In case you didn't check Facebook on the right day, I have fulfilled my two-year contract in Israel, and Tim and I decided not to extend for another year. The reason is simple: Tim was basically living there as an illegal immigrant. He played the three-month visa game well enough, but we started to worry when a person in the same situation was told that if she left the country again, she would not be allowed to return. Although Tim was never given this ultimatum, Jewish last name withstanding, I didn't like the idea of potentially being trapped in the Mideast without my boo.
And so we issued an ultimatum of our own, but to the school: We would stay only if there were a position for Tim, one that was more clearly legitimate than his subbing arrangement, the economics of which remain legally suspect to this day. Many ideas were tossed about, and Tim even had some interviews with principals, but when nothing substantial was offered before the job fair, we decided to take our chances. Said job fair was less than a week after I had to turn in my declaration of whether I was staying or not, and the school wouldn't give me an extension, so with one yellow paper put in a mailbox, I said goodbye to Israel.
As a country full of ironies, there were many for us even at the end. Within a month after the job fair, quite a few positions that would've suited Tim opened up, including a Spanish teacher spot. Presumably, this departing teacher should've handed in her declaration before the job fair as well, but she just claimed she didn't know she had her new position yet. She was in the clear, because the letter of intent is not legally binding, only the contract is, and she hadn't signed that yet. Live and learn, I guess. And now, the school probably is planning to fill this job with a local part-timer for a year -- instead of a sought-after sub and tutor who fulfilled obligations to a school that he wasn't even officially employed by.
Indeed, the school never truly recognized Tim's contributions, even if some were at my behest. One principal, for example, refused to fill out a job fair evaluation for him because he hadn't observed Tim (apparently, that doesn't bar you from being alone with 20 kids in a classroom day after day). In another ironic twist, at the end of the year Tim was asked to take over for a teacher who was asked to resign. As part of this subbing period, he was not only supposed to develop, explain, and coach students through the final, but he also was asked to grade the end product. About 100 essays in all. Indeed, the guy who was not deemed good enough to be offered a position at the school next year was relied upon to replace a teacher who was allowed to be in the classroom for this entire school year. And don't even get me started about how this teacher was given a "favorable" recommendation letter for agreeing to depart gracefully.
This treatment, along with a 6 percent pay cut and the mutual moving-on of good friends, didn't make leaving the school very hard, actually. But leaving those friends who are staying did. I can only hope I find some people as nice as those in Israel as I start at a new school in Costa Rica. Read and see on my new blog.
