Get Taken Seriously Outside the Classroom (Working Girl)

Ever been told, “You’re just a teacher”… and felt your stomach drop?
This episode is your reminder that “just a teacher” is not a truth — it’s a label that makes your skills invisible.

In today’s Moviesode, Vanessa uses the 1988 film Working Girl to unpack what happens when someone is wildly capable… but kept out of the room because they don’t have the right title, credentials, or connections.

If you’re a burned-out teacher thinking about leaving the classroom, this one will feel personal — in the best way.

What we cover:

• Why teachers get underestimated in career transitions (and how to push back) 
• The capability vs. credentials trap that keeps educators stuck 
• How to translate teacher skills so employers actually “get it” 
• Why documentation = protection (and how it becomes your job-search proof) 
• The role of gumption: applying before you feel 100% ready 
• A bigger truth about “support roles” (teacher/secretary/nurse) and reclaiming ownership of your work 

Quick movie note:  (because… the 80s were the 80s):

There’s some nudity, objectification, and moments that hit differently in 2026. Also: the hair and the shoulder pads are truly a jump scare. You’ve been warned. 

Next Step (if you’re ready to stop spiraling and start mapping)

If you’re recognizing yourself in Tess — capable, underestimated, and ready for something more — Vanessa’s new program Find Your Bearings was built for this moment.

It’s three sessions where you break down your experience, translate your skills, and build a clear path forward using SCOUT.

Support the Podcast 

Teachers in Transition is independently produced by Vanessa Jackson. If this podcast has helped you feel less alone or gain clarity, you now have the option to support the show financially for as little as $3. Support is completely optional and helps cover production costs so this resource can remain accessible. Whether you choose to support or simply keep listening, thank you for being here.
 https://www.buzzsprout.com/277608/support to sign up and support the podcast!

Share This Episode With a Teacher Who…

✅ feels stuck and undervalued
 ✅ keeps hearing “next year will be better”
 ✅ knows they have more to offer than the classroom can hold

And remember: you’re not “just” a teacher — you’re a whole skill set.

CONNECT WITH TEACHERS IN TRANSITION
 

Website: https://teachersintransition.com

Email: Vanessa@Teachersintransition.com

Leave a voicemail message! (512) 640-9099

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

Transcript

Hi! Welcome back to Teachers in Transition!   I’m Vanessa and  I am really happy you’re here today!  And today is a MOVIESODE – where I take a movie and use it as a lens to focus ideas about teachers, teacher skills, and how we fit into…everywhere. 

Today we’re going to talk about the 1988 film Working Girl, starring Melanie Griffith, Harrison Ford, and Sigourney Weaver. And I have to tell you… what I thought was going to be a light, fluffy episode about an 80s movie turned into something much bigger once I started digging into it. So buckle up, friends, because this one is going to be a bit of a wild ride. Apparently I cannot watch a movie without turning it into a sociology lecture, and this one gave me a lot to work with.

If you’ve never seen Working Girl, here’s the short version. Tess McGill is a working-class secretary from Staten Island who has a genuinely strong mind for business, but absolutely none of the credentials or connections that would normally get her into the room. She comes up with a great idea for a deal, shares it with her boss, and then her boss quietly steals it. And instead of backing down, Tess decides she’s going to run the deal herself before her boss can take credit for it. That’s the premise.  It’s a Rom-Com, officially, but the real story is everything happening underneath that.

Before we go any further, a quick note if you’re thinking about watching it. This is an 80s movie, and the 80s had… choices. There’s some nudity, there’s definitely objectification, and there are moments that feel very different when you watch them with 2026 eyes. Also, the hair and the shoulders pads are enormous. Just… prepare yourself. 

One of the first things that really stands out about Tess is how consistently she’s underestimated. It’s not just one moment or one person - it’s the entire environment she’s operating in. Her accent is judged, so she takes speech classes at night. Her background is dismissed because she’s from Staten Island. Her job title puts her in the secretarial pool, which means people assume her role is to support someone else’s work, not contribute ideas of her own. And at one point, a boss even sets her up with what is supposed to be a professional opportunity that turns into a man trying to trap her in the back of a limo. When she fights back, she’s the one who gets pushed out of her job. Not the sleazoid who tried to pimp her out or the very creepy guy in the limo (played a bit too well as we now know, but Kevin Spacey).

