A New Direction

Today, I took the first step in ending my employment as I handed in my official resignation at my school district.

Now, all I have to wait for is whether or not the Board of Education will accept my resignation, which is expected that they will accept it. The rumor of my departure has long been the talk amongst the students and the other faculty members at the school and I'll admit, it has been a decision that I had made long ago during a meeting with the current principal last June.

Sometimes it's tough to think about, again packing up and moving on to new employment, only just a few months away. It's also tough to think about what I went through at college to get to this point, only to find out that it all wasn't good enough.

To lay it on the line, I absolutely loved my job. Obviously, it has it's up-and-down with the profession and there are days that I'm so absolutely stressed out that I want to strangle myself, but there are the days in which I really just enjoy talking with the students. That will probably be the most difficult to deal with: just the absence of my students. I've grown to become pretty good friends with a select few and in return, it's a great feeling to know that I can be turned to in times of need.

If I could, I could have stayed on if things would have worked out. But differences in the educational standards (graduated from a South Dakota college and working in Minnesota, the standards are quite different) hampered me ever since I received my Minnesota license. It was expected by my own school district to return to college to receive yet another undergraduate degree without compensation from my employer. That, I could not do. I simply just do not have the time or the money to complete such a feat.

Looking ahead, I now have professional experience -- something that will look great on my resume as I prepare to look for a new career. My goal: something in the computer/network/security industry, something in which I hope my future employer will pay for most, if not all, my training. Already with whom I've spoken to, that would not be a problem.

I just wish that smaller school districts could do the same, but with rising educational costs and the tax burden placed on the smaller communities, it's a difficult situation. It's all understood, but I had always hoped to retire from a teaching/coaching capacity because it is my first, true love.

I won't go into the specifics into which companies I'm looking forward to, but all I can say that it's private sector. I'm going to take a break from teaching for a while, but I hope to continue coaching in some sort of way. It's been a great supplement to my income these past couple of years, but just the fact that I'm getting students involved in an extra-curricular activity and having them compete, that's the rewarding thing.