Dear Alice,

Growing up, I never considered job insecurity to be a real thing. I grew up with parents that both had stable jobs, even when they both decided to switch careers, and when my sister went into the workforce she’d landed her first job in her vocation almost instantly. So when I got a job as a teacher, I thought I was going to be teaching there for my whole life; I even made plans about the whole thing. Yet, life has a funny way of hitting me where I least expected it, and this past Thursday, I was fired from my first ever teaching job.

I have no clue why I was fired, but I do know that the reason they got away with it is because of probationary periods. Guess I just wasn’t a right fit for their school. Honestly, I want to be angry about what happened. I want to be mad that I was basically thrown away like a sack of garbage, but, if I’m being totally honest, I’m not. I hold no ill-will towards the school that fired me. They were just doing what they thought was right for their organization, and I, apparently, wasn’t right for the school.

The more I think about it, the more it makes sense that I was fired. I mean, I went into the job with basically no experience, only having worked for the one place since I “graduated” college, and with what I think was my worst job interview to date. They clearly were taking a chance on me and they must’ve thought I wasn’t worth the trouble. But don’t mistake this as a pity party (even though it might sound like one); this is a reflection on what happened.

In the interest of being fully open, I must say that being fired did suck, but I think I see what they saw in me when they hired me. They saw some potential. They saw someone who could shape the children of tomorrow. In me, they saw a teacher. Maybe I just wasn’t ready to be the teacher they needed me to be. Maybe I was too inexperienced to give them enough reasons to keep me.

I could get stuck on the maybes and the perhaps, but I think I’ll move on to the other side of this coin. Sure, I might’ve learned a lot from this experience, but I hope that the students I had also learned many things. Not just grammar and vocabulary and the basics of public speaking, but also on how to be good people, citizens of the world, members of a community and not just individuals. I hope that they learned that their actions affect others and that kindness is always better than hate. I hope they learned all the things I didn’t teach them from a book.

I didn’t get to say goodbye to my students. Probably for safety reasons that I will never understand. But if I could say goodbye to them, I’d tell them this: It was a blessing to be your teacher. It was an amazing experience to get to share the last two months with you and to be in the presence of such amazing kids. You’re all amazing, all brilliant, and you all deserve to be loved and cherished for the rest of your days. I hope that whoever comes after me gets to experience how amazing you all are. I hope I get to see you all soon, maybe in some other walk of life. I hope you learned and I hope you remember.

Love,

Alex