It’s official! Denisa is starting a new job in May. She’ll be an ESL teacher for grades 3-6 at McMahon Elementary School in Lewiston. This will be a full time position, and quite the change for her (and for us). A bit of context:
She got her Masters in TESOL back when we were in Utah, and the plan at the time had been that would be an excellent tool to have to let her get a job pretty much wherever I ended up as a librarian. Well, we didn’t really anticipate I’d end up in Western Maine, which was about as devoid of any ESL population as you can get. There were some ESL schools an hour away in Lewiston, but that was too much to bite off at the same time we were actively raising kids. So her focus turned elsewhere.
Long time blog readers and friends will know that she became a baker for years, and then transitioned over to being an adjunct professor at UMF, where I’m the library director. She enjoyed both of those opportunities, but now that Daniela will be heading out and we’ll be down to just Michaela at home, she’s got more time to turn her attention elsewhere. Adjunct professoring, while it might sound like a good gig to a non-academic, leaves much to be desired in many ways. Don’t get me wrong: it’s not toiling away in the salt mines or anything, but it’s also not nearly as good of a set up as a full professorship is.
She was having a lot of her students go on to teach ESL in schools in Maine, and more and more, she missed being able to do the thing she always wanted to do while she was in college. She’d applied for a couple of university jobs here or there, but never anything ESL-centric. She made the decision to try this route back in February, got a couple of issues figured out (such as “what do you need to be able to get an ESL teaching license in Maine?”) and then started applying.
That turned out to be a very short process, as she got the first job she applied for.
So, there will still be an hour commute, which isn’t great, but there’s a real need for her in that school, and I think she’s excited for the opportunity. She’ll miss her students and colleagues at UMF, but she’ll also be able to meet all sorts of new ones in Lewiston. This will also position her well to one day be able to teach at an international school, if the stars ever align for that. We’ve been thinking for years about moving to Europe one day. This opens up some doors for that to happen, but we shall see.
In any case, many congrats to Denisa on the new job. It’ll mean some more car juggling for our family, and I’ll need to hold the fort down on events in Farmington during the day, but nothing too difficult, I don’t think. I’m excited for her.