Teachers in Transition

Teachers in Transition – Episode 242: Shining Bright in Dark Times: Lessons from the Iditarod and Refining Your Career Path

• Vanessa Jackson • Episode 242

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In this episode of Teachers in Transition, host Vanessa Jackson explores the inspiring lessons we can learn from the Iditarod and how they relate to leadership, trust, and resilience—both in and out of the classroom. Vanessa reflects on the crucial role of lead dogs in a sled team and connects their responsibilities to the challenges faced by teachers navigating career transitions. She also discusses an exciting new feature in ChatGPT—word clouds—and continues with Step 4 of her five-step career transition framework: Refine.

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The transcript to this podcast is found on the episode’s homepage at Buzzspout

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 who specializes in helping educators just like you. I taught in a middle school classroom for 25 years, left teaching to work in the corporate America world of staffing. Now, I provide tips and suggestions to help with stress and mental health, hacks to help your day, and tips for job-hunting and career transition.  Today on the podcast we are going to talk about the Iditarod and what it can teach us about ourselves, I have recently learned a new trick that ChatGPT can perform to help you out and we go into detail on Step 4 of leaving the classroom: Refine!

First, I am starting with an apology for the late drop on this episode. The weekend got away from me very quickly when the hour-and-a-half that I THOUGHT I needed to get the tax information together for my Tax Guy turned into 8+ hours.  There is much food for thought here that will undoubtedly appear in a future podcast. Meanwhile, if you are still working on your tax things, my thoughts are with you!

I want to talk about dogs.  And the Iditarod. 

I saw this just this weekend, and I want to talk more about it.  It is from Nils Hans and it is taken from the Facebook page for the Nome Nugget.  Nome, Alaska, of course, being the finish line for the Iditarod – which is currently running.  I’ll put a link in the show notes to the article.  
 
 

 


 LEAD DOGS

It’s all about the lead dogs. Lead dogs are the pride and joy of each musher. They are the dogs closest and dearest to the heart of the musher. The lead dogs are in charge of the team and the ones the rest of the team members look up to and follow without question. Mushers are in awe of the leaders for their unwavering dedication and work ethics. In a string of 16 dogs the lead dogs are about 70 feet away from the musher. That’s a long way. At night or during a storm a musher can’t even see the leaders. 

The leaders are ideally the smartest, most athletic, fastest and the dogs with the most drive in the team. They have to be, as they are the ones breaking trail when needed while the rest of the team follow in their footsteps. Most lead dogs can feel the responsibility and take the job very serious. They are the ultimate type A personality. They aspire perfection. Most are born lead dogs, some trained to be lead dogs. 

The tasks for a lead dog are numerous. They are responsible for finding and following the trail with 14 hard charging athletes behind them. They are responsible for making quick last-minute decisions without the musher being able to help them as the musher can’t see around corners or through snow storms. Lead dogs guide a full team of 16 dogs past other dog teams during a passing on the trail. They charge into the wind without losing the trail or veering off of the trail. They cross open streams, follow scratch marks on frozen lakes, take left- or right-hand turns on command as well as hold out the line when parked or during hook-up. 

They are the spark that radiates through the team and down the gangline all the way to the handlebar and the musher. 

A dominant lead dog can be the difference between life and death in the wilds of Alaska. Knowing and trusting these lead dogs puts mushers at ease, miles from help, every day. 

Lead dogs aren’t the alpha of the team. The musher is the alpha with the dogs being equal members to the team. Some lead dogs are stubborn while others are born to please. Some are people-friendly while others are aloof and dead serious to the task at hand. Many are one-man or one-woman dogs whose life revolves around the close bond they have with their musher and their team. Lead dogs are the pride and joy of each musher. They are the source of many stories and live on forever in the memories of dog mushers.

#iditarod, #nomenugget

 

As we all know, people don’t leave jobs; they leave leaders. And I think that this innocent article about lead dogs holds just as true in our situations in schools. One of the most interesting things to me was the emphasis on trust—that there has to be this high level of trust between the musher and the lead dogs; otherwise, nothing else happens.  Unfortunately, many teachers do not have situations where they feel they can trust those around them – this just adds to the sense of loneliness and overwhelm.  

There is a lot of concern in some groups about the running of the Iditarod. It has been called animal abuse when it is not. Having lived in Alaska, I have gone to visit the sled dogs, and I’ve seen how they train and what they do. Let me tell you, those dogs love their job in a way that we can only dream of.  And no one ever worries about how they’re abusing the teachers with overwork, and carrying loads that are just too heavy for too long. 

