Breakfast with Amber

May 2023: Great Hearts

Here we are, folks. The final month of college. You're probably looking for some heartfelt story about my graduation, but I'm saving it for later. I like to go in chronological order.

It was the start of May, and I still didn't have a job, and at this point, I was biting on every hook that was presented to me. I even started saving sales jobs on Indeed. Sales. However, I was getting some leads in the realm of teaching, including at charter schools, which apparently don't need a teaching certificate from you to hire you. It was just preferred, but I was willing to take that chance.

One of the charter school networks I was applying for was Great Hearts Academies, which operates in a Dallas, San Antonio, Phoenix, and Baton Rouge. I had already filled out their general application and was just checking their job board daily to see if there were any open positions I wanted to apply for. They were all for 2022-23 except for a few speech pathologist positions. I did not want to be a speech pathologist.

One evening, I got an e-mail from Great Hearts Academies about a hiring event happening at one of their San Antonio campuses on May 11 from 5 to 7. That's right. It was two days before my graduation, and I was going to a hiring event. The job grind never stops. I RSVP'ed for the event, and was given a follow-up e-mail with a few notes about the event: bring copies of your resume, fill out the general application (which I already did), and also, you might be asked to give a mock lesson on one of the following topics.

The topics were subtraction with a remainder and the properties of cells. I wanted to be an English teacher, so neither of these were in my wheelhouse. I had no idea what I was supposed to teach about the properties of cells, so I went with the other one. I had only taken one math course in college, but it wasn't like all math knowledge had left my brain. This was elementary level stuff, too. This should be easy.

Fast forward to May 11, and the only thing I had prepared was a nice outfit to impress the interviewer with. I only had one paper copy of my resume, and it had writing on it from when I visited CELCS. I was walking to the Storch Memorial Building where the nearest printing station was in my dress and heels hoping that I could make it to the event in time. I printed two copies of my resume and walked back to my dorm to call my Lyft. Once it picked me up, I sat in the backseat writing out demonstration problems for subtracting with a remainder because while I had the knowledge of subtracting with a remainder (after a quick Google search, which taught me that it had been taught to me in elementary school as subtracting across zero), I was completely unprepared when it came to presenting that knowledge.

My driver noticed that he was picking me up from a college, and he asked me what year I was. I said I was a senior. "So that means you must be graduating pretty soon."

"Yep. This Saturday."

He also asked me what I was going to do after graduation. I said I was applying to be a teacher, which is why I'm writing down all these equations for this hiring event. He asked me a lot of things, actually. This guy kept the conversation going for the entire 30-minute drive. (Did I mention that this drive was 30 minutes? The school was on the 410 loop on the west side of town, making it the farthest from campus I had ever been within San Antonio.) He asked who was coming to my graduation (my parents, Grammy and Grampy, Gus and Debra, I might have also said Grandma Janet by mistake). He asked what I was going to do immediately after graduation (move back in with my parents until I can find a job). He asked where I was from (Houston).

"Where in Houston?"

"I live in Cypress. It's a suburb northwest of Houston."

And then he tells me his uncle lives in Cypress, and he used to stay in Cypress over the summer and mow his uncle's lawn for cash. Who knew?