Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Stages of Unemployment

When you first become unemployed, you believe it will be short lived, especially if you are an educated professional. I am a certified teacher in Special Education. Confident that unemployment for me would be short lived. Never in my life had I filled out more than one application before being offered a job in education. Henceforth, I thought I would have a position within a month of arrival. But July passed, then August and September. I had applications completed in various counties with no success. That’s when anger sets in toward all the people who laughed and made fun of teachers when the economy was prosperous. Teachers were the blunt of everyone’s jokes; I even had a parent once tell me we were no more than glorified babysitters. Now that the economy is on the decline, teaching is a respectable profession once again and everyone with a college degree, who got laid off, suddenly wanted to become a teacher. With the foreign teachers imported for science and math, and many new converts to education, there are so many teachers in the profession that after fifteen months and seven areas of endorsements, I still do not have a job.

After the anger subsides, you began to take an inventory of yourself and began reassessing of your age, appearance, years of experience, and self-improvement potentials. Then you began to expand your outreach area for employment. For me, I had over a hundred applications in five counties and the Atlanta Public School System but only mustered two interviews. My new home was more of a prison than anything else. For the first time, I was involuntarily unemployed, had spent all my savings, knew very few people, and could not even volunteer to get out of the house. It was a very dire time in my life. Over the next few months, I had signed up to do volunteer work at a school but was never called; joined the substitute teachers’ role in four different school systems but on average only worked one day a week.

Finally you accept the fact that your profession no longer wants you and it is time to seek a different profession or become an entrepreneur. You thank God for the blessing you do have and stop second guessing and feeling sorry for yourself. This is the stage I have reached; I don’t know what is next in my life but I know where I will not be, in the classroom doing what I love most, teaching.

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