After the Classroom: The Adventure You Didn’t Know You Were Ready For

To Live Would Be an Awfully Big Adventure (Especially After Teaching)

In this heartfelt episode, we head to Neverland, but this isn’t just a nostalgia trip. It’s a wake-up call for teachers who feel like they’ve become someone they don’t recognize.

We unpack the 1991 film Hook and its surprising resonance for burned-out educators, creative souls, and those contemplating a career transition.

From the chilling moment Peter is asked, “Have you become a pirate?” to the empowering final message: “Take care of everything smaller than you,” this episode will inspire you to reclaim your spark - and build a life that gives back.

💡 In This Episode:

• 🎯 What Hook reveals about adulthood, burnout, and systemic betrayal
• 🌟 Why creativity is a form of self-care (and how to start reclaiming it)
• 🤝 How to build a “Battle Buddy” support system
• 🧠 Why standardized testing broke more than classrooms—and how we rebuild
• 🔍 A tip to find clarity with a CLARIFY sort of acrostic
• ✍️ This week’s challenge: The 5-Minute Joy Practice & Daily Haiku
• 🎵 And a little sprinkle of Robin Williams magic

🔍 Keywords: teacher burnout recovery | how to leave teaching | career change for educators | jobs for ex teachers | teacher career transition

🛠️ Resources Mentioned:

• 🎨 Try this creativity booster: Write a daily haiku (5-7-5 syllables)
• 💼 Career Clarity Tool: MyNextMove.org
• 🎶 When You’re Alone scene from Hook: Watch on YouTube (skip ad)

👋Connect with and Follow Vanessa
📧 Email: Vanessa@teachersintransition.com
📞 Text or Leave a Voicemail: 512-640-9099
📅 Book a Free Discovery Session: teachersintransition.com/calendar
💼 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/vanessajackson78132
📷 Instagram & Threads: @teachers.in.transition
📘 Facebook: facebook.com/profile.php?id=61565671792885
🌤️ Bluesky: @beyondteaching.bsky.social
    X (Twitter): @EduExitStrategy

I need your help!

Please share this podcast with someone that you think might like what it has to say – many teachers are aching to find a way to a new career.  You can help them. People find new podcasts mostly because they’ve been recommended by someone they know.   

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

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!  I’m Vanessa Jackson, and welcome back to Teachers in Transition. This is the podcast for every educator who's ever whispered, "I love teaching, but..." and then trailed off into burnout, bureaucracy, and the heartbreak of a profession that keeps asking for more than it gives.

Today, we're heading to Neverland.  We're talking about Hook. In case you haven’t seen this 1991 classic, we open the movie with Peter Banning – cutthroat mergers and acquisition lawyer with no time to really pay attention to his kids. The man is always on his phone before most people had cell phones. Peter is married to Moira and they have two kids – Jack and Maggie.  They go to visit Moira’s Granny Wendy in London and come home to find that the kids have been kidnapped and the house has been trashed. Peter looks around forlornly and his attention shifts out the window where a star gets brighter and brights until it ZOOMS into the room and tells Peter he has to come with her to save his kids. That’s Tinkerbell.  Tink hauls Peter out wrapped up in a child’s bedsheet.  He awakens in a completely foreign place and is further confused when everyone starts calling him Peter Pan.  We learned that Peter kept coming to visit Wendy, but fell in love with Moira, so he stayed and grew up because he loved Moira.  (Probably a bitter pill for WENDY, but maybe she’s a better person than me, lol)  Much of the movie is Peter getting in touch with who he USED to be until he does tap into that and regain his full Pan abilities – which includes the ability to fly. 
 
Meanwhile, Hook has been behaving to Jack as the Father than Jack always wanted. There’s even a mini-Captain-Hook-pirate-uniform.  The battle becomes for Jack’s heart and soul. 

