Gone Done Moved

I don't even know where to begin, and that's probably why I've avoided making an entry since January.

Yup. Still don't know where to begin.

The past three months have been very... Complicated. Of course, I've recorded our journey home, my infectious arrival, and the beginnings of our farm adventure, but since then, everything has changed.

After a few weeks of searching for jobs, Joshua and I both secured employment. Following in Dave's footsteps, Joshua began training as a manager for Holiday Gas Stations, and I got back into education as a Teacher's Aide with Red Wing Burnside Elementary. We continued to look for different work, but things did not look promising.

Both of us missed teaching. For my part, Burnside provided a window into a functioning school where staff and teachers supported one another and students saw success every day. I loved working with fourth graders, and I had the special opportunity to help with the Title VII program, serving students from the Prairie Island Reservation. I absolutely adored the kids.

On the other hand, it was difficult to be paid less than 10 dollars an hour, and I was frustrated by what felt like regressing professionally. Here I was, a certified teacher with two years of classroom experience, unable to gain licensure in the states of Minnesota or Wisconsin without another year and a half of course work and student teaching (which would cost me 15,000 dollars at minimum). I began to see my years of education and TFA collect dust on the shelves of my resume, and with the job market as it is in rural areas, I saw no end in sight.

As for Joshua, he realized quite quickly that although he had both hated and loved teaching, he sorely missed the feeling of purpose that teaching needy students gave him.

The Minnesota Department of Education proved as obtuse and unhelpful as ever, and when we met with Universities in the Twin Cities, we discovered just how expensive gaining our teaching license could be in terms of both time and money. To make matters even worse, the job market for teachers in Minnesota and Wisconsin is miserable. At Burnside alone, I was working with a number of certified teachers who were unable to find work and therefore were working as Education Aides.

It was incredibly difficult to begin thinking about widening our search. We have been planning on moving home and living near family for over two years, and before that, we had always assumed that, some day, we would move back to Minnesota. We love our families very much, and it was painful to think of not only leaving them, but also disappointing and hurting them by leaving them.

But in the end, it felt like there was really no choice at all. With our wages, we never would have been able to fix up the farm or have a family of our own, and without the possibility of teaching in the future, we found the prospect of working 9 to 5 jobs 50 weeks out of the year for the next how every many years truly depressing. Our money was running out, and if we were going to make a decision, we had to make one soon.

Joshua and I began to research states where our certification might be able to transfer. New Mexico straight up accepts Louisiana teaching certificates, and Arizona and Montana have alternative licensures that allow people like us to begin teaching right away while we work towards full certification. In Colorado, charters simply require teachers to be Highly Qualified under NCLB, which we are.

But before we began casting our nets, I stumbled upon the Denver coalition of charter schools and found half a dozen openings for Middle School Science teachers. We sent off our resumes, and within a week, we had received requests for phone interviews at every single place. Two weeks later, we drove down to Colorado for in-person interviews.

After a number of job offers, Joshua and I both settled on working for the same network, West Denver Prep. We were so impressed by the positive yet driven schools that we observed, and we loved Denver. By the end of the week, we found a rental with all of our requirements (two bedrooms, yard, washer/dryer, walking and biking distance to work and grocery store, under 1000 dollars a month), and paid our deposit.

Less than a month later, we were packing our U-Haul and driving back down. We got caught in a blizzard in Nebraska, but after 14 hours of driving, we arrived safe and sound in our new home. It was even better than we had remembered, and since then, we've been settling in, decorating, exploring the neighborhood, and hiking.

So. That's everything in a nutshell. Of course there are other complicated elements, but here we are and there that is. We're happy; we're where we never expected to be; and now we're about to begin an unplanned life.