Teachers in Transition – Episode 217: Scorpions, Memes, and A Few More Interview Questions

My apologies on the late drop and the delay with the transcript.  The internet in my area was not functioning as it should have been.

Today on the podcast Vanessa talks a little about scorpions and how they can teach us how important it is to take are of ourselves, she shares a hack on increasing happiness while letting others around us know how much they mean to us, and we got over a few more interview questions in what has turned into a short series on interviewing!
 

Predator vs. The Winchesters: Villain Support

A song video from my favorite band:  Chain Lightning

I’d love for you to come and join us on our Facebook Page! Join the discussion and toss in your two cents!

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 specializing in teachers. I teach you how to navigate the journey from stressed, overwhelmed and burnt-out teacher to your next career where you are valued, challenged, and have mental and emotional space at the end of your workday for your family, your friends, your pets and/or your plants. 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 – Welcome! Today on the podcast I talk a little about scorpions and how they can teach us how important it is to take care of ourselves. I have a hack that keeps us connected to those we care about (or marginally tolerate) while letting others around us know how much they mean to us.  Finally, I am going over a few more interview questions in what has turned into a mini-series on interviewing!  This will be part 2. 

Last night,  my dogs were very interested in a scorpion that had somehow gotten into the house. They were looking at it cautiously.  I hae big dogs.  I have dogs that almost 100 pounds, and my biggest dog seemed like he was trying to decide if he wanted to pick it up with his mouth. Thankfully, he didn’t—he's a little smarter now after his run-in with the porcupines and skunks!

First off, I hate scorpions. I saw the original 1981 Clash of the Titans when I was nine, and there's a scene where the scorpions grow to a ginormous size on a screen. That made quite a lasting impression. It's one of the few critters in my house that automatically becomes my husband's responsibility when one shows up. So, the first time I saw a scorpion in my house was way back at our first duty station —I shut down the bathroom and refused to go in until my husband dealt with it.  Wouldn’t even let my kid go near that half of the house. While rationally I know that it won’t grow to full size and dispatch me to the underworld, the irrational part of me still freezes when I see one. Good thing they’re not very fast.   
 
That house had several scorpions over time.  I’ll spare you all the stories.  Almost all of us were stung at one point or another.  I learned a fair amount about them. Most importantly at that time was that our Texas scorpions aren’t deadly – just really painful stings.  Other things I learned: They like dark, cozy spaces.  They seem to travel in pairs – if you take one out, there’s usually another one nearby. They seem to defy gravity  and can crawl straight up walls and pop up in odd places. 

Last night’s guest got me thinking about some of the other things I learned about those nasty little arachnids (my apologies if you like them).

When a scorpion feels like it has no way out, no escape, it will sting itself to death.  If they’re trapped in a jar, they’ll try to get out and when they give up, they’ll sting themselves to death.  And if you trap two of them together, they will turn on each other and fight to the end. One often cannibalizes the other one. 

I bring this up because I think there's an important parallel here. When you find yourself in a teaching situation—or any situation, really—that is toxic, how do you respond? How are the other people in the situation also responding.  A lot of us respond in ways that aren't healthy, which slowly kill us over time. It’s very much like the scorpion stinging itself to death.  It just makes our depression and our isolation worse. And how often do we feel powerless and then lash out at others?  How often have we been at the receiving end of a colleague’s frustration?  How often have we been on the delivering end? 
 
 So, if you find yourself lashing out or feeling hopeless and full of despair, stop for a moment, breathe,  and take stock of your situation. Look for the root cause of where those feelings are coming from.

One helpful exercise for this—used in different ways across different disciplines—is called the "Five Whys." Here’s how it works: Start by asking yourself, "Why is this a problem?" Once you have an answer, dig a little deeper and ask, "Why is this the answer to the first question?" Keep going, until you’ve asked and answered "Why?" five times. By the end, you'll have peeled back the layers and hopefully uncovered the root cause of your hopelessness or despair. And if you’re anything like me, you might just find that a fair amount of rage was hiding in there too.

Take a moment to look for solutions and maybe apologize if you were the one who lashed out. 
 
 That’s no way to live.  It might be a sign that it’s time to either look for a new teaching position or a new career completely.  

So, remember: You don’t have to stay in a toxic situation, and you definitely don’t have to figure out how to get out of it by yourself.  I can help if you need it. 

And moving on our hack.  Our hacks are designed to help you have a better day. This summer, I attended a conference in Bellevue, WA. What made this conference so notable wasn't just the sessions—it was happening one floor below a fan convention for the TV show Supernatural. And let me tell you, this wasn’t just any fan convention; it was the Superfan Conference, and many of the show's stars were there. Now, my mom really liked Supernatural, and I have friends who absolutely love it. I've never disliked the show; it's just never really been my thing.

So, there was this fun moment on one of the first nights we were there. A few friends and I were heading to dinner at the hotel restaurant. As we were walking down, my friend suddenly got very excited. I looked over and saw a man, and I immediately registered that I recognized him. So, the Southern person in me smiles and gives a little head nod of hello. He smiled and nodded back. But then, as we passed each other, all the little pieces clicked into place, and I started saying, “Badger... Sterling...”

The man in question was Mark Sheppard, a character actor who portrayed Crowley on Supernatural. But where I know him from is two of my beloved shows—Firefly, where he played Badger, and Leverage, where he played Sterling. I think he got a giggle out of the fact that I knew everything about him except why he was at that conference! Meanwhile, my friend, who is a huge Supernatural fan, was just over the moon with excitement.