Despite the fact that this film includes six Academy Award winners (they hadn’t all won yet), and three more nominees, Hook didn’t win over the critics. It’s got a 29% on Rotten Tomatoes. But I think that’s because it said what a lot of adults don’t want to hear. That we’ve traded wonder for workaholism. Magic for metrics. Presence for productivity. connection for control. 

And if that’s not what teaching has become, I don’t know what is. And that hits a little too close to home, especially for adults trying to justify the grind, or who just don’t have another choice in a bad economy in a profession that doesn’t pay our value.  

So grab your glitter pens, your coffee, or your sword of Pan because we’re about to talk inner child healing, creative self-care, teacher loneliness, and what it means to take care of everything smaller than you.

Let’s start here…

There’s this moment in Hook where the Wendy, after hearing about Peter’s work as a lawyer says  "So, Peter, you've become a pirate.”

Do you ever feel likes that’s what’s happened to us as adults? Because some days, it sure feels like we did.

We start the year as Tinkerbell—decorating bulletin boards, adding glitter to name tags, throwing our own kind of teacher pixie dust all over the place. We’re ready to believe. Ready to fly.

But then come the data meetings. The behavior charts. The emails that expect immediate responses at 9pm. The scripted curriculum. The district mandates. The unfunded Federal mandates?  And before we know it, we’re enforcing rules we don’t believe in. Policing joy. Losing our spark.

We didn’t mean to become pirates. But the system made it hard to stay optimistic.

So here’s your first invitation today: Forgive yourself.

You didn’t turn into a pirate. You adapted to survive on a ship with a Boo Box that stopped sailing toward joy.

But the fact that you’re here—listening, questioning, wondering if there’s more—means your inner Peter Pan is still in there. We just need to remember how to fly.

All the rising action in the movie is centered around the fact that  Peter Banning forgot how to play. He forgot how to imagine. He forgot how to connect.

And that’s what burnout does.

Burnout doesn’t just make you tired. It makes you forget who you were before survival became your full-time job.

Let’s talk about Tink a little bit.

Did you know that Julia Roberts filmed most of her scenes in Hook alone? Because of the special effects, she was isolated from her co-actors. And she’s talked about how lonely that made the process. They even had a less-than-positive name for her during filming.

Sound familiar? Teachers are Tinkerbell.

You light up the room. You spread joy. You believe in people even when they stop believing in themselves.

And yet… you’re doing it alone.  Here’s how we fight back.

I want to talk about something from the military world that I’ve mentioned before: the concept of a Battle Buddy.

In the military, a battle buddy is someone assigned to you—a peer who helps you navigate stress, holds you accountable, and makes sure you don’t go through anything alone. They are there so someone else has eyes on your physical, mental, and emotional well-being.

We need that in education.

Now, here’s the nuance you actually need more than one.   You need someone ON your campus to keep eyes on each other and help each other out.  But you really need a second battle buddy who should not necessarily be someone in your same toxic ecosystem. If you vent too much within your own district, it just reinforces the stress. It keeps that stress loop going.  And then start to give you unflattering names like they did to Julia Roberts.

They don’t need to have answers. They just need to have your back.

You want to know when we really lost Neverland? When we took play out of kindergarten.

We replaced finger painting with fluency rubrics. Block centers with behavior trackers. Imaginary play with iReady.  

And now we wonder why kids can’t regulate, can’t connect, can’t cope.  Teachers who have been teaching since before iPhones know exactly what happened.  There is no mystery.  It’s the consequence of what I like to call the “Jetson-i-fication of Education”  Just because Elroy had 1st grade calculus does not mean those were solid goals!  They’re training us to be pirates. 
 
 We’ve pushed standards and expectations down  to do lower and lower grades all in the name of increasing rigor. Now we’re at the point where it’s just flat out developmentally inappropriate. In order to get kids to pass the tests with this increasing challenge, teachers have to provide more and more support. I posit that this leads to kids who can not independently function without an adult constantly working on them.  You may have seen this in your classroom if you are still teaching.  I also think this leads to the rise in the need to Project Managers in more and more fields.  

