Also for the college level, I've found the networking I did several years ago to be invaluable.
Indeed. When I student teach this fall, I want to make sure I am in good standing with the principal at my high school. I want my name to have good connotations in the education field here. I'm already in greats standing among all the math professors and education professors, and I feel like their backing is in my favor for getting a job and going on to grad school.
Like I said, I am student teaching beginning in six weeks. I am very nervous in a sense, but I have attained enough practice and experience that I know for sure that I just need to get into my groove in the first week or two and all of it will fly by and go smooth. It happened in both "practice" classes that I only had to teach 3 lessons in. The kids loved me (talking high school juniors and seniors), the math was the harder stuff and my mistakes only stemmed from nervousness. The kids got the concepts well enough that they got great grades on their subsequent test and really knew the content well.
Yep, very nervous but so amazingly stoked that all this hard work is culminating in less than 5 months.
I also feel blessed to have chosen arguably the best subject to teach for middle/high school. At least here in Florida, if you are certified to teach high school math, you have a job somewhere near you. I think in my city there aren't jobs, but a 25 minute drive to a high school to work is more than worth it to me (and relocating later is always an option, though the drive would be great for listening to music).