The Mythical Dream Job and Moving On

I need to find an English school for tomorrow. I need a new dream.

Everyone that I started with is gone. They've drifted away, gone home, moved on. One guy is managing an AmeriCorps team in Florida. Another left to teach for a youth camp in France. The American woman returned to the US to study psychology and Russian, and began dating a new man. The Ukrainian testing director politely resigned to take care of her newborn baby. Two friends got fired. Another colleague just dropped off the face of the planet without a word to anyone. I guess these are the usual happy endings at your average ESL school.

It's weird to be the old-timer at work. Me? How did this happen? There were so many times that I almost quit of out frustration. Now I look around and I'm still here while everyone has scattered. Still here, still teaching the same classes, still flipping through the same battered school workbooks. The students seem content and the administration always  It's so easy to stay, to look back at old lesson plans and recycle ideas. The other day I asked D- "have I ever been happy teaching?" "Oh yes!" he said, "back in Alaska you were happy." Back in Alaska I found my own students, started my own classes, prepared something new every week. Now that seems like a lot of work compared to the steady predictability of teaching over and over for this Ukrainian school, but maybe change is good. Maybe new demands and new faces are good. All year I've told myself- this will be the last semester at this school, then I'll find something more challenging, but it hasn't happened. A little discontent never seemed like a good enough reason for leaving.


Not that I haven't looked, though. When D was interviewing this summer I was also approached to interview. To me it was just a random offer to interview. Little did I know that it would be for the Mythical Dream Job of all teachers at my school... not so mythical after all, haha.

Some brief background: there was one teacher at my school (now gone, of course) who had an additional job. No one really knew what he did but jealous rumors always circulated- he works at home! he gets paid to answer phone calls! He never volunteered many details but of course, he didn't teach as often as the rest of us. And maybe he was afraid that others would eagerly try to steal his job.

Then, though D, I was approached and asked to come interview for a job. In fact, it turned out to be the job. But it just didn't appeal that much to me. I wish it had, for it truly was a work-at-home job, using Skype to answer phone calls from customers in English-speaking countries. You sat at the computer for your shift, from early evening to the wee hours of the morning, and got paid a very decent wage to do so. I wonder how my life would be now if I had pursued the job. This would be my fourth month in that position. (Normally I never think about that possibility but today- out of the blue- the teacher who vanished called me up and started fishing around for info about the job. I need work, he said. I want to stay home and earn some cash.)

And a new semester starts tomorrow. When I think about this, a dull panic rises inside me. Again? Have I really signed up for another round? I like the students, the material, the routine.... but then again, it's the same students, the same material, the same routine. And me, the same teacher.

How dangerous is discontent?