My Dream Job Turned Nightmare Part 1

I am no stranger to changing jobs.

I’m in love with the idea of the working holiday visa because a career just doesn’t seem in the cards for me. I don’t feel like I live my life to work, so although I appreciate finding jobs that I enjoy, I really can’t picture myself doing one thing forever. I want to follow my interests and see what’s out there. And I never settle for bad positions for longer than I need to. Getting out of debt would give me so many more options and leverage!

During college and late high school I bartended and waitressed at over 10 different restaurants and banquet halls. I also sold knives (very unsuccessfully), worked at a sandwich shop, sold bracelets on Etsy, and worked at a summer camp in Pennsylvania. Plus a lot of volunteering for different organizations, so I feel like I can learn how to do anything with enough training.

For the last 4 years I’ve been teaching preschool at what I thought would be my “gap year” job, but it’s so much easier not to make a big change, and I found myself stuck. I had to go through three different schools to find the one that I felt treated me right, and I’ve been happy in my position for 3 years now, the longest consecutive job I’ve ever had. But earlier this year, I did quit.

I attended a job fair for my county’s public schools and applied for a position with a government-funded program for underprivileged preschool-age children that a friend had recommended me for. I waited four months to get this job. I dreamed about it, fantasized about it, and talked to all of my teacher friends who had worked there in the past or knew anything about it. Their opinions were mixed, but it paid 1.5x what I was making at the preschool and also came with 100% free full healthcare coverage. I was on cloud nine when I finally got the call that they were offering me the position.

I was so sad to quit my job at the preschool, the best job I’ve ever had, but my boss understood that I couldn’t turn down free healthcare (this was a few weeks before COVID hit the US, can you imagine?) and I was ready to make the change. I went to orientation with such high hopes, ready to kick ass at this new job, pay off all my debt, and change lives (including my own!).

But from the very first day, I knew something wasn’t right. I left orientation still cautiously optimistic but when I was telling my partner about it later, I randomly started to get choked up. There were immediate misunderstandings with my contact at the headquarters office. No one seemed to know what was going on. I dropped by in person just to show my face and ask a few questions before my first official day, and they tried to convince me that I was obligated to start working immediately, even though they had no idea what school I was supposed to be at or who I would be reporting to.

They lied to me about what school I would be teaching at in my job offer and put me in a classroom at the worst-rated school in our district that had already run through 6 teachers from August-February of that school year. After 3 days of “training” where I filled out paperwork and watched a teacher play Youtube videos for the children at a completely different (better-rated and funded) school, they threw me into my own classroom. I got to work 30 minutes early so that I could try to get a feel for the resources available and get some things ready for the school day, but no one had given me keys and the only other person who had access to my classroom came to work late, so I had less than 5 minutes to prepare before students started arriving.

I tried to set up an art table, but in this entire classroom with 16 students, I could find only 8 pieces of paper. My “construction center” consisted of a box of about 30 Legos. There were 2 baby dolls. The curriculum materials I needed to teach the state-mandated lesson plan were in a resource room across campus. I was at a complete loss of what we were supposed to do all day.

When all the students had arrived I introduced myself and read them a story before they sat at the table for a school-provided breakfast. At this point there were various other adults in the room watching me, but none of them bothered to introduce themselves or explain why they were there except one woman who claimed to be my assistant. It was her first day too. We set about trying to pass out plates and I was trying to plan out what we were going to do for the rest of the day while the children were eating, but before I could even open everyone’s milk cartons, a girl stood up and said, “I’m done! What can I do?”

At the same moment, one of the women observing my classroom came over and introduced herself as the head of the entire program I’d just gotten hired for. I breathed a sigh of relief, finally! Four days in and there was finally someone in charge who I could ask for help. I asked her if we could talk for a moment and she led me out into the hallway while my assistant and another woman in the room handled the class for a few minutes.

Maybe I made a bad call, perhaps it was unprofessional of me, but I needed help and I asked for it. I had come home from the first 3 days of training sobbing every night, and I had spent most of the weekend getting drunk and dreading coming into school that day, and it had been even worse than I expected. I took a deep breath and tried not to cry as I told her that I felt really overwhelmed, like I had no resources or support, and that I didn’t even know who I was supposed to ask for help. The kids would be going out to recess within the hour and I didn’t even know where the playground was! What was I supposed to do when there wasn’t even enough paper for me to make a list of all the materials my classroom was missing?!

If I was looking for sympathy, I had gone to the wrong place. She immediately went on the defensive, shaking her head. “No, no no. All I’m hearing is problems. I don’t want to hear problems, I want to hear solutions. What are you going to do to make that classroom successful?”

I stopped short, staring at her. She wanted me to believe this was my fault? Some failure on my part?

“You’re a teacher,” she said. “Use your experience. There are 16 kids sitting in there counting on you. What are you going to go in there and do? What’s your plan for the day? What did you observe while you were training?”

I really did try. Despite the fact that I was quickly descending into a panic attack, I tried to hold it together. I didn’t want to throw the woman who “trained me” under the bus, but I squeaked out something about how I could just play Youtube videos of Sesame Street all day like she did, but I was pretty sure they weren’t paying me to do that. Desperate, I said that if she could just help me get the curriculum materials from the resource room (that had the state-mandated lesson plans and all the information I was supposed to be teaching, plus books, puppets, pictures etc from that week’s theme), I would scrape something together.

She assured me that it was in the classroom and I just needed to ask the other woman who had been observing me where to find it. She walked back in the room and sent her out. I asked her, and she told me it was in the resource room on the other side of campus, as I already knew. The woman in charge came back out and asked if I was satisfied and ready to get back to work. I had no idea what to say.

It was surreal, overwhelming, embarrassing, and I was trying very hard not to cry or even faint. I could feel myself panicking. I needed this job. The money was so good. The healthcare would kick in after the first month. How was I going to afford to walk the Via Francigena next summer if I quit? But if I went back into that classroom I knew I would just be counting down the minutes until I could go home and I’d probably never come back. At least this way I could go out with some dignity and not suffer the rest of the day.

I squeaked out, “I actually think it’s better for everyone if I just go now.”

Her only words were, “Well, it’s not ideal, but I’ll walk you out.” I guess after you run 7 teachers out of their jobs in one classroom, you’re not really surprised anymore.

She left me in the front office with one of the assistant principals. As I signed my resignation papers after less than 4 days, the AP smiled at me kindly and said that this wouldn’t impact my potential to work in the school district in the future and that I wasn’t the only one to have a hard time with that program.

It was only about 9 AM at that point and by noon the same day I was back at my preschool job, where they were very happy to have me. It was so helpful for reminding me that I’m a great teacher and nothing about what happened at that nightmare job was because of me. My confidence was shaken, but I would slowly gain it back.

So that brings me to the new game plan that I’ll tell you about in Part Two!