Teach for Hysteria: How to Apply for Job Without Really Trying or Is That A Noodle in Your Ass?

Ach, I just put that last part in to make sure you all were still awake out there.

Okay, let me describe to you how teachers can take advantage of the one Get Out Of Jail Free Card afforded them a year.

As I mentioned before, if you want to leave your school and go to another, you have to get permission from your principal. They call that "releasing." In his dried up little heart, my principal likes to call it, "squeal like a pig, bitch, for I release no one from my realm!" There are loopholes of course. The biggest loophole is the School Based Option Transfer, or SBO. But, like many loopholes, this one will make you sweat.

There is a tiny window in the Spring when this happens. You have to keep checking the DOE website for the notice. No one announces it beforehand. Then one day, miracle or miracles, the list appears! Ta dum. The race is on. You have 13 days (or less, depending on when you find out about it) to find a new job.

One seven page memo and three forms later, you realize you have to look through a list of schools to see where you can transfer to. Click on the link and you see that the list is SEVENTY PAGES LONG.

I kid you not. The first thing I did was go through and highlight all the English secondary positions and take out the Staten Island pages (no offense, but really). I was down to fifty pages.

I have decided that I am not going to work in the Bronx again, it is too fucking far from where I want to be. So I took out those pages (sorry Bronx, it has been nice getting to know you though). Thirty-five pages.

See? Just like I teach the kids -- when you don't know what to do, process of elimination will help you every time.

Phew. Then what I did was go to Inside Schools.org, "the independent guide to NYC Public Schools" and look up the schools that were left, which was a lot. But, if you ever want the inside scoop/hint about any public school, check there. They are my saviors. If there was any indication of rigid atmosphere, military presence (i.e. Junior ROTC), few kids of color, mean principals, low morale, violent environment, or large class sizes, out they went.

Last but not least, I cross-referenced the school addresses to check their neighborhoods for convenience and being where I might possibly want to live.

I was left with a tidy list of about twenty schools, and I dropped off my transfer forms and cover letters at two of them yesterday afternoon after I came from the doctor. The word on the street is that for schools you really want you should hand deliver. All others need to be faxed.

Yes, you read that right. No regular mail for these things. You need to fax them or hand deliver them by 1pm on a Wednesday. Since no teacher I know can do anything once school starts, that actually means you have to have everything in by Tuesday. And, I learned that when you hand deliver them, you might actually get a mini interview on the spot! Hmmm...

Oh and last but not least, let me say it again, the entire process listed above has exactly 13 days in which to happen. That's right -- thirteen days to go through the list, cross check, prepare, and fax or deliver the forms. No wonder so many despondent people I talked to in the past were like, "Yeah, I missed the SBO. Now I am stuck here."

But people, I filled out my cards. Let's hope I get out of jail!