What do I do now?

School starts for my daughter in a matter of hours. She's excited, but she's worried too. She worries that her mom may turn into a basketcase... I am too. You see, our lives have been about teaching for as long as she can remember. She attended classes at the local junior college prenatally. Later, at 3 years old, she attended my education classes at Humboldt State University, sometimes taking notes so that she would be proficient by the time her turn came to attend college classes. Through the long hours of classes, student teaching, my 12 hour days at my first real teaching job, her mom has always been a teacher. And now, she's not.

I know, I know, teachers aren't made, they just are, but what happens when there isn't anybody to teach? I understand that there are plenty of students out there who don't have teachers, but I don't have anybody to teach.

Jobs have been available for the past month. I saw on one site that the same application had been downloaded 541 times. I'm hoping that the real number is only one quarter of that, because if there are even 100 out-of-work teachers in this tiny area, then something is drastically wrong. I've applied, gotten my rejection letters, or no notice at all, and even interviewed for a position which seemed made for me. I placed second out of 45 people. Now I know how the runner-up in a beauty pageant feels. I always wondered, now I know. The difference is, a beauty queen isn't relying on the income from winning, I am.

At my doctor's appointment this morning, the nurse practitioner mentioned that her husband, a laid-off teacher, is sitting at home waiting for call-backs too. She has her income still, they can handle a year of lay-off time without being on the street. I can't.

So my attention turns now to jobs for which I am drastically over-qualified, and yet under-qualified. No, I have never been a secretary, but I've written hundreds of messages, notes, letters and answered many irate phone calls. No, I have not done extensive data entry, but I can a run a grading system like nobody's business and even figured out how to send the damn grade checks through e-mail. No, I never went to nursing school, but I can't even count the number of knees, elbows, hands and other bruised, scraped, cut body parts I have bandaged, cleaned, and treated with antibiotic ointment. No, I did not learn to be a landscaper, but a woman on her own learns how to wield a weed whacker and pruning shears. No, customer service is not my dream job, but I have enthralled children with my history stories which are "so much better than the textbook, Ms. D!" and showed non-readers that books don't hurt and might even be enjoyable.

I've made kids smile and jump for joy and I've cried for them when they are down. I've been called Mom, Dad, Auntie, Grandma, and even Uncle once, and I've answered to them all. I didn't go to school to become a psychologist, a fortune teller, or even a mind-reader, but I did learn to read the set of a child's shoulders and predict how his morning had already gone. I also figured out how to make the rest of the day go a lot better for that child and worried when he went home that night. I learned that the toughest, meanest acting child still needs an adult to say "I believe in you," even while that child is telling the adult that she hates them.

I don't know what to be now that I can't find a job teaching. I have a family to support, and subbing doesn't pay the bills. I devoted a lot of time to become who I am, and it will be hard to become anyone else. I'm truly not trying to whine and I can't believe that this is hitting me this hard. It's amazing how alone I feel, because I can't show my daughter how horrifying this is to me. She knows, though, I don't usually sit on the couch all day in my pajamas, with red-rimmed eyes. My friends, mostly teachers, are incredibly supportive, but inside they have to be thinking, "Thank God I have my job." And rightly so, teachers should be grateful to have their jobs. They should be thankful that they have somebody to teach. . .

Now my daughter asks if we have enough folders for her classes, because she is finally a full-fledged junior high student. Seventh grade will need a lot of folders. I tell her she is in luck, because teachers have a lot of folders, and pens, and paper, and notebooks, and anything else a child could possibly need to survive.

Maybe I'll need to be something else for a while, a secretary, a gardener, a data entry clerk, but I'll always be a teacher. . . with plenty of folders.