teachers every March, and then hiring them back in July or August, after school budgets are approved.
There are two kinds of pink slips you can receive on the Ides of March. The first kind is a layoff, where you can be called back later in the year. The second kind of contract non-renewal is just a euphemism for “you’re fired.” I can’t remember exactly what the speech was that my principal gave me, but it was obviously from a script. I asked him to repeat what he’d said, and he said the exact same thing, and I still wasn’t sure if I was laid off or fired. So I flat out asked him, “Is there any chance that I’ll be hired back next year?”
“No.”
Most jobs when you get fired, you go clean out your desk and go home. Teaching is the only job I know of where you get fired and you still have to come into work. For three long months. If you’re smart, you don’t tell anyone that you were fired. Because if your students get wind of it, you’re totally screwed. So for three months I got up every morning and drove into school and acted as if my heart wasn’t broken and lied to my students about whether I’d be back next year. The ones that really broke my heart were the freshmen who wanted to request me for their sophomore English teacher. The last day of school, as I was cleaning out my desk, one of my students stopped by to say goodbye and I just lost it. I told her I couldn’t talk to her right now, and after she left I just put my head down on my desk and cried.
Feh. Maybe my current job isn’t the worse gig I’ve ever had.