Teachers in Transition - Ep 198: Embracing Change and Finding Courage in Transition

Today on the podcast, Vanessa talks about the fear we feel when a large change is looming, and we’re reminded how the caterpillar turns into mushy goo to become a butterfly.  We also talk about a hack that uses a physical gesture to spark our mental fortitude, and how it is increasingly important to make the decision of whether to stay or go as school districts going into budget season and we see just how valued we are in their budgets.    

Scene where Dory teaches Marlin that things have to happen in Finding Nemo

Scene where Thor awakens his power in Thor Ragnarok: 

A link to our Facebook Page! Join us! 
The Resume workshop is April 21, 2024 at 2:00P Central Time and will be through a Facebook Live

And remember to send your comments, stories, and random thoughts to me at TeachersinTransitionCoaching@gmail.com!  I look forward to reading them.  Would you like to hear a specific topic on the pod?  Send those questions to me and I’ll answer them. Feel free to connect with Vanessa on LinkedIn!

The transcript of this podcast can be found on the podcasts’ homepage at Buzzsprout. 

Transcript

Are you a teacher who is feeling stressed out and overwhelmed? do you worry that you're feeling symptoms of burnout - or are you sure you've already gotten there? Have you started to dream of doing something different or a new job or perhaps pursuing an entirely different career - but you don't know what else you're qualified to do? You don't know how to start a job search and you just feel stuck. If that sounds like you, I promise you are not alone. my name is Vanessa Jackson; and I am a career transition and job search coach and I specialize in helping burnt out teachers just like you deal with the overwhelmingly stressful nature of your day-to-day job and to consider what other careers might be out there waiting for you. You might ask yourself, What tools do I need to find a new career?  Are my skills valuable outside the classroom?  How and where do I even get started?  These are all questions you deserve answers to, and I can help you find them.  I’m Vanessa Jackson. Come and join me for Teachers in Transition.  

***Hi!  And Welcome back to another episode of Teachers in Transition. I am your host, Vanessa Jackson – I’m a career transition and job search coach. I am here to help you reach your goals and figure out how to navigate the journey from teacher to the career of your dreams. I provide tips and suggestions to help with stress and mental health, hacks to help your day, and job-hunting tips.  If you are frustrated with your current teaching position, if you are stressed, overwhelmed, and burned out you are in the right place - I am here for you. Today on the podcast, we’re going to touch on how scary it can be to make changes in our lives, a hack that uses a physical gesture to spark mental fortitude, and how it is increasingly important to make the decision of whether to stay or go.   

In our first segment on stress relief and mental health, I want to take a moment and briefly talk about what it feels like to make the transition. You are going to feel chaos and fear. And you're going to question a lot of your decisions and that's normal.  Change is hard. 

 I was enjoying a walk with my kids this weekend. And on our walk, there were so many fuzzy black caterpillars that were on the sidewalk, and we would stop and we would use little branches to help ferry them across the sidewalk and over to the safety of the grass and the flowers. 
 
 I'm reminded that the caterpillar will eventually be butterflies, assuming they get across the sidewalk, but remember that when a caterpillar goes into a chrysalis and creates the process of becoming a butterfly, it completely breaks down. It becomes a bunch of mushy goo before it turns into that butterfly. And I think that sometimes going through this process of transition, when being a teacher is all we've ever known, (and in some cases, all we ever dreamed of being),  we have to go through our own chrysalis and that can be messy and sometimes we feel like a puddle of mushy goo, and that's OK. Take the time to feel that.  Take the time to examine the root of the fear and see what is holding you back.  There is power in your feelings. And they're not wrong. They are there to protect you in some instances. 
 
 When my husband gave me the news that the army was moving us to Alaska, I cried.  I was so afraid to leave everything I’d ever known and go to a place that had a climate I couldn’t even imagine let alone know how to live in!  Fortunately, I had no choice in the matter if I wanted to live in the same state as my husband (I did!) so off I went.  And those were insanely happy times for me.  Times that I would never have experienced if I had not been forced into it. That realization has allowed me to do a lot of scary things later on – move away from teaching music and into the corporate world of staffing.  And when that dried up, I decided that I had the confidence to take what I had learned and help others.  It was a scary step, but ultimately, I decided that I was worth the risk. I bet on me.   It is definitely not the easiest thing I’ve ever done.  But I’m happy.  And sometimes it surprises me that I am happy outside of a classroom.  I think maybe it’s easier to be happy when not only do I believe in what I am doing – helping other teachers – but also that I can finally live up to expectations and be in charge of the goals.  

We have a lot of things to be afraid of.  The unknown is scary.  I’d argue that the known is a pretty scary thing too. Sometimes fear protects us from danger, sometimes it is preventing us from moving forward.  Remember – success lives outside our comfort zones!   

Consider this scene from the movie, Finding Nemo where Marlin is desperately trying to get Dory to understand the promise he made after losing everyone but Nemo. 

Marlin: I promised I'd never let anything happen to him.

