The trip that changed it all

Finding a job and the 1st year

A few months ago I took the 10 hour long flight over to Anchorage, Alaska. This trip is what truly started the whole Alaska craze. I had always wanted to teach at a place that was exciting and new but also a a place that needed a teacher. A school that I would not only teach at but a school that I could also learn from and experience new things.
I graduated from the University of South Carolina in 2013. I left that school with a degree in Early Childhood Education and the belief that the world was mine and that because I had a degree jobs would be easy to find. I believed that a job would just fall into my lap. Boy could I not have been more wrong. What they fail to tell you in school is how hard it will be once you get out of school to find a school. The middle of my Sr year I started filling out applications and attending job fairs. Each one harder than the next. I expected it to be easy to find a job like I would walk in and be able to scope out the different schools and then just choose one. sadly it does not work this way. Finding an education job in South Carolina is like finding a needle in a hay stack. But not only finding a needle in a hay stack but looking for that needle when 12 other people are too. (OK so that one kinda got away with me ha ha but you get the point). Getting a teaching job is hard. I mean who wants a teacher straight out of school? One you have to train and show the ropes? Long story short, I ended up getting a job at an arts and science charter school in Hardeeville, SC. It was an at risk school and I looked forward to teaching my first year. I had high standards for myself and for what I was going to accomplish. I was also really excited and nervous about meeting all 22 of my new children. Long story short I learned many things through the year, I had days where I loved my job, I had days where I cried myself to sleep, I had days where I wanted to quit teaching and days where I loved what I did. What kept me going was my kids. I loved my kids. Every single one of them I loved their attitudes, I love their smiles, their tantrums, their excitement and their creative spirit. It was this year that I also learned the importance  of teaching children that they have the power and ability to succeed in life and that they are important as a person.  As the year continued on I became more and more anxious. Even though I liked my kids and my job something was missing. I looked around one day and realized that I was unhappy. I was young I was suppose to be excited and having fun in life but all I did was look around and I could not find one person around who's life I wanted.  I was missing the wonder in life. I missed being in a place that you want to be in. I grew up moving around as a military child so traveling is in my blood. But I really miss being in a place where the culture is different than yours because it really opens you up to a new world and a new culture and that is how one grows. People love to say if you don't travel now, you never will. So I decided to change it.

Anchorage job fair

The trip to Alaska actually started with a joke. Christine and I were having one of those days. SO we started joking around and talking about places to go and have an adventure at. We played around with far away lands like China, Germany, India, and even Italy came up but the application process was crazy, you had to have 3 year of experience, or the programs were very intense. A few days later Alaska came into the picture and we started doing research. What does one really know about Alaska? I mean it was in the movie The Proposal right? I do know that there is lots of snow and it is cold, they have polar bears, Moose, reindeer and sadly they don't have penguins (yes, yes, I originally thought so too haha.) But other than that I really knew nothing about Alaska so I started digging. I learned about their need for teachers, the pride they take in their environment and keeping the beauty of the land, and I am not going to lie when I found out there was a 5:1 ration of men to women it made Alaska that more desirable. We talked about moving and laughed about it and did some more research even found a date of a job fair that we could attend but it didn't really become reality until I got a ticket to Alaska for my birthday from my parents.  So Christine and I decided why not? We packed up a suit case, our resumes, our little bit of knowledge, and high hopes. About 10 hours later we landed in the city of Anchorage. We got off the plane and from the instance we stepped off the cold air caught us. It wasn't like really cold like people think but it was nippy which surprised me because it is suppose to be ungodly cold all the time in Alaska right? See that is the problem with doing your own research online. You see so many websites that talk about the extremes of Alaska and we all know that the Internet never lies. Anyways we got out the airport got into our rental car, a   Malibu of all things and drove out to the street.  And that it the day I fell in love with Alaska. The scenery was beautiful, breathtaking, like nothing I have ever seen. It was like I was transported onto a movie set or like someone had painted these snow topped mountains. I knew at that moment I was home.

