The Call of the Last Frontier: The True Story of a Woman's Twenty-Year Alaska Adventure by Cook Melissa

Author:Cook, Melissa [Cook, Melissa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hoodoo Books, LLC
Published: 2021-10-28T00:00:00+00:00

You Scare Me Every Time You Say That!

FORTY–TWO



On the second morning of the job fair, more districts were requesting interviews with us—many who were not on our list. There was no hiding from them. Copies of our CD now floated between school districts. Elgin and Melissa Cook filled the board. Our wish list was not panning out though. Cordova and Valdez had no openings. Kenai had blackballed us. Kodiak requested on-site interviews, but the exorbitant, last-minute airfare for the possibility of two jobs was out of the question. Fairbanks swiftly became the only viable district on our list. They preselected a handful of candidates for interviews. It did not look good, despite the hoopla surrounding us.

Cole Lehman, the former teacher from Nelson Lagoon, bounced into the conference room ecstatic. “Number twenty-three!”

“Number twenty-three? What does that mean?” we asked him. Cole had been one of our first friends and a tremendous support to us by phone in Nelson Lagoon.

“It means I am the twenty-third person hired to work in Fairbanks for this year. If the district pink slips people next spring, anyone hired after me will go first.” Pink slip practice was a genuine concern. The larger district’s hiring practices included pink-slipping all non-tenured teachers in the spring and waiting until late summer to rehire them. And not everyone received a contract months later, leaving loyal teachers who waited in the lurch.

“Let’s fly to Fairbanks and meet the principals,” I suggested after Cole left to sign his paperwork.

“We can at least introduce ourselves,” Elgin replied. Another couple lingered close by, listening to us.

“After meeting the principal and seeing the school in Seward, it’s worth checking out the district,” I agreed. Our time in Seward saved us from the monumental mistake of pursuing jobs there.

“May we travel with you?” The couple jumped into our private conversation. An hour and a half later, the four of us tightened our seat belts for an Alaska Airlines flight to Fairbanks. The round-trip tickets set us back an affordable one hundred dollars each, and we shared the cost of a rental car. We drove from one school to the next, introducing ourselves to each of the principals.

“Elgin and Melissa Cook,” we introduced ourselves, shaking one hand after another. We gambled canceling interviews with districts we lacked the enthusiasm to hire on with in lieu of the slim possibility of connecting with a Fairbanks principal. With eyes wide open, we ignored the hiring protocols and did it anyway.

The principals still had our CD on their desks. One shared with us, “I used your CD application during in-service last week to show the teachers their competition.” He offered us chairs for an informal interview. “The HR people offer a few teacher contracts in April. Then we wait to see how many students enroll before we interview in August. It’s late, but if you can hang on until then, I would sure love to have you on my staff.”

August? August was four months away and days before the school year started.

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