Dory: Hmm. That's a funny thing to promise.

Marlin: What?

Dory:  Well you can't never let anything happen to him. Then nothing would ever happen to him. Not much fun for little Harpo.

 It takes courage to make a change.  Things might happen to you then again, things might happen for you too. That might not always be a bad thing.  Think about it and dream about the possibilities!
 
 

Remember – courage isn’t the absence of fear – it is taking that step in the midst of your fears.

 And now it’s time for our teacher hack.  These hacks are designed to help you make your life a little easier in some way to create mental, and/or emotional space for you to spend time on YOU as you work on YOU.   Today’s hack is about finding mental fortitude when they are trying to tear you down. Give yourself a gesture of power.  This doesn’t have to be huge, but it becomes a physical reminder and a brain cue to rise up when you are feeling intimidated and hold your head high.  We’ve probably all heard about using a rubber band to snap ourselves when we have a bad thought, but I’ve always thought that it might not be the best idea to hurt ourselves in the process of trying to be kind to ourselves. Also you might have heard of power posing – where you stand with your hands on your hips so that you feel more powerful.  Research showed this wasn’t really a thing, but it’s possible they were looking in the wrong direction.  It’s not about the same pose working for everyone.  It’s about a moment of deliberate movement to remind yourself that you are strong enough, smart enough, or just plain enough before moving forward with something.
 
What would this physical gesture or movement look like?  I’m reminded of the character Wanda Maximov in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  You always know she was getting ready to ruin someone else’s day when she tilted her head in that one specific way. There are memes galore that speak to the fact that things are about to get very real in the MCU when Wanda tilts her head (or someone’s eyes glow, but you probably can’t do that, and I digress). Perhaps for you it can be a way to plant your foot, a movement of your hand, a roll of a shoulder – a movement that allows you to ground yourself in the moment and remember your value and worth.  Consider what small gesture, stance, or pose can serve you to focus yourself – I’d love to hear what works for you. If you’d like to share it with me.    

And moving on to our job-hunting segment today…

Last week I gave you five steps that you need to walk away from teaching and into the job of your dreams. Those steps are: 

1.    Decide 

2.    Contemplate 

3.    Build

4.    Refine 

5.    Attract 

The first step is to decide that this is what's going to happen. Those who have already made this decision can remember what that moment was. There was a moment when you were sitting there and you told yourself there is no amount of money on the planet that is going to make this OK. More likely, it is an accumulation of a thousand small things that add up.  
 
 The sad reality is that things are not going to get better. I was listening to a little bit of a school board meeting for a district nearby.  In that meeting. They were looking at ways to eliminate their budget shortfall because, well, let's be honest, states are not in the habit of overfunding schools. (That is a whole separate topic and podcast). In this meeting, they had drawn a very clear line to distinguish between teaching staff and everyone else who is not teaching.  Those presenting the budget were very clear that they were not trying to eliminate teachers.  OK – kinda. 
 
  Their plan first included eliminating positions through attrition, so if somebody retired, or left and didn't come back, they just weren't going to fill that spot. They were going to shuffle people around and cover it. What *I* hear is fewer teachers, more students in a class, fewer electives or specials offerings for our children.   That's what that really means.  
 
 Other suggestions were to eliminate their longevity pay. Some districts give the staff X amount of money extra in the paycheck if you have been with them for X amount of time. I've worked in one a long time ago. That district gave $1000 a year for every five years that someone had been there. And that's great. The district in question was proposing to eliminate that, so that means we are no longer going to reward people for staying. It’s almost like they know, teachers don't want to be there. It was unclear whether they were going to take away the longevity pay that already existed. Usually they don't do that, but would instead begin to make things unpleasant to encourage those folks to look elsewhere. It is not a healthy mental environment when anyone is put in that situation. 
 
 Another suggestion to save money was to reduce the amount of money that they put towards insurance. And in this regard, we're speaking about single employee, no family, no kids on a basic plan. That plan *was* fully covered. The discussion here was to reduce that down to the state minimum required contribution. It turned out to be a reduction of $14.00/month. It was at this point that the woman who was presenting this indicated that she had no concern for the people.  I guess that really isn’t her job.  I'm going to try to imitate her tone as closely as I can because the tone conveys its own message. Her comment to the board was, “It’s only $14.00 “ as if that's not much money, But it's $14.00 a month. That’s $168.   And if $14.00 wasn't very much money to start with, why can't they continue to pay it? Everybody needs every penny; I get it. But If you as a teacher are no longer worth $168 a year, then you certainly won’t be more.  Speaking of which, they weren’t just going introduce a pay freeze – there wouldn’t even be a tiny raise to try to offset that.  
 
