After attending the Alaska Job Fair in Houston

I felt overwhelmed with information after the job fair.  I wanted to create a giant spreadsheet with all the information I received for each district then do a side by side comparison of the top 10. But, who has time for all that with a full time job?  So I did my usual approach which is to go through every open door and trust that the ones that need to be shut will be.   

We continued to prepare by learning as much as possible about Alaska. Amazingly enough, we knew people who knew people who were teaching or had taught in Alaska, so we had no shortage of information.

I will confess, I closed one door myself-  I realized that Alaska can have extreme weather and temperatures, and I decided that I wanted to choose a region that doesn’t get snow during the months of June, July, and August, which eliminated a couple of regions.  So, for review-  our collective requirements were: Internet, running water, flush or composting toilets available, we had to both be teaching within the same town or village, and we could expect three snow free months in a year.  Those minimum requirements left a lot of districts open!  

About January, we started getting follow up calls and emails from people we had spoken with at the job fair.  We made sure our application with Alaska Teacher Placement was up to date, and we followed up on every contact.  Some doors opened, some closed.  Sometimes the person contacting us only had 1 vacancy.  One phone conversation,  I was very tired, and completely went blank on a couple of questions.  It wasn’t pretty.  But each open door, and each closed door was part of the learning process.  When one considers closed doors part of learning and guidance, one doesn’t get frustrated or disappointed when doors close.  

One conversation was a closed door and an open door at the same time.  A principal called to invite me to interview, and after talking, realized I was part of a couple.  We talked for about 15 minutes, and he got information about both our certification areas, and what kind of setting we would prefer.  He told me he didn’t think he would have 2 positions in the same village for us, but that he knew Twin Hills was looking for a teaching couple.  We had never heard of Twin Hills, but looked it up.  We found lots of information available about the village and the school, and in fact, stayed up way too late reading about it.  After sleeping on it, we both felt like we should reach out to them, so we did.   When we called, the person who I spoke with said they didn’t know of any openings in Twin Hills, but they would have openings in the district, and they would be sure to keep our information.  

In the next few weeks, things happened fast.  We had phone calls, emails, and interviews stacking up, something every day.  Every day we kept thinking about Twin Hills but not hearing anything, so we kind of figured that it wasn’t meant to be.  Then, things got serious!  A couple of the districts were ready to move forward with letters of intent.  We had serious conversations about if we should accept one of those offers, or wait for things to pan out in a village similar to Twin Hills.  We knew in our hearts that Twin Hills was our first choice.  We were torn between taking the offer in our hand, or holding out for something that we had no reason to hope for.  Before we had a chance to make up our minds, I got an email from the Director of Instruction at the Southwest Region School District.  We scheduled an interview, and a follow up meeting with the same team.  It felt like a fit!  So when the offer came in, we were thrilled.  We were so lucky to have several choices, that included the one we liked best!