 

After we found our little hotel and decided to go in, because the outside looked kinda scary but inside it was quite quaint it even had a gastro pub that had great food. The next day we went to the hotel for the job fair. It was then that we quickly  realized that they had changed the date for the job fair moving it back a day so they could have professional development. It also allowed them time to setup which was all good except they had failed to update the website. So there you had it, two girls from South Carolina were in the hotel in full interview attire ready for the job fair but on the wrong day. Any normal person would have left after figuring it out. But not us. We were both hardheaded and we were both determined not to waste the day. Thus the Job fair game begin. You don't understand many people hate going to job fairs. But that is not the case with me. I love job fairs. I love the talking to people and trying to sell yourself. It didn't take a long time for it to get around the hotel that there were two highly qualified girls with no life sitting in the lobby handing out resumes. That is when the employers started to come and talk to us, taking our resumes, and even conducting interviews with us. Between me and my ability to talk to anyone and everyone (even a brick wall) and Christine's great intellect we were a great power team and we sold ourselves to each employer with success. By the end of the day everyone knew who we were, the people in charge of the job fair, the Alaska Mentor people, even the people who ran the hotel. We stayed until late afternoon and then decided to go and truly explore Anchorage. Later on that night we talked about the reality of teaching in Alaska. What we wanted, what we didn't even want to try. We decided that we were going to stick with the main cities. Bush towns were too scary and they were truly roughing it. We were scared to try something new and that was too hard  and it was something I definitely didn't want to do, right? Wrong.

Let me back up a little bit, 'Bush communities are defined as regions of the state not connected to the north american road network or ready access to the states ferry system. A majority of Alaska's native populations live i the bush and most parts of the bush can only be reached by small airplanes, snow machines, snowmobile, boat or dog sled.' (wikipedia)  Some of these bush communities don't even have running water, electricity, cars, or even toilets. They would use out houses or even honey buckets which are like bedpans. Me without a working toilet? Ha, don't make me laugh. The isolation was also a concern for me. I am young, I needed to party because I partied all the time.... oh wait no I don't. This all seemed scary and with little information available to us we wanted no part of it. We decided that we were going to take the safe option. The one where we would know how it would go, the one that was like home. The boring option.

 

The next day was the real day of the job fair (we were even early). We were anxious to see Martin, Holly, and all of our other friends that we had met the day before. We checked in and got our name tag (not that we really needed them) and stood in line. That day we pushed ourselves we went to districts that we didn't know much about an had an open mind. We talked to a lot of people, learned  about many different communities, their need for teachers and how not all of the bush communities are like we believed. Sure some of the bush communities are like what we read with no plumbing and such but most are not. The other Bush communities have been pouring money into teacher housing, convinces, training for their teachers, and also into resources for their schools.They have been updating and changing the curriculum by adapting new standards and making sure they are including the values of the people they serve. They were different, they were new, they were exciting, and they were the adventure that I was looking for. I instantly fell in love the comradely of all the Alaskan districts they had friendly competition but everyone is helpful and nice. The districts work together they all have their differences in what they teach but it was night and day between this job fair and the shark tank back in South Carolina.  I had gone from having to fight tooth and nail trying to find a job to having so many job offers that the different districts were bending over backwards to sell themselves to me (like they brought us drinks (cokes) and everything). I got to a point that I had a few job offers and who ever said that having more is better lied to you. It makes it so hard looking at pros and cons of each and weighing what I want to do. That is until The North Borough School District interviewed me and offered me a job. The second we started the interview process I was impressed. They were so focused on the student and protecting the culture of the different towns that they were in. They also worked well as a team. You really can tell a lot about a district from their interviews. They also seemed to enjoy their jobs and spoke highly of their schools and who they worked with and best of all I could see myself like them in the future. It was amazing how things fro, that point started to fall into place. I found a district that I loved, that would support me, that would challenge me, and would be an adventure in a borough without having to rough it.

I learned a lesson that day. Never say never. because the second you do you will prove yourself wrong. I now have signed a contract with the North Borough School District for 1 year. I will be in Atqasuk which is a bush community and I couldn't be happier or more excited.