And if you’re a teacher listening to this, I’m guessing that dynamic of being underestimated and labelled feels a little too familiar. Because teachers hear a version of that all the time when they start looking outside the classroom. “You’re just a teacher.” and “What else would you even do?”  And every time I hear that phrase, I kind of want to laugh, because anyone who has actually done the job knows how absurd it is. Teachers are managing complex environments every single day. They’re leading, planning, adjusting, communicating, solving problems in real time. They’re doing project management, training, conflict resolution, and logistics all at once. But somehow, when all of that sits under the label “teacher,” it becomes invisible to the outside world.

That’s exactly the problem Tess is dealing with. She has the skill. People just aren’t looking past the label.

And this is where the movie starts to connect to something bigger. Because Tess isn’t just underestimated as an individual - she’s in a role that historically has been treated as a support role. Secretary. I caught someone throw out the hypothesis that secretaries in the 60s and 70s  were groups of women who existed to take of the executive load and the planning so that the men in the business world could succeed. I’m sure that’s not 100% true, but it’s more than 1% true.  And if you zoom out a little, you start to see a pattern. For a long time, women were steered into a pretty narrow set of professions: teacher, secretary, nurse. All of them essential. All of them requiring real expertise. And all of them framed as supporting someone else’s work higher-paid work rather than owning it themselves.

Teachers run classrooms, but they’re told what to teach. Nurses manage the actual flow of patient care, but physicians hold the authority (good physicians know to trust the nurses!) Secretaries keep entire organizations functioning, but executives get the credit. And what Working Girl does so well is show what happens when someone in one of those roles decides they’re not just going to support the work anymore - they’re going to own it.

That’s the real disruption in the movie. It’s not that Tess has a good idea. It’s that she claims it.  When someone tries to take it from her, she pulls it back. 
 
 As she is stepping into the idea of pretending to be who she knows she is, she also steps into the adage of “dress for the job you want” to slip into a party and meet the guy her boss was going to pitch Tess’ idea to before meeting him officially. 

At the party where Tess meets Jack Trainer, played by Harrison Ford, that really highlights another layer of this. Tess doesn’t know it’s Jack. Before the famous line, Jack says something to her that’s actually pretty revealing. He tells her she’s the first woman he’s seen at one of these events who dresses like a woman, not like a woman thinks a man would dress if he was a woman. And then Tess delivers that iconic line: “I have a head for business and a bod for sin. Is there anything wrong with that?” It’s funny, but underneath it, she’s making a point. She shouldn’t have to erase who she is to be taken seriously. All she ever hears about it how she looks.  She wants to be known for the brains too. 

And more importantly, she knows what she’s talking about. She has the capability. What she doesn’t have is the credentials. She didn’t go to the right school. She doesn’t have the right network. She doesn’t have the right job title. And that gap between capability and credentials is something teachers run into all the time when they transition careers. There’s this assumption that you need another degree before you can even try. Not true.  Eh.. sometimes that’s true (some things require degrees). But a lot of the time, it’s not about learning something new. It’s about translating what you already know how to do, and possibly grabbing a quick certificate or two.
 
 In the movie, she has a boyfriend (at least in the beginning). He doesn’t see her for her.  He sees her as a trophy for him. He gives her lingerie for her birthday gift.  Jack, on the other hand, brings her a briefcase when he stops by to tell her they’re in a deal together.  Her boyfriend, Mick, gives her something he enjoys, Jack gives her tools and support she can USE. One sees her as something to look at. The other sees her as someone with a brain who can execute a deal 

And then we get to what might be one of the most practical lessons in the entire movie: documentation. When everything comes to a head and Katharine tries to take the deal back, she leans entirely on hierarchy. She claims that Tess stole the ideas in a room full of men. She’s the executive. Tess is the secretary. End of story. Except… it’s not. Because Tess has kept track of her work. She has notes. She has proof. And although it doesn’t happen in the boardroom meeting as our 2026 selves would want, there is a reckoning shortly there after suddenly the conversation shifts from “who has the title” to “who did the work.”  As Jack tells the owner of the large company that this deal benefits “She’s your man” and he refuses to move forward without her. 

