In January of 2014, I celebrated 10 years of working with the Houston Independent School District. I remember when I received my pin for 5 years of service and I was shocked. I turned to my friend and told her that if she was here when I received my 10 year pin, that she should stab me with it! Its not that I wasn’t appreciative of the district or that I hated my job … its just that I have never done anything for 10 straight years. Every year that I had been teaching, I would say that it would be my last year. Well, …. for 10 years it hadn’t. So I made the decision a couple of months before my 10 year anniversary to put in my notice that I would not be coming back.
A few months before one of my former co workers, who is teaching overseas, told me of a possible job opening at his school in Europe. I was all gung ho about the idea of moving overseas since that was a bucket list item of mine, I went on and applied and told everyone I was moving to Europe. After 3 months of waiting, I found out that teaching at that Europe school would not be an option. It never occurred to me to go back to the district so on a referral from a teaching friend I registered for The International Educator (http://www.tieonline.com). At the beginning of March, I was traveling and had a 4 hour wait at and airport so I paid the $40 to register for TIE. I uploaded my cv, letters of recommendation, my cover letter, etc …. and I forwarded my information to several schools on TIE that were advertising secondary math openings. Three days later I had three schools contacting me (only 1 of the ones that I had contacted) and 7 days after that I had three job offers from those three after 2 rounds of skype interviews each. God is good!
My former co – worker told me that the hiring season for international schools ended in February, so the fact that everything happened so quickly in March was even more of a blessing and a pretty awesome 10 year anniversary gift from God!
My Math Class Weblog 