An Open Letter to the Teacher Who Didn’t Get a Job

Dear New Teacher,

You are a fully-licensed teacher without a classroom.

You took all the methods and pedagogy courses and learned how to create a 10-page lesson plan that meets all student needs. Getting outside of your comfort zone, you visited classrooms to complete hours of observations and clinical experiences. You paid for the background check (or checks), you studied and passed all the required exams, and you graduated with a degree in education.

To get that degree, you also spent months student teaching in someone else’s classroom. You worked beside a mentor teacher to learn how to do things on your own while balancing extra college tasks. For months, you showed up at school everyday without pay, thoughtfully designed creative and differentiated lessons, taught the lessons, and ran someone else’s classroom while dreaming of the day you would have your own classroom (soon, right?).

After graduating, you devoted hours to creating a portfolio highlighting your education and experiences that you were so proud of, sent in applications at schools, and even got a few interviews! You watched YouTube videos that provided tips on how to interview for a teaching job and impress the administrators. You showed up to the interviews ready to answer ANY question and communicate your enthusiasm for teaching.

With eagerness, you saved teaching ideas and classroom inspo to your Pinterest boards, read books on classroom management strategies, and planned activities to do at the beginning of the school year with your new students. You bought a cute lanyard and a teacher planner, preparing for the day you could officially call yourself a teacher!

Over the summer, the weeks ticked by, and at some point, the realization set in that you might not get your first teaching position this fall. Those schools you interviewed at decided to go with someone else, and August arrived with no job lined up.

Then, one day, back-to-school posts start flooding social media. Pictures of organized classrooms set up to welcome students back. Teachers posting selfies with the caption, “It’s my 12th year!” “My first year!” “Year 3!”

You let yourself hang onto hope until the first day of school officially arrives…and finally, you accept that you will not be teaching in your own classroom this year. You won’t have your first classroom this year, and you won’t until next year at the earliest. Next spring you will have to prepare for another round of interviews, trying to prove that you are capable of doing the job.

You knew you weren’t guaranteed to get a job right after college, but you were not prepared for the hurt that you would feel when the first day of school showed up and you were not getting to experience the firsts that you worked so hard to have: setting up your first classroom, first back-to-school night, first day of school as a teacher in your own room, first group of students you get to call yours for a year.

It hurts the most when you see other new teachers starting their first year, and you are not. And maybe you didn’t take the traditional route…you aren’t in your early twenties, you worked for numerous years to get here, you have a family to provide for, you have a mountain of student loans to pay off, and you thought you might finally have some breathing room in your budget. That makes the weight of waiting another year for a teaching job even heavier.

I didn’t realize I would grieve my first year of teaching that didn’t happen this year, but it hit me like a train wreck. I am grieving the year I thought I would have. When I took my own kids to backpack night and then dropped them off for the first day of school a couple days later, I felt crushed that I wasn’t getting to experience these as a first-year teacher this year.

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Perhaps you are not a new teacher, you have taught before, but for some reason, you don’t have a job this fall. Your disappointment and grief is valid, too!

I just want you to know, dear teacher, that you are a teacher even if you didn’t get a job this year, and you are not alone. I see you and all the work you put in to get here. While you grieve the year you thought you would have for a little while, remember to also be proud of yourself!

May we get our classrooms next year!!

Sincerely, a fellow new teacher without a classroom