You know how when a dog gets the zoomies, just how much joy is all over their face as they run all over your living room? That’s how these sled dogs feel as they are pulling the sled and running in the beautiful Alaskan weather, in the sunshine, and on the snow. It would be significantly more abusive to these dogs to leave them inside and to deny them the opportunity to run. They are not bred for their appearance, their coloring, or their size. They are bred for their brains, their stamina, and their drive. The Alaskan sled dog is a breed. And if you, like me, read The Call of the Wild by Jack London when you were growing up, you would be surprised to note that these dogs are not humongous dogs.  They’re just standard mid-size dogs.  
 
Just in case you did not know what the Iditarod is all about, it is about a massive diphtheria outbreak that occurred in Nome, Alaska, in 1925. There was no medication, and the town was more than 600 miles away from everywhere. You could only get there by dog sled, so they set up dog sled relay teams. It was not one team that ran all the way. They worked together. Twenty different teams worked together to run this serum from Nenana, which is about an hour away by car (now) from Fairbanks, AK, to Nome. The serum got there in 6 days, and so the Iditarod Trail was established on this path between these two towns. It got its name because Iditarod was the largest town on the trail. The town and the original trail are long since gone.

Now, the Iditarod is an 1,100-mile endurance sled dog race lasting for 10 to 15 days, allowing plenty of time for rest for the musher and dogs. There will be times when you can see the mushers go by in different places in Alaska. I got to see this once almost by accident, and it was all at once so simple and yet so exhilarating to see these dogs whisking down the frozen river, pulling together with what was basically big doggy smiles on their face.

Teaching is an endurance race, and it is not something that everyone can do. And it’s hard to do it with a smile on our face, but we do it.  We do it in every conceivable situation in every condition imaginable. If you are a teacher or have been a teacher, you have done something that people will never fully understand if they have not done it themselves.  This is one the things that makes you so insanely valuable in the world of work.  You have the capacity of work with joy in your heart similar to those lead dogs.  Not that I’m calling anyone a dog here.  The Iditarod is my favorite big sporting event and one of the few that I follow in real time (or as close as I can -  which might be another reason I like it!).  
 
 There’s an opportunity here – what drives you?  Where are your passions?  Create a team that is aimed in the direction you want to go and use that collective energy to help propel you in the direction of your dreams.

There are a couple of traditions surrounding the Iditarod that also set it apart from other endurance events. One is that it celebrates all competitors, not just the winner. The Red Lantern Award is given to the last musher to cross the finish line and complete the Iditarod. In the days before streetlights, the Red Lantern was left lit until the last musher crossed so that we knew everybody was home safely.  It is very much a we-not-me mentality has to also exist in a classroom and a school for it to be a positive environment for everyone.  Sure, there’s competition, but everyone who crosses the finish line wins something internally – the knowledge of completing something many cannot even attempt. 

That is a second tradition that is somewhat related to that Red Lantern. The Star on the Mountain is a 300-foot illuminated star, on Mount Gordon-Lyon in the Chugach Mountains. This is near Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson which itself is adjacent to Anchorage, AK. The star is lit the day after Thanksgiving through the darkest months of the winter, and it remains lit until the last musher finishes the Iditarod race in Nome. You can see the star across the city. It has 350 different bulbs that shine in the dark until the last musher is home.  
 
 So I invite you to find a little nightlight or other small light.  If it comes in the shape of a star, that’s GREAT. If not, it’s easy enough to place a cardboard cutout of a star so that the star shines through.   But use this star to remind you of these things: 

1.      You are an endurance athlete – teaching is not for the faint of heart. 

2.      Go outside at night and look up. Looking back in time at the light that left eons ago can help bring perspective to rough days.  And there’s always rough days

3.      As Carl Sagan once said “the nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars - we are made of star stuff"

 

You are amazing.  You are a star.  And in times that are dark, you can shine brightly. 

 

And in today’s hack, - I am sharing another thing that ChatGPT can do.  Did you know that Chat GPT can now do a word cloud? I didn't know that. 
 
 I like to use word clouds when I am collecting data. For example, when we go over personal branding, I ask you to write down all the things about you and I ask you to get feedback from friends, family and colleagues, and all of those things can be put into a word cloud to see what comes up first and largest. We also use word clouds as a tool when we are breaking out job descriptions to find out what the most important keywords are across multiple job descriptions. and it all works with ChatGPT in an instant! 
 
 It is interesting, because ChatGPT is not good at creating images with words (the words get misspelled…), but the word cloud works!  Give it a try and see how you like it. It’s another way to visualize data.

 

And moving on to today’s segment on CAREER TRANSITION AND JOB SEARCH we are going to dive in DEEP to Step 4 of the 5 Steps out of the Classroom. Step 4 is REFINE. 

As a quick recap, the first Step is to DECIDE.  You have to DECIDE that leaving the classroom is the right step for you.  
 
