Monday, November 30, 2020 - Getting my first job

Monday, November 30, 2020

Memories and Lessons

This week, I am looking at my teaching memories and the lessons I learned.  It is said of some people who have worked at the same job for 30 years, that they have 30 years of experience, and other people in the same job for 30 years, that they had one year of experience that was repeated thirty times.  The implication is that the second person didn’t grow in his/her job while the first person did grow.

So, my memory today is from my first year teaching at West Grant High School in Patch Grove, Wisconsin.  (Hey Dana and Joe, Kurt, Sherry, and so many others!!)

Getting that first job was quite a bit different than today.  With no internet, no fax, no email, the world was a different place.  I was in my last term at Winona State College (which later became Winona State University) and really hadn’t thought about what happened after graduation.  College was too much fun - but real life called.  In my mind, I was going for a master’s degree someday.  But, I knew I needed some money to get my master’s degree and after four years of paying for college, largely on my own, I didn’t have much money left.  So, I needed to take my first real job!!

I was a double major in mathematics and social science/history concentration and in education.  I had done my student teaching at Winona High School.  I was a dorm resident assistant (RA) and in too many clubs and organizations.  And, I graduated with high honors and received the “Purple Key” designation (a local variant of a Phi Beta Kappa honor).

I opened my file at the Winona State Placement office in March 1969.  To that, I had an unofficial transcript (pending graduation), a typed cover-letter (not word-processed - but I was a good typist and this version didn’t have any ‘white-out’!!), and a statement of my interest to become a math teacher.  

Every week, the placement office received job openings from around the area.  I suppose all the school districts that had job positions mimeographed their openings and sent it to all the relevant colleges in the region.  So, my guess is that the West Grant School District sent this list of openings to maybe thirty schools with teacher education programs.  

Then the Winona State placement office, once a week,  made a consolidated list of all the job openings they had received.  They had two lists - one for teaching candidates (like me) and one for non-teaching students. I would stop in the placement office and pick up a copy of the teaching positions.  

I would read through the list, identify the schools that seemed interesting to me and let the placement office know so they could send out my transcript, cover letter, and my statement of interest to the school district.  So, the job opening in math at West Grant came in, I thought that was a possibility.  It was about 2 hours from my home in Cedar Rapids.  I had to look up Patch Grove Wisconsin on a map and saw it was close to Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, which was across the Mississippi River and Marquette and McGregor Iowa.  I had been through those areas many times.  My (at that time) girlfriend’s home was in Guttenberg Iowa.  I had enjoyed southwest Wisconsin, so I said “yes” to the placement office to send my materials to John Gehn, Superintendent of the West Grant School District.  A few days later, after Mr. Gehn received my application, he called the placement office to arrange a meeting with me.  

Aside - “the times there are a changing”.  When I first went to Winona State, there was one telephone per floor in the dorms.  There was no such thing as a cell phone - everything was land-line phones.  I did have a telephone in my dorm room - as all dorm rooms did by that point in time.

The placement office contacted me that Mr. Gehn from West Grant School was interested in talking to me.  I said I was ready to talk to him, so using the Placement office as the communication medium, we set up a telephone call between Mr. Gehn and myself.

*****

Mr. Gehn explained their situation.  (I’ll be honest, I was pretty naive).  The person they hired would be the one-and-only high school math teacher.  If I took the job, I would be department-chair, and all the faculty wrapped into one.  

AND … then came the extras - the person who had been their high school math teacher was also the junior varsity basketball coach and head baseball coach.  Could I also coach?  I’d make some additional money.

Generally speaking, to be a high school coach, one should have taken a course like “Care and Prevention of Athletic Injuries” plus courses in “Theory of Coaching Basketball” (or whatever athletic area).  I hadn’t taken any courses in coaching or athletics!!  (My course schedule was full as I did have a double major).  

And (gasp) I said nonchalantly that I could coach basketball and baseball.  BOOM.

Over the phone that day, sight unseen of the school, of the superintendent - in the placement office at Winona State College, I got a job offer to be a math teacher at West Grant High School for about $6,200.  Then I would get about $300 more for my teaching.  And, maybe a bigger gasp, I said “Yes”. 

I walked out of the placement office that day, with two thoughts.  The first thought was ‘hey I have a job after graduation’, and the second thought was ‘what did I just do - taking the first job offered me - sight-unseen’.  

During the summer of 1969, while back in Cedar Rapids after graduating, I subscribed to the “Courier Press” newspaper of Prairie du Chien and looked for apartments to rent.  In the middle of July, my parents and I drove to Prairie du Chien and found an apartment.  It was a huge apartment, the entire second floor of an older home on South Beaumont Street - a block sound of the Prairie du Chien public library and about 13 miles from the West Grant High School!!

*****

Some lessons learned:

There is sometimes something called “dumb luck”.  

Times have changed.  Through a very dated communication system, I took a job sight unseen at a very rural school.

While it was a great experience, these days I would do more research into jobs and probably be a little more selective!!

*****

LOVE WINS!!!  

HUGS!!

Karen