Standardized testing didn’t just change the way we measure success. It changed the way we see kids.

And I’m just going to say it: Give me an issue and I can tie every societal problem back to this over-importance and over-accountability of testing. Like the Oracle of Bacon, but for broken systems instead of connecting actors.

You want to fix education? Let kids play. Let teachers teach. Let humans be human again.  That’s how we find Neverland.
 
 Because then we can learn how to be better.  We can have the TIME to be better. 

At the end of the movie, Peter passes the sword of Pan to a Lost Boy named Thud Butt?

That moment is magic.

Because no one—not even the actors—knew who he was going to pick. The kids’ reactions are real. From watching Robin Williams with rapt attention to the smile when Thud gets the sword ?– all real.  

And he says this line he gives as he passes the sword:

"Take care of everything smaller than you."

Y’all. That’s it. That’s the job. That’s the mission. That’s the legacy.

You don’t need to love your neighbor if that feels too big right now. But maybe - just maybe - we can al start by taking care of something smaller than us.

A student. A colleague. Your inner child.

We can’t save the whole system overnight. But we can refuse to let it shrink us.

We can refuse to stop believing.

We can choose to fly—not because we forgot the weight of the world, but because we remembered the light inside us.
 
 And maybe one of the reasons that we get so angry is that we don’t feel like the people “bigger” than use are actually taking care of us.  We’re having to give without getting and eventually our well of reserves runs dry.  And then?  Burnout. 

So that’s why self-care is so important, but not the sort of self-care they’re guilting you about in professional development.  I want to you think of exercising your creativity as a form of self care. 
 
 The science backs this up: creativity is not fluff. It is important. It is VITAL. It provides healing. Research shows that engaging in simple creative practices - writing, coloring, dancing, building, imagining - can help regulate your nervous system, reduce anxiety, and restore a sense of control. I feel like teachers AND students can benefit from that. We talked a little bit about coloring a couple of weeks ago in episode 262. 

And the beauty of creativity is that it doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be playful. 

So I want you to think back: what was your favorite thing to do when you were seven? What made time disappear?

Finger painting? Building blanket forts? Singing along to the radio and dancing? I remember spending entire afternoons taking the pine needs from a pine tree across the street and we would all lay them out in a field like it was a house with hallways and rooms and the whole nine yards. 

I have two challenges for you this week: I want you to do a version of that for five minutes. Not because it’s productive. Because it’s powerful. You can reclaim that little part of yourself.  Five minutes. 

The second challenge is to write a haiku a day for seven days.  If you have forgotten (or perhaps blocked this memory…) what a Haiku is, it is a Japanese poetic form of art. It has seventeen syllables arrange in a very specific pattern: 5 syllables in the top line, 7 in the middle, 5 in the last line.  It is creativity and challenge to use tight language and avoid unnecessary words. Literally every syllable counts.  
 
 And I am a huge fan of what works for you is what works for you – if you’re a wordy sort of person and love the idea of a 7-day, challenge – I hope you’ll share with me. I’d love to hear from you and my contact info is in the show notes – Teachers in Transition is on all the socials now ya know!
 
 And if you’re not a wordy sort, I hope you’ll try this at least once. It’s a great way to look at something in a completely different way.  And that is a very important thing to do when trying to preserve your soul and avoid burnout.
 
 What made Peter become Pan again was this search for clarity.  He found a deep sense of clarity.  This is an important, often misunderstood piece of career transition. You don’t have to be who you’ve always been. 
 
 “So let’s talk about what it means to rediscover who you are and what else you’re capable of - when the job that once defined you no longer fits.”

This even spells out CLARIFY to help you remember it 😊 

C — Connect with Your Inner Voice

Remember the line from Tink at the end to Peter? “That space between sleep and awake, where you still remember dreaming”.  You should start there.

