Shortly after I was told by my principal that the pink slip was imminent, a story ran in the paper about Anytown School District's budget woes that mentioned "one band director at HHOTRMS has already been let go." I sent an e-mail to the reporter asking why I hadn't been identified by name, after all there are only 2 band directors at our school (I guess 2 is a lot). His reply was that he wasn't sure if I would want my name in the paper identifying that I had lost my job, especially since he hadn't had an opportunity to talk to me yet.
"A lot of people at the meeting said some very nice things about you, I think there might be a story in this." the reporter replied in his e-mail. A few weeks later we sat down and had an interview in my living room about the whole situation and the story ran shortly thereafter.
Two days after the story ran, I ran into a friend of mine who had seen the story in the paper. "It wasn't very nice of them to print something like that in the paper," he said. "I sure wouldn't want the whole world to know about it if I had lost my job."
"I wanted it in the paper!" was my reply. I have over 1500 graduates of my middle school band program that now know about the situation and can join the parents of my current 200 kids to let Dr. Jekyl know what a horrible mistake she made by letter me go.
Since the story ran I have received job leads (one of which is very promising) from 3 different sources, none of which would have known about me if the story hadn't run.
In the mean time I'll keep chugging along looking for openings that fit what I do. If I can find another group of band geeks that will let me be their king, then great. Maybe life will take me elsewhere.
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