Still looking? If so, then I am still helping.

What’s the big challenge faced by first-time hires? Whether as a cashier at Krogers, an engineer at Boeing or a kindergarten teacher, the first hurdle new applicants must leap stems from their lack of practical experience. You must convince others that you know enough to do what your employer expects.

That creates the first barrier to tackle when trying to land a starting position. Especially in wealthier and stronger districts, you will probably be competing against applicants with classroom experience. Many teachers try to move from the $35,000 per year job to the $45,000 per year job by changing districts, and districts like to hire that man or woman with a year or more of full-time teaching experience. Classroom management is largely (or even almost entirely, depending on where one attends school) learned on the job. Those first few years of experience consequently carry great weight in an interview. If student teaching is the extent of your experience, a position may slip away because you look great, but “Indira” looks great, too, and she has proven she can manage a classroom. She probably also has a portfolio showing the many clever assignments her students completed last year.

Don’t give up. Even if you lack experience and connections within a district, please remember that every teacher out there got hired for a first position at some point. If you student taught in a district, that should help, allowing you to talk about a school’s student and staff culture. Use your student teaching. You might want to praise a teacher whose management skills you admire, citing specific examples of how he or she kept students on task and moving along. Share great strategies for managing transitions you observed and any other classroom strategy you intend to steal from more experienced colleagues. It’s usually a good idea to include a mistake or two you made while student teaching that you managed to correct with help and advice from colleagues.

You did not do your student teaching in your first or second pick for where you want to teach? That brings me to today’s critical observation: Don’t be too picky!(OK, a little pickiness doesn’t hurt :-))

You are looking for a FIRST teaching position. Yes, you would like to work 12 miles from home in a district that pays $10,000 more than most of the districts around it, a district loaded with money, technology and support. But the competition for those positions will be fierce. If you refuse to look at the position that’s 30 miles away in the underpaid district with teachers moving carts between remodeled closets, you may be refusing to look at the position that offers you your best chance to begin teaching.

I understand the desire to hold out for the best possibility. But I am writing these posts for would-be teachers who missed the first hiring wave in the spring. Do you want to chance missing the year? You can move on once you have experience — a move that will be much easier if you take a position for the upcoming year. My first bilingual middle-school position was 34 miles from home, and my drive took 55 minutes in the morning darkness and sometimes over two hours in the afternoon congestion, stoplight by stoplight, by stoplight. I snaked my way along county roads in an area with no expressways. The following year I cut that commute in half, zipping to work at 70 MPH for much of the drive. You are signing on for 190-some days of teaching, not life.

For the most part, I recommend applying for the outlying and less prestigious positions. You can let a year or two slip by if nothing you want becomes available but that teaching certificate gets dustier while graduates keep streaming out of colleges and universities each June. Once you start teaching, you can apply for other positions later, joining that favored pool of applicants, slightly-experienced-teachers-looking-to-better-themselves-who-can-probably-manage-a-classroom. You might also find your 30 mile commute takes you to a place you love.