And I'm telling you this story to tell you this: I recently caught one of those little video memes online. This one had a bit where it’s “Tech Support for Villains,” and I'll put a link to that clip in my show notes if you want to watch it – it’s a one minute TikTok video. In the video, you see things from the perspective of the tech support guy who's like, "Hi, how can I help you?" and he's talking to the Predator from Alien vs. Predator. And just from the conversation, you can tell— “Oh, oh, John and Dean Winchester? Nope, nobody warned you about them?” Basically he’s telling the Predator to run because those guys are going to get him. The video is much funnier than I can describe here, but when I saw it, I immediately thought of my friend who loves Supernatural and that memory of our time in Bellevue.

We’re several time zones apart, so the meme was waiting in her inbox when she woke up. Her response was just a laughing emoji, but it made me smile knowing that I made her smile.

And this got me to thinking about all the ways we’re connected. We live in a much bigger world now than the one most of us grew up in—especially if you're over 40. Nowadays, when we move away, we don't lose our friends; we keep them on social media. Instead of going from friend group to friend group and keeping a few connections, we actually maintain contact with most people we've ever worked with or met—as long as we choose to do so. But then, how do you nurture all of those friendships? Honestly, you can't.

When I was five years old and had two friends, if one moved away, I was a great pen pal. But I can't be a pen pal on that level now that I have hundreds of friends!  Thousands? And it occurred to me that these little memes, these short videos, have become a 21st-century way of reaching out and sending a small message that says, "I know you like this, and I was thinking of you when I saw it."

And it all boils down to sharing. We tell kids all the time, "Sharing is caring," right? So, today, I want you to think about this: the next time you see something and you know someone else would like it, send them the link. Share it with them. Take a quick screenshot and send them the picture. You never know how you might brighten someone's day with something that’s so small and takes so little time.  And like my favorite band sings “Hope is epidemic, optimism spreads”.  Take care of each other out there, y’all. We’ll all be happier. 

And moving on to our job-hunting tip

I'd like to continue our segment from last week, where we talked about common interview questions and how to answer them. It's always best to think about these things in advance so you don’t end up with that "deer in the headlights" look during an interview.

One question that will very likely come up is: "How did you hear about this position?" There are several ways to approach this. If you have a connection, like knowing someone who works there, absolutely lead with that! For example, you might say, "I know [this person] at your company, who really enjoys working there and thought I might be a good fit for this job." A connection is always preferred over a random stranger. This is also a great reason to connect with as many people as you can through LinkedIn.

The next part of answering that question involves doing your research. Presumably, you want to work at a company you can respect, so talk about what that company has done that excites you and how you hope to contribute to their team. Remember, they’re learning about you, but every part of an interview is about how you can help them.

Another question that often comes up is: "Tell me about your weaknesses" or "Tell me about a time you failed."

For the weakness question, the old wisdom was to spin a weakness into a strength—like saying, "I care too much" or "I’m a perfectionist." But really, what employers want to know is how you handle adversity. Can you self-reflect on an area where you aren’t amazing and improve those skills? Talk about a genuine weakness you’ve had and how you’ve addressed it and improved it.

If you’re changing careers, this is a great time to highlight a skill they might be worried you don’t have. I don’t know why everyone thinks teachers can only sit in a circle and sing "Kumbaya," but they really underestimate what we can do! This is another opportunity to prove that .

Similarly, when discussing a time you failed, focus on how you reacted. I’m assuming your answer isn’t, "I hid in a corner and cried." Instead, describe how you assessed the situation, learned from it, and made sure it wouldn’t happen again.

The last question I want to talk about today is: "What do you like least about your job?"

This is not the time for a 10-minute rant about feral children, enabling parents, or inept administration. Even if it’s true, you don’t want to discuss that in an interview! Instead, perhaps say one of the things you like least about teaching is the lack of upward mobility. As a teacher, there’s not much room for advancement—there’s just "teacher." Sure, you could become an administrator, but then you’re not really teaching, and most of us got into teaching to, well, teach.

You could also talk about how the pay doesn’t keep up with the cost of living, or how the job doesn’t challenge your full skill set and how you’d like to grow and develop in a new area with this new job. Make sure you’ve practiced this answer, because it’s all too easy to slip into, "My boss was mean, and the kids threw things at me," which you definitely don’t want to say!

So, we are going continue this series—there are a lot of great interview questions we can cover here, and I think this will make a nice little series. This is the second in our series, and I want to remind you that there’s a whole lot of work to do before you even get to the interviewing stage.

If you’d like help with that, I am more than happy to work with you. Just go to the website, teachersintransition.com, click on the calendar, and schedule a complimentary discovery session with me. We can talk about what you might be looking to do, and if it turns out that we’re a good fit, I’d love to work with you. I help stressed out, overwhelmed, and burned-out teachers to translate their skills and become viable candidate in a workforce beyond education. And if you just need an ear for a few minutes to hear your options out loud, we can do that too. I have a link to the site in the show notes. 

And join the discussion on Facebook! You can search for the Teachers In Transition podcast club on Facebook and we pop right up. You just have to answer a couple of questions so that we know you are not a bot.
 
 Remember, navigating a career change like this can be tricky and it can be scary and you don’t have to do it alone. The best time to start a career transition and exit strategy was about six months ago.  The next best time is now. 

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!