We arrived in SFO, and then began the frantic lining up to clear customs and connect to our next flight. We’d been told to get a move on, as there wasn’t much time. We all made it as it turned out and we were soon on our way to Washington/Dulles Airport. Luckily they didn’t show Die Hard two on that flight.
The organisation that hired me had a program, touted as being, established to promote intercultural communication and interaction, chiefly through the work of international teachers in the host school systems in the United States. I’d seen an advertisement for the program in Courier Mail Newspaper in Brisbane blaring out, (WHY NOT TEACH IN AMERICA?), in June of 2003, while I was teaching at a state high school in Queensland and I rang the Australian director. I was a little concerned at my age so I felt obliged to tell him.
“Listen mate I’m er a little long in the tooth, if you get my drift.” Oh he got the drift alright, but he said that he’d done it when he’d been older so I applied.
This was followed by a battery of submissions, forms, tests, interviews and references, lesson plans etc, until I was informed that they had hired me and I went into a pool of teachers. Now, as any aspiring professional, man does not live by warm and fuzzies alone, so I looked up the online pay schedules. A quick scan of the tables of salaries showed that if one had a Masters, one could draw an extra $6,000 per annum in most districts in the USA. A prime opportunity I thought, to finish what I had started 5 years before, and qualify for the MA of which I only had 1 semester to complete.
Now the fact that I was teaching high school in the day would normally have made this task near impossible but, the clincher was where I was teaching it. I was no longer teaching at the previously said state high but in a Catholic girls’ secondary college no less, and basically I just had to turn up give them their work and they just did it, no fuss, no arguments. I was at uni at night finishing the masters and I should be graduated before I went to USA. Finally, in March 2004 I was interviewed by the Deputy something-or-other of Personnel for the County Public Schools Board, VA, and he offered me a contract on the spot. He actually said, “Mr. Silvestri, ah am authorised to offer you a contract to teach English to years 9 and 10 at my County School District.” And he shoved a contract in front of me. So I signed on the line and all was fine and it was time, to move in line, and thus began the following odyssey…
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