That’s a powerful shift. THAT is support

Because being underestimated is frustrating, but documentation is how you protect yourself while you prove your value. Teachers know this instinctively when they’re dealing with difficult administrators. Document the conversation. Document the decision. Keep the receipts. And in a job search, that same habit becomes the way you show your impact. Not just what you did, but what changed because you did it.  

And a quick hack here – use a voice app to increase the speed of this.  You can pull transcriptions straight out of iPhone (I assume Android works even better) and if necessary, you can use AI to help pull it together to spot patterns, create a timeline and a report. 

But even with all of that, the thing that really drives Tess forward isn’t documentation. It’s gumption. She keeps going when it would be easier to stop. She steps into rooms where she technically doesn’t belong. She moves the deal forward without waiting for permission. And that’s uncomfortable. There are moments where she’s clearly nervous, clearly unsure, clearly feeling like she might not belong. But she acts anyway, and she keeps moving forward with this belief that she belongs. 

There’s a statistic that comes up a lot in career conversations. Women tend to apply for jobs only when they meet all of the qualifications. 100% of the qualifications. Men tend to apply when they meet about half. Tess is a perfect example of what it looks like to move before you feel 100 percent ready. She knows enough. She believes enough. And she goes.

My favorite line in this movie comes when Tess is asked by Trask basically why she was doing all the pretending. And Tess answers: You can bend the rules plenty once you get to the top, but not while you're trying to get there. And if you're someone like me, you can't get there without bending the rules.

You are going to feel this deeply as you work to leave the classroom – you can’t be afraid to show gumption and go around some of the more established rules to be noticed so you can, as Tess would say, ‘hit ‘em with your smarts.”

Near the end, we see an excellent example of the partnership between Tess and Jack. There’s a scene where they are in their kitchen getting ready for work, and it’s just… easy. They’re moving around each other, passing items off without asking or answering anything.  It feels like a dance. And then he pauses that dance, he hands her that little lunchbox full of things she will need in her first day at her big job and shows her what is in there, “Peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Milk money. Twinkies.”  And then he tells her “Play nice with the other kids and be home before dark.” It’s funny, but it’s also incredibly supportive. He’s not trying to control her. I LOVE that he told her to play nice with the other kids because he KNOWS what’s she’s capable of.  He’s not undermining her. He’s treating her like a professional who is about to go do something important.  Those are HER initials on that lunchbox.  No one else’s. 

And then we get to the ending, which is the sprinkles topping – sprinkles in top of the cupcake there.  Tess walks into area she was sent to, sees someone in the office on the phone, so she sits quietly outside and waits.  The woman comes out and to Tess’ surprise, it turns out that this is her new office!   And the secretary just looks at her and says, “That’s your desk.” (in the office) And you can see it hit her. She hasn’t caught up yet. She’s still thinking of herself as the secretary. The support person. The one who organizes someone else’s work.  She’s worked so long and so hard to be taken seriously that when it finally happens, it takes her more than a couple of beats to catch up.  She even tells her new assistant that she expects to be called Tess, she doesn’t expect her assistant to fetch her coffee unless they’re both getting some and they’ll make up the rest as they go along.  

Tess didn’t suddenly become capable at the end of the movie. She was capable the entire time. The difference is that she finally stepped into a position where that capability was visible - and she allowed herself to claim it.

And that, more than anything, is what this movie gets right.

If you’re listening to this,  and you’re recognizing yourself in Tess - capable, underestimated, and ready for something more - then the next step is getting clarity on what that actually looks like for you.

That’s what my brand new Find Your Bearings program is designed to do.

It’s three sessions with me where we break down your experience, translate your skills, and start building a clear path forward. And you’ll get to use SCOUT, the tool I created to help you uncover the skills you didn’t even realize you had. The ones that don’t always show up clearly on a resume but absolutely matter in the real world.  And remember, because it’s new, there is introductory pricing for a limited time.  Grab your spot and check it out. 

You can find all of that at teachersintransition.com.  

And if you’re finding value in the podcast, I’d love your support. This podcast is written, produced, and edited, by me, Vanessa Jackson.  Some of the ways you can support the podcast is to keep listening, share it with a teacher who’s feeling stuck like you might haves been, and if you want to contribute financially, you can do that for as little as $3 a month through the support link on the Teachers in Transition Buzzsprout homepage.

Until next time, keep looking for the good ideas in all the places, and don’t be afraid to “hit ‘em with your smarts!”

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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!