Job Loss is devastating. I’ve written a book about it: Job Loss: What’s Next? A Step by Step Action Plan. This week 192 great Brevard County School District teachers, with good evaluations and effective performance, will be given letters saying their services will no longer be needed in August for the next school year.
Each of these teachers has put endless hours of effort into teaching students. Each has given his/her evenings and weekends, time when they should be refreshing themselves for the days ahead, to planning, grading, evaluating projects, supervising extracurricular activities, and preparing engaging lessons for future use.
I know. I was a career teacher, giving 40 years to 5,000 students who passed through my classrooms.
Here’s advice from my book for the period of depression ahead.
“The first punch may be denial. This can’t be happening to me. It happens to other people. I’ve always done my job; my boss always gave me top evaluations. There must be some mistake.
“This is nothing more than a natural repsonse to any negativity which crosses our paths. We need to justify ourselves, to make excuses. We just can’t believe we’re in some way responsible, because sometimes we’re not; it’s just a circumstance and we happen to be in the way. The second is anger. Next is bargaining. This is where the “if onlys” creep into your mind in the middle of the night. This is where it becomes very personal and very real. And this is the treacherous minefield or quicksand which can catapult your thinking into the dangerous depths of depression.
“When you, the provider, cannot provide, when the body just doesn’t want to get up in the morning, get out of the comfy pj’s, lies around on the couch in a perpetual pity party. . . this may be the most recognizable stage of all in the process.
Now, what to do about it? “Depanding on one’s individual personality profile, one’s life’s baggage, one’s experience in observing others, one’s religious-spiritual health, one’s age, and a multitude of other factors, you may progress quickly or slowly through each of these identifiable stages in the grieving process. A healthy personality will spend as much or as little time in each as is necessary to deal with the reality of the situation. “
Tomorrow we’ll deal with the “What do I do next?” part of the process of recovery.
Meanwhile, purchase my book on Amazon.com and use it to guide the next few months. Then share it with a friend or loved ones who needs the step by step action plan as much as you do!
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