UNI Fair Day 1

Well a teacher job fair is one of the most interestingly unique things I’ve ever been a part of. After getting virtually no sleep and getting dressed up in our finest we set off to downtown Iowa (term downtown loosely used) to the Convention Center to figure out our future. While we experienced some trouble on the way there, we were both still very excited and optimistic about our prospects. 

Excited, cold, but ready to impress.

Dressed and ready to go.

On our way there, Shannon became enamored with the snow. I wrote down some of my favorite Shannisms about the snow here.

• "Does it make noise when it falls?"
• "Stuff is flying into my face! What is it?"
• "When it lands on me, will it be wet?"
• "Oh my God! Look at that one. It's snowflake shaped! I didn't know they were really that shape. I thought that was just a rendering!"

Someone was very excited about the snow...

When we arrived (in a car that works mind you…we’re fancy like that) we walked in to a makeshift lobby surrounded by hanging file folders with various candidate names. We found our folders and opened them up to see who was interested in us. It was kind of like a grown up valentine’s Day setup. Schools had the opportunity to view our online profiles and put little Valentine’s in our mail box with requests for interviews. I expected to only get a few as there is a limited demand for Social Studies and American History teachers across the globe. What I found aligned with that thought. I had three total invitations. Two of them were from schools that I had already interviewed with and the third was from a country I don’t remember and certainly couldn’t spell. Undeterred I met up with Shannon as she was nursing a series of paper cuts from the cascading avalanche of interview valentines she received. I believe I counted 143,078 invitations although she will tell you it was only 14. She understandable had quite a bit of interest given her experience in years and versatility. 

These were our contact sheets we found in our folders. This is how schools contacted us.

We then were funneled into a room where a panel spoke to us about what to expect. It was actually pretty informative. After the speech we were unleashed into a room where hundreds of tables were setup with schools from all over the world. We were expected to line up at tables, sell ourselves in 14 seconds or less and hope that we intrigued the collection of principals, superintendents, and others allowed us an opportunity to sell ourselves in later 30 minute interviews. Teachers can be one of the most well-educated, polite, adaptable, and gracious of all people…or they can be jaded, blood-thirsty, and conniving. It was an interesting experience to see hundreds of teachers put on polite smiles and make small talk, only to elbow someone out of their place in line and go for the throat. It was an understandable but interesting set of moments.

After selling ourselves to a variety of schools we had previously targeted and one or two we hadn’t heard of before, we were granted interviews with seven schools. Our first interview was scheduled for later that day.

When the time came for our interview, we found out that the interviews were to be conducted in the hotel rooms of the principals. It was very interesting. There were piles of recruitment folders, pictures, and packets. After interviewing for about a half hour we left our first interview feeling pretty good. We went through this process with all four of our first day interviews and felt very confident in our performance.

During our last interview of the day on the first night, we received an offer to teach in Colombia on the spot. It seemed like a decent opportunity but there were some incentives that didn’t match some of the other schools we were interested in. We told the principal we could give her an answer the following day.

We were confident in how we did in all of our interviews and satisfied that we received an offer but we also saw the hundreds of other candidates and realized that we would have to be adaptable and patient if we were going to get an offer we felt was right for us. 

We eventually got back to the hotel the first night at about 9:00pm and collapsed into bed knowing that wherever we ended up, we would know by the following afternoon.