If I were looking for a job as a teacher in the States, I would go to the local school district and give them my CV. I’d ask about individual schools that have openings, sure, but the hiring office is centralized. Maybe this is a good thing. Definitely from the perspective of a person looking for work it is a convenience.

But here, each school does its own hiring. And if there are several schools tightly associated with separate but near-by locations, still each school does its own hiring. So I’ve been making lots and lots of phone calls Whew – it’s exhausting.

Last week I came to the end of the list of schools that I had gathered up. I’d contacted them all, and sent them all my CV, whether then needed an English teacher or not. Can’t hurt, right? I had gathered this list of schools by googling various combinations of Swedish words to mean “adult school”; there are several different ways to say this (each corresponding with slightly different types of adult schools).

I was originally contacting high schools but I stopped after I found out that my California credential doesn’t do me any good – these schools are forbidden from hiring someone without a Swedish credential. So the international high schools are the only ones I bothered much with.

But yesterday in a conversation with J I gleaned some new words to use to search for schools which would result in finding websites of schools that are private and therefore not bound by the Swedish-credentialed-teachers-only provision. Now I’ve got a list of 28 new schools to contact. Exhausting, yes, but also exhilarating. Each one is another employment potential.

By the way, I’m dumbfounded by Sweden’s sheer volume of schools. Clearly education is a super-high priority in this country. I think I’ll enjoy the experience of teaching here once I find my school.