In my last diary, I mentioned my own personal experience of growing up in a comfortably middle-to-upper-middle class household, with a conservative value system, and the rude awakening that life decided to give me once I graduated from college.
This time, I'm going to elaborate more on some of the things that have happened directly in the years since I lost my teaching job.
Immediately after losing my job teaching in 2005, I went to work for a local company that sold pro-audio gear. I had always wanted to learn more about sound engineering and the opportunity seemed like a good way to get myself into that, learning how to do a mic plot, set up to record, and cut a good recording.
I learned absolutely nothing at the job, because while the owner and I talked extensively about what my goal would be, rather than actually taking the time to teach me anything (or setting me up with someone who could) he instead gave me duties updating the thousands of listings they had on eBay and setting up their company's website, thus leaving me with no time during the course of the day to spend with product or with someone who knew what they were doing.
My web design skills did get better during that period, but considering that I knew very little about actually writing code, I couldn't really get very far or do anything particularly special. I had passable skills with Photoshop, which is what kept me afloat, but the owner had an unreasonable expectation of turnaround considering the workload that he threw at me and the other guy he hired to manage his eBay and storefront listings.
Ultimately, in 2006, I left because I had a job offer in Michigan that I wanted to pursue. I ended up finding out that less than 9 months later, the pro-audio gear shop had gone under, falling behind on its orders, failing to deliver product, and a number of other things. The owner had gone through a nasty divorce in the weeks leading up to my departure, and since his now-former wife had handled the books for the company, I am fairly certain that the divorce doomed the business.
In 2006, I took the job in Michigan for a local music store, and worked there, struggling to keep my head above water and to try to look for teaching work in Michigan. The move itself cost me little, but I would find out that there were a number of costs I hadn't foreseen coming.
In the meantime, I kept sending out resumes to schools, hoping that I would score something. I took my certification testing and passed, earning my teaching certification, which would at least allow me to work in an instructional capacity.
In 2008, the job at the music store disappeared, and while officially, they cited a bunch of small details in errors over my two years with the company as the reason they were letting me go, I suspected that it was being done under duress; this was reinforced by the severance package they gave me - a full week of extra pay beyond what I was scheduled for, plus all of my accrued vacation time credited back to me, and a guarantee that they would not contest unemployment.
This was as the recession was truly taking hold in Michigan, and as such, schools were clamping down hard on their hiring. Unemployment numbers shot through the roof, hiring came to a complete halt, and anyone who had a job clung to it like it was their last, best hope.
I drifted about, hanging on to my unemployment for almost two full years before finding the job I'm in now, at a local transportation company. I managed to drag it out thanks to a couple of holiday jobs, requesting that weeks of unemployment I had remaining on my original claim be held in reserve in the event that the holiday job didn't persist, which I knew was a virtual certainty.
Through all of this, I have sent out dozens of resumes to schools, trying to find teaching work. I can count on one hand the number of times I've actually made it to the interview.
Many people tell me that the economy is the reason for my lack of success. I'd like to fully believe it, but when you send out resume after resume and hear nothing but dead air for weeks, months, or in my case, years on end, you begin to think differently.
The current tenor of the discussion surrounding the teaching profession makes me believe that my chances to find work as a teacher again are very, very slim, if ever. It's already hard if you're an English teacher, a history teacher, or even a science teacher - but as a music teacher, it seems that all I can count on is there being no work at all for the foreseeable future. There were a grand total of seven openings for music teachers across the entire state of Michigan this past year.
The few people I do know who are working are buckling down, clinging tightly to their jobs and making it exceedingly clear to their administrators that they have no desire to leave or make any kind of movement. The few jobs that did come open this year had administrators swamped - in one case, I had heard that the principal had received over 250 resumes for a single open band director's job.
People like to think that Michigan's a "blue state" - but it runs a lot redder than people give it credit. Governor Rick Snyder, a Michigan grad who, given his background, should be a Democrat, is a dyed-in-the-wool Republican, is one of the architects (along with Al Pscholka, a slimy ex-Whirlpool exec with ties to the Benton Harbor Jean Klock Park fiasco) of the horrific Public Act 4, which authorized Emergency Financial Managers to basically become dictators of the municipalities they became assigned to.
Michigan also plays host to Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the fool who demanded that President Obama return his Nobel Peace Prize in the interest of "bipartisanship", and has an absurdly right-wing Senate that is eerily taking its cues from Republican hobgoblin Scott Walker in terms of everything from voting rights to firefighters and police unions and worse.
Michigan is only blue at the Presidential level because of Detroit, Lansing, and Grand Rapids, so to compensate, the entire rest of the state runs as red as blood and plays along with the Tea Party's wingnuttery.
Given all of this, I'm afraid that I don't stand a chance. Everyone I've talked to says that I need to leave Michigan, but I can't afford to move again - and there's no guarantee that I could even get an apartment anywhere else, with my credit being trashed due to the recession.
I feel helpless and cut-off - and I'm just hoping that I can hang on until something improves.
Hat tip to the fine gentleman at Eclectablog for the articles.