I Found a Job!

Hello friends!

Special Thanks to my cooperating teacher and his great
students for this awesome name plate they gave me at
the spring concert.

This is strictly a journal entry. I just wanted to talk a little about the past few months. I didn't want to write a journal blog of despair, but really that's what the past couple of months have mostly been.

I started my job search in February, before the TMEA Convention. I remember being so excited for TMEA (after all, 2010 TMEA was life changing for me), and then being progressively more bummed out when I didn't get a call to meet a principal who had said he would like to meet me while he was there. Of course I did eventually meet him. I knocked the interview out of the park, and went back a couple of weeks later to meet the other principal. I was the favorite for the position of Band Director at this district for weeks, but in the end I didn't get it. It was the first major missed opportunity of many in the job hunt season. You see, normally this small school district didn't get any good applicants, but this time they had several good applicants, and one outstanding applicant. He showed just as much enthusiasm and imagination as I did, but the big difference was that he had several years of experience as an assistant at an incredible small school program in the East.

This was the story of my early job hunt. I applied for a job, and things looked promising, and then out of nowhere someone would get hired from outside of the area.

Even in February and March we were getting ideas as to how bad the budget crisis would be. I wanted to think programs would see budget cuts, but that band teachers wouldn't lose jobs. Boy was I wrong! I was entering the job market in one of the worst years possible. It was a year in which, for the first time in a very long time, there would be a surplus of teachers rather than a surplus of jobs. And those teachers that were flooding the market had at least one thing I lacked - professional experience. I've worked hard to develop a reputation as someone who is going to be a great teacher, but even with all of the recommendations and connections and everything else, it's still hard for Districts to take a chance on a first year teacher when there are so many experienced teachers in the market. And hey, I don't blame them.

I didn't have a problem landing interviews. I was very fortunate in that regard. The gentlemen I student taught with are so highly regarded and well known in the small school world that having them as references is often enough to get you picked out of a pile. My cooperating teacher would make calls for me, and then I would make a call, and sometimes I knew I had an interview before I even sent my documents. I was very fortunate in that regard.

But typically if you student teach with them, you have a job in no time. One of my best friends had a job before May of last year, and I had hoped to duplicate that kind of success. But it was not to be.

I wanted to write a blog about graduation. After all, my undergraduate degree was a long and trying eight year process. Although I felt like I emerged from it more passionate and prepared than most first year teachers, and while my entire family celebrated its first member to go to college straight out of high school and graduate, for me it was bittersweet. I hadn't accomplished the goal of graduating with a job. And with the job market as it was, who knew if I would be able to snag one? We were hopeful, but it was a time of incredible uncertainty. After all, I have a family to provide for, and our second son was less than three months away from being born. We had to find a job, get moved, get the house ready, and get me ready to start the year.

Jobs would get posted. My cooperating teachers would make calls. I would make calls and set up the interviews. I would go to the interviews. A few days later I would get rejected. Some of the jobs, to be honest, would have been bad for my career, or not challenging at all, but that made it more frustrating when I didn't get it. I thought, "I know I could've been great in that job!" As the weeks grew into months, the tension continued to build.

All told, I had 12 interviews for 9 schools. I drove to all nine schools at least once (twice in one instance), and had two phone interviews as second interviews. I came close to getting a lot of them. I racked up a couple thousand miles on the road (this job search was definitely not cheap). It was tough.

But thankfully, thankfully, I finally landed one!

And it's kind of a funny story. Again, the networking played an important role. We knew the director at this small school was retiring. What we didn't know is if that district would choose to cut the band program as some other small districts across the state have done given a similar opportunity (where the director retired... in other words, nobody would have to be fired).

As soon as the retirement announcement was final (or rumored to be), I sent in my resume saying to the effect, "I heard your band director is retiring, and if that's the case I would like to be considered for this position." The response was that they hadn't decided whether or not to keep the program, and they might decide in the coming weeks.

3-4 weeks later, after their next board meeting, I had heard, incorrectly, that they decided to open the position. So this time I filled out the application (keep in mind, the job had not even been posted or advertised anywhere), scanned it, and e-mailed it to them. The response I got was to this effect (and I'm paraphrasing), "I don't know where you're getting your information, but the board has not yet made a decision. They will likely vote on it at the next board meeting."

So four weeks later, I called to check the status of the job. This was 7-8 weeks after submitting my resume. I was glad to hear they had decided to open the position. I resent my application to the personnel officer, and a few days later we set up an interview.

I think by the time I went in for this interview I had been on top of this position for two and a half months. I left the interview thinking that it didn't go as well as I would've liked. A couple of days later I sent a follow up "Thank you" e-mail as I normally did, but didn't expect to get any good news from it.

A couple of weeks later, after having gone to another interview, and on the same day that I received another rejection notice for an assistant position somewhere else, I got the thrilling call offering me this job. I told the principal I would be honored, and proceded to buy some flowers for my wife.

Finally, some certainty was returning to our lives. All of the hard work to get that degree (and the mountain of debt it's coming with) would not go to waste. I would be one of the few fortunate people who would actually get to have their dream job!

So now we've moved on from big problems to other problems, but problems that are good to have. We need to find a place to live in this new town. That's a much better problem than not knowing if I would get a teaching job, or not even knowing where we were going to begin with. I have an incredibly long list of things to do in the next few weeks if the program is going to have the kind of year that I would like for it to. It was a good feeling last night to sit in my "temporary office" (at Denny's) and write out a couple of pages worth of items of things I need to do. And of course that list is just a start.

While I have several interesting things I'd like to post on this blog before the summer is out, you'll have to forgive me if my posts slow down some now that I have this position. I had hoped that if I were going to get a head director type of position that it would be in April or May so that I could work to have a smooth transition for the students, and have the full summer to get everything ready. But hey, like one of my AFJROTC teachers in high school always said, "Sometimes you just have to roll with the punches!"

I have friends who are still trying really hard to find jobs. It's an incredibly tough year. I thought about writing a blog with job search tips, but to be honest, all I can offer is that your connections are very important. In most cases, they're the only chance you have.

That, and don't be afraid to call and talk to the person who will be making the decision either before or after you turn in your paper work. It will dramatically increase the likelihood of you getting an interview.

Also, you really never know if an interview was good enough to get you the job. I had several great interviews that didn't pan out into jobs, and one of the interviews I left feeling unsure about was the one that got me the job. The interview is crucial, but sometimes you just don't know what they're looking for, or what other factors are in play.

Anyway, I am just so excited to be past this difficult and uncertain period in my life. We now have an incredible adventure ahead of us! Thank you for reading my blogs. I hope that you find these posts helpful, or at least interesting. In today's case, thank you for sharing in this pivotal moment in my life. I am so grateful that I get to live my dream of teaching band, while my wife gets to have her dream of being a stay at home mom and wife.

Thank you again, as always, and until next time, take care!

Musically yours,
Mr. Cooper

PS. This blog is about to become a lot more relevant over the next year, at least in my mind. I can't wait!