 After you make the decision, the next step is to CLARIFY. This is where you take the time to get to know yourself.  Who are you if you aren’t working as a teacher?  Teaching takes up so much of our whole existence that the immediate thought is to do the exact thing but outside a school.  But what if something else was calling to you?  In this step you do a self-inventory to learn all about your interests, talents, and aptitudes.  You investigate other careers and career families (many job titles that all do the same thing).  You identify your career strengths and skills gaps. 

In the BUILD phase, you build the frameworks for your resume, your LinkedIn page, your cover letters, and your network.  You also start to build the spreadsheets and trackers that are necessary to make adjustments when one thing isn’t working.  
 
 And in the REFINE stage, you will refine the things you started building.  We also introduce AI tools to make all of this easier.  You tweak the resume to make sure that you are clearly detailing and OWNING things you have done with quantifiable results like numbers and percentages.  A hiring manager or recruiter wants to know (1) what you can do (2) why it matters and (3) how it saved them money or increased productivity (or income).   You use your bullet points to tell the story of how YOU can meet all of the qualifications of the job description.  
 
 You tinker with your LinkedIn Page regularly because LinkedIn will tell recruiters how likely you are to respond based on how often you interact with the site.  You continue to grow your network.  You reach out for informational interviews, and you connect with people at companies you’d love to work for or with people who have the same job title that you’d love to have.  You learn as much as you can from people already in the position you’d like to eventually have. 
 
 You get comfortable using AI tools like Chat GPT (or your AI tool of choice) to tailor your resumes to job descriptions, break down job descriptions, collect keywords and upskill your gaps.  Let’s break those down a little. 

AI tools like ChatGPT can take a huge load off your shoulders and make the job search process far more efficient.

 

It can Tailoring Your Resume to Job Description.

One of the biggest mistakes job seekers make is using a generic resume for every job application. The reality is, most companies use Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) that scan resumes for keywords before a human ever sees them. If your resume isn’t aligned with the job description, it might not even make it past this digital gatekeeper.

AI can help by: rewriting your resume to match specific job descriptions, identifying the most important keywords, and reframing your teaching experience in terms of the skills employers are looking for

💡 Pro Tip: You can paste your current resume and a job description into ChatGPT and ask it to adjust your resume for a better fit. Try prompts like:
"Compare this resume with the job description and make adjustments to improve alignment while keeping my voice professional and authentic."

 

Next: Breaking Down Job Descriptions

Job descriptions can sometimes feel like a foreign language. They’re packed with industry jargon, vague expectations, and sometimes unrealistic requirements. AI can help you decode them so you can determine what the employer is truly looking for versus what’s just a wish list, how your current skills align with the role, even if it’s outside of education, and which key phrases and terminology you should use in your resume and cover letter.

💡 Pro Tip: Copy and paste a job description into ChatGPT and ask:
"Can you break down this job description into plain language and tell me what skills are essential versus preferred?"

And Collecting Keywords for Resumes and Cover Letters

Many teachers struggle with translating their teaching skills into corporate language. AI can identify: common industry keywords for roles you’re interested in, alternative ways to phrase your experience to match the language of your target industry, and buzzwords that increase ATS compatibility.

💡 Pro Tip: If you want to improve your job applications, try asking:
"What are the most important keywords in this job description, and how can I naturally incorporate them into my resume and cover letter?"

And Finally Upskilling and Identifying Gaps

Once you know what employers are looking for, the next step is ensuring you have the right skills. AI can analyze your resume and compare it to job descriptions to identify what’s  missing skills, recommend learning resources (like free courses or cheap courses, certifications, or online tutorials) to help you bridge the gaps, and suggest projects or experiences you can gain to make yourself a stronger candidate.

💡 Pro Tip: You can ask ChatGPT:
"Based on this job description, what skills am I missing, and where can I learn them online?"

AI tools are powerful, but they’ not magic. They work best when you use them as an assistant—not a replacement for your own judgment. You’ll still need to:
 Personalize the AI’s suggestions to ensure they reflect your voice and experience.
 and Double-check for accuracy and relevance.  Sometimes AI hallucinates. 
 Take action on the advice, whether that means tweaking your resume, learning new skills, or practicing interview answers.

So, if you haven’t started using AI to make your job search easier, yesterday was the time! With just a little practice, you’ll find that these tools can help you streamline your transition and land the role you truly want.

If all this seems like a lot and you’d like to get some help to get out of the classroom – that is what I do!  You can connect with me at no cost at teachersintransition.com/calendar to book a quick coffee chat or discovery session to talk about what’s right for you. Even if you choose not to work with me on a regular basis, you’ll still leave with ideas and resources to get you started. I just want to remind all my stars that I would be happy to be on your team to help drive you in the direction of your dreams. 

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 Vanessa@Teachersintransition.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!