Well, after four years of trying, I was finally offered a job as an elementary teacher. 
The job market in Oregon is very tight, and there are far more licensed teachers than there are teaching positions in this area. We have no sales tax and propery taxes were cut significantly via initiative a decade or so ago. The northwest has also been in a longer and deeper recession than the rest of the country. So, many newly licensed teachers either leave the state (other states will hire you on the spot and pay more) or take jobs that don't require a teaching license (the job market is tight enough that you need either a teaching license or many years in the field to get even the non-licensed jobs these days).
I did the latter. I have been working as a Head Start teacher for the past 2.5 years. It's been a pretty good position, but it's also not exactly what I'd been looking for. It was also not full time. I also discovered that since I was not working for a school district, I was no longer "on track" to work into an elementary position. I could have probably moved into early childhood administration or university-level education (I was techincally employed by a local university), but, if anything, I seemed to be moving farther away from my original goal of teaching elementary school at the classroom level.
Anyway, I finally got a job offer- next year, I'll be teaching first, second, and third grade (yes, all together, eep!) at an elementary school about 30 minutes from my house.
While I'll be moving from part-time employment into full-time work, I am hoping that I won't be significantly busier than I have been this year. One of the things I did to help me become more employable was to take Spanish courses during the evenings this year. I would like to continue to learn Spanish, but I'm hoping to move into summer study and not do it during the school year. So, the main time difference will just be that I'm moving from a familiar position to a more unfamiliar one. That will take some time at first.
But, overall, it's a chance to get to do what I've been wanting to do for years. It's also helped me to believe in myself again, because it's hard to do that when you get rejection after rejection after rejection. My new school appears happy to have me, my old school appears unhappy to lose me, and hopefully this is going to be a big step forward for me.
I thought I should share this, since some of you were around when I was going through school and even looking for a job the first time around. It's been a while!
The job market in Oregon is very tight, and there are far more licensed teachers than there are teaching positions in this area. We have no sales tax and propery taxes were cut significantly via initiative a decade or so ago. The northwest has also been in a longer and deeper recession than the rest of the country. So, many newly licensed teachers either leave the state (other states will hire you on the spot and pay more) or take jobs that don't require a teaching license (the job market is tight enough that you need either a teaching license or many years in the field to get even the non-licensed jobs these days).
I did the latter. I have been working as a Head Start teacher for the past 2.5 years. It's been a pretty good position, but it's also not exactly what I'd been looking for. It was also not full time. I also discovered that since I was not working for a school district, I was no longer "on track" to work into an elementary position. I could have probably moved into early childhood administration or university-level education (I was techincally employed by a local university), but, if anything, I seemed to be moving farther away from my original goal of teaching elementary school at the classroom level.
Anyway, I finally got a job offer- next year, I'll be teaching first, second, and third grade (yes, all together, eep!) at an elementary school about 30 minutes from my house.
While I'll be moving from part-time employment into full-time work, I am hoping that I won't be significantly busier than I have been this year. One of the things I did to help me become more employable was to take Spanish courses during the evenings this year. I would like to continue to learn Spanish, but I'm hoping to move into summer study and not do it during the school year. So, the main time difference will just be that I'm moving from a familiar position to a more unfamiliar one. That will take some time at first.
But, overall, it's a chance to get to do what I've been wanting to do for years. It's also helped me to believe in myself again, because it's hard to do that when you get rejection after rejection after rejection. My new school appears happy to have me, my old school appears unhappy to lose me, and hopefully this is going to be a big step forward for me.
I thought I should share this, since some of you were around when I was going through school and even looking for a job the first time around. It's been a while!
, Griselda, for landing the job and for the patience of waiting for the opportunity. There are some lucky children out there who will have a better education now. 
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