Before the performance reviews and pacing guides, what did you love? If you journal consider this as a journal entry – or perhaps just think about it right now. 

• What did you want to be at age 7? At age 17? In fact, what are all the things you wanted to be once upon a time. Is there a running theme in there? 
• What have you always done just because it felt good—not because it was required?

I remember how adamant I was in telling my 3rd grade teacher that *I* wanted to be an author when I grew up. I realized not all that long ago, that actually, I am an author now.  I write a great deal every week to help (and possible even entertain) others. 

L — List Your Strengths (Old & New)

Don’t just think in terms of standards. Think in stories.

• What problems do people come to you to solve?
• What did your favorite students say about you?
• What non-teaching roles have you filled unofficially—event planner, counselor, team leader? My Mom was my wedding planner.  She came within NINE dollars of her original budget.  STILL blows my mind almost 30 years later!
• What are some qualities that your friends and colleagues would you to describe you.  And don’t guess.  Ask them.

A — Audit Your Energy

Track your joy and your existential dread for a week.

• When do you feel like you’re flying?
• When do you feel like you’re sinking?
• What topics make you want to talk for hours? In case you ahven’t noticed, I could talk about movies for hours – and have done so this summer.  

This helps rule in or out things like:

• Curriculum design
• Corporate training
• Instructional design
• Coaching
• Copywriting
• Public speaking
• Operations and team management

(Yes, you are that qualified.)

R — Reimagine What Work Can Be

“To live would be an awfully big adventure.” As Peter says. 

Maybe your next role isn’t in a classroom or a cubicle.

• What if it’s a podcast?
• A job at the zoo?
• Creating Art?
• A marketing gig at a nonprofit that aligns with your values?

This is your Neverland mapping moment. Dream big.

I — Identify Your Core Values

Burnout often happens when your values and your environment are misaligned.

• Do you value autonomy? Creativity? Community? Justice? 
• Use those values as a compass when researching new careers.

F — Find Your Battle Buddy

This isn’t solo work, y’all.

• Pick someone outside your district who can help you stay grounded, cheer you on, and challenge old narratives.
• Share your vision with them. Say it out loud.

Y — Yes to the First Step

You don’t have to know the whole path. In fact, even if you think you know the whole path, it will probably change. You just have to say yes to the first clue.

• Schedule an informational interview.
• Take a free skills assessment (like MyNextMove.org).
• Sign up for a low-stakes workshop in something that intrigues you.

You were never meant to stay grounded forever. You’ve just been waiting to remember who you are. This isn’t just a job change, it’s your next big adventure. Whoever you are, you’re still you. 

And like the song in the said (I’ll spare you my singing, but I’ll put a link in the show notes to the scene):
 “The stars are all my friends / Till the nighttime ends / So I know I'm not alone / When I'm here, on my own. / Isn't that a wonder? / When you're alone / You're not alone / Not really alone.”

"To be a star, you must shine your own light, follow your path, and don't worry about the darkness, for that is when the stars shine brightest." (wish I could take credit for that but it’s Ralph Waldo Emerson)

If this episode spoke to that part of you that you miss - come talk to me. Schedule a free Discovery Session. No pressure. Just space.

Space to remember who you are outside the systems that forgot you.

Space to imagine a future that gives back. Because you’ve given enough.  And it’s time.

I stuck this at the end because I don’t always to the show notes either. 

And don’t forget: you still know how to fly. Take care of everything smaller than you.
 Thanks for listening, friend.  Thank you for believing. 

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! 

Email me at Vanessa@teachersintransition.com
Leave a voicemail or text at 512-640-9099
Schedule a free Discovery Session with me: https://teachersintransition.com/calendar
Follow me on Bluesky @beyondteaching.bsky.social
Find me on Threads and Instagram @teachers.in.transition
And on X at @EduExitStrategy
Follow on Facebook: search for Teachers in Transition and look for our blue phoenix.
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I look forward to connecting with you