 There was also a proposed hiring freeze for anybody who was not a teacher. This was the point where the people giving the presentation either indicated that they absolutely NO idea of how a school works, OR they know, and didn’t care, and they’re just planning to overload the teachers who choose stay.  The board did start to call them out on some of these questions.  One board member clarified that that they freeze wouldn’t be everybody because clearly they were going to need to replace a principal they knew wouldn’t be returning. You're going to have to have an administrator. So the hiring freeze wasn't as freeze-y as they were initially indicating. 
 What positions might this include? What happens if one of the lunch ladies leaves?  No replacing that position?  What about janitorial staff which is already chronically understaffed and often first cut?  Who cleans up?  What about the Instructional assistants and paraprofessionals. What happens when one leaves and isn’t replaced? 
 
 Practically everything that these people were suggesting. To save money on the budget was going to come at some expense somehow to a teacher: either in added duties, added expectations, or an actual reduction in funds. We’ve all heard it before. “We just need to pitch in and do a little more.  It’s just a few minutes.  It’s just this one small extra thing.  It’s for the kids, you know…
 
 It's death by 1000 cuts, because any one of those things isn't much. Sure, $14.00 isn't much. It won't even get you a meal anymore at McDonald's in most states. But when you add all of those things together that weight starts to get very heavy. And they have been doing this to teachers ever since I started teaching. And it's not OK. 
 
 And clearly it's not going to get better. 
 
 It's like the parable of the growing heap. If you put a coin on the table, you cannot say that coin makes you rich, but then you add a coin to it, and you add another coin to it , and so on and on and on. And you add an almost limitless supply of coins to it. At some point you look at the pile and you go. I've got some wealth there. 
 
 This is the same thing but in reverse. They're taking away. And how and instead of a coins in the pile We pile up another indignity, another chore, another expectation. At what point do we look at the pile and say, “that's enough”. 
 
 It is a very personal decision. 
 
 If it was just about doing something positive and teaching kids, I would still be in the classroom. I just decided that I could not allow myself to be treated like that anymore.  That was my decision in my circumstance. Everybody's got different circumstances, and everybody has to make the decision that is best for them.
 
 A job hunt is difficult and it is strenuous. What is going to get you through it? It is going to be persistence patience and consistency. What you do a  little bit at a time over a fair amount of time makes more difference than doing a lot of something once.  
 
 Consistency. Patience. Persistence. And you might be thinking to yourself:  I don't feel tough enough for this, Vanessa. I do not think I can. 
 
 And I would like to remind you of a scene from Thor: Ragnarok, and it's at the end. Spoiler alert. If you don't want the ends ruined for you, you might want to jump ahead OK: it's at the end. It looks very bleak for our heroes. Thor is being throttled by Hela, who tells him that she's not a queen or a monster - she's the goddess of death. Then she asks, “what was he the God of again?”  She's overpowering him with the clear goal of ending him. And we're told earlier in the movie that Odin was all that kept her in check.  We get a flashback, or perhaps a flash to another realm, I guess because Thor was close to death himself. Thor flashes back and has this moment with Odin, who has died earlier in the movie. Thor walks towards Odin and just crumples to his knees and tells his father that he failed and their home, Asgard, is being destroyed. Odin tells Thor that he didn't fail to save Asgard because Asgard was never a place - it is a people. He still has the chance to save the people. Thor tells his Dad that he can’t stop Hela because she is too strong and because he isn’t as strong as Odin was. Odin’s parting comment was, “No. You're stronger.”
 
 I want you to think about that. You do something every day that most people can’t do for a half hour – you teach children of assorted ages things that they don’t often want to learn.  You manage multiple people with diverse – and sometimes difficult – needs.  Not many people do that well for short periods of time in day.  You do it all day every day! You're very strong. It doesn't make you weak if you decide to step away and to choose yourself because that is what is most healthy for you in the long run.  You have to live with you the rest of your life.  Make sure that you will still enjoy that experience. 
 
 You’re strong.  You got this.  I’m here to help you to learn how to take all the wonderfulness that you are as a teacher and parlay that to teach you to find the job of your dreams.  

Here’s a reminder that I am doing a free resume workshop.  This time it will be through the Facebook group, so head over to become a part of the Teachers in Transition Podcast Club and we will go live on Sunday, April 21st at 2:00 PM Central time. No spots to reserve and nothing to do in advance – just join the group and come to the live. We’ll talk about the components your resume needs to have, how to write your bullet points, what not to do in your resume, and how the ATS and your resume may or may not get along out there on the web.
 
 If you know other teachers who are struggling, stressed, overwhelmed or just plain burned out, please share my podcast and resources with them. We have to help and support each other in order to thrive in the life we want. I am happy to share my experience from the staffing industry coupled with my years of teaching to help you translate your talents, skills, and experiences to move beyond the classroom.

That’s the podcast for today! If you liked this podcast, tell a friend, and don’t forget to rate and review wherever you listen to your podcasts. Tune in weekly to Teachers in Transition where we discuss Job Search strategies as well as stress management techniques.  And I want to hear from you!  Please reach out and leave me a message at Teacher in transition coaching at gmail dot com.  You can also leave a voicemail or text at 512-640-9099. 

I’ll see you here again next week and remember – YOU are amazing!