In late June, Ashford eliminated the entire teaching assistant position. We were told during what would be our last class, and when that course was finished, we were just done working. It was a pretty hard blow as I had never experienced a position just going away before.
At about the same time, my sister who is the mother of my niece and nephew had received approval from her principal to go down to a half time position. I was so happy for her and her ability to spend extra time with her children and do what was best for her family, but it was a double whammy for me financially.
I had been looking since late December of 2012 at our local school district and went on a total of 5 interviews but only for teacher librarian positions and did not receive any offers of employment. I have tried to get the teacher librarian endorsement through the Colorado Department of Education, but it is a long story and basically they will not endorse me in that area at this time even though my master's degree in Instructional Technology almost exactly matches the degree program that is offered by the only "state approved" program at the University of Colorado, Denver, even though it says that it is "offered, but not yet approved." I will have to submit a program approval if I ever want it to be considered and that is a lot of work. I am not unwilling to do the work, but frustration set in and I had to step away from it for a while.
I was never called for interviews for Elementary or English/Language Arts positions even though I hold endorsements in both of those areas as well as School Librarian, which is not the same as Teacher Librarian in the particular school district in which I was applying. I applied for 71 jobs in the district between December and September. Then I had to take a break.
I have also been applying for many online and/or other on-ground jobs for teaching, instructional design, training, libraries, and curriculum development. I think sometimes, the places already have someone in mind or that there are 100 other applicants for every job, so I needed to do something different to make myself stand out. Most of the time, I never hear from anyone. I have received some "thanks for applying letters, but we went with someone else." I have had no interviews or even offers of interviews.
In early January, I did a Pinterest search to find resume' ideas. I pinned quite a few items. I even contacted someone on there who had professional resume services, but he wanted $1500.00 to do a resume' for me, very much out of my price range. So once again, I empowered myself! I found one that was done by a technology teacher and she had blogged about it, so I read her information, printed out a copy of her resume and went to work.
This is what I came up with!
The one that I found on Pinterest was only one page, but if I wanted mine to be readable, I had to do 2 pages. My words only resume' is 4 pages, so this one is faster and gave a visual of what I am capable of doing rather than just words, words, words.
What I had been reading said that most people only spend about 10 seconds looking over each resume' the first time around. I wanted to have something that would stick in peoples' minds quickly and be remembered.
Here is the one I used as my example.
Just like Ms. Otto's, I used Microsoft Publisher to make my resume. I looked up all of the technology icons and logos online. I took pictures of my wordle and my license and certification. Even though, I have never met Anna Otto, I will be forever grateful for her inspiration. If you want to see the article that inspired me, you can click Techie Teacher to go to her website.
I have been especially busy in the past month applying for new jobs and using my new resume'. I have been moving along with Colorado Christian University and received an email the other day for one of the four positions for which I applied that said there had been a large response to the professor job and they were still reviewing materials and would let us know when interviews would be scheduled. They haven't forgotten us, me! I also received an offer from Connections Academy to do a digital interview, which I will do this weekend. I haven't ever done a digital interview. It isn't just a Skype session. I will use my webcam to record my answers and then many hiring managers will have access to it. I guess I will have to blog about that as well!
I know God has a plan for me and I just have to be willing to keep on moving forward and trusting He will take care of me. The waiting has been hard, but I will just keep swimming!
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