From Dragonfly: Unassigned

As I wrote in the last couple of days, the education department had liked my "try out," but instead of working for the instructor I was "trying out" for, I was informed that another instructor wanted me as her head tutor. After trying to see her for 3 days, as I was told she was looking for me, I finally found her in her office last night. I was second in line to see her, when a bunch more people came and she decided to walk out of her office and do other things as we waited, and waited. She then came back and asked us all who we were. I knew that she'd been seeking me out, so I told her my name, and she said, "oh, wait here." She then proceeded to help every other person waiting to talk to her. About 1 hour 45 minutes later, she came up to me (I'd been sitting in the hallway waiting patiently), and said, "now who are you again?" I told her my name and that I understood she had been looking for me. One instructor and several tutors in Education had informed me of that. She looked at me and abruptly said, "I have not been looking for you."

I informed the instructor that I was told she was interested in hiring me as one of her tutors. She said to me, "I am not hiring another tutor. I have not yet made a decision if I want another tutor. I don't know where you were told this." I told her how I had come about the information and she just stood there in the hallway looking annoyed. I told her my background; that I am getting my PhD and my interests in education. I told her about my teaching experience. She seemed totally uninterested in anything I have done. She asked me what I have taught in high school and I said that I am not a high school teacher, but that I have been tutoring the students in the other teacher's class for a couple weeks and he thought I was good and that I had done well on the tutor test. I also told her that I do research in student learning motivation and how to engage learners and she stopped me and said, "well, that will do you no good here. We just teach the GED-prep books, nothing more." I explained that I understand the curriculum is based on the books, but if a student is struggling with a concept, I can help find ways to help them with it. I gave her the example that when I was tutoring a student the other day, she was struggling with multiplying numbers. I worked with her in making a multiplication table to help her get the numbers down better (rather than guessing). She was disturbed by this action I had done. It is not in the GED books to do such a thing. She then said, "I am really not interested in having another tutor at this time."

So, this left me in a bit of a quandary. I had told the other instructor (through his head tutor) that I will step back and they should hire Freckles (a wonderful tutor with brilliance in math) and that I would talk to this other instructor who was seeking me out. Now, I am still going to be "unassigned" from having a job. There are more instructors, and I certainly do NOT want to work with the instructor I spoke to last night. She was incredibly rude. I am not giving up on working in education, but I can say, it was a little upsetting since I had been assured that she was wanting to hire me. That's the reality of prison, though, things don't work in here the way they work on the outside. Persistence, though, is important. And, I am certainly a persistent person.