Bubble bursts

I had a crack-it-moment today. It came on the back of an emotional afternoon, in which My Awesome Mentor told her VCAL boys she's leaving at the end of term, so I was already a tad brittle. Then there was a staff meeting at which it kind of hammered home to me that, even if I stuck out this incredibly hard year, with the boys being super-ratty, it is EXTREMELY likely I won't have a job. And then I cried at work. Ugh.

Here's the thing. Because the school was 'under threat', I could onl;y be offered a short term contract. They needed me, they wanted me to commit for the whole year, but they couldn't offer me ongoing status due to lack of enrolments (Apparently they could offer other people ongoing contracts, but that's another story). And now, despite knowingly and willingly re-entering the school during a really tough transition phase, I'm being told that the school can offer me the following in support: zilch. Because I am not an ongoing staff member.

I've known all along there were no guarantees. But to hear that at best the new school will be able to accomodate all the ongoing teachers (and it's highly unlikely we'll achieve such a 'best' outcome), and to realise that all the rhetoric about supporting each other is essentially a blast of hot, meaningless air... well that's pretty sucky, really.

So tonight I applied for a job, and expressed interest in some others. And I may or may not leave my school, even though I have made great friends there, and I really do like my feral boys and it would KILL me to leave them in the lurch. And if nothing comes through and I'm still at this school at the end of the year and fighting tooth and nail for a job somewhere, well, it's not like it's the first time I've joined the rat race. I just didn't really want to :(