Changing jobs represents a unique set of challenges, but changing a career can feel like a daunting task depending on the level of education you may have invested in or the amount of experience you have racked up. In spite of those challenges, however, the time does come for some when the writing is on the wall. You realize you aren’t happy anymore in the career of your first choice, and it is time to assess what you might be able to do to transition into another line of work. Here are what I would offer are four distinct signs that you are not only ready to change careers, but you need to change before your health, or your primary relationships suffer anymore.
1. You find yourself dreading Monday mornings.
2. You feel stuck and unhappy because you don't see room for advancement or promotion.
3. You feel that you have no control over your work or your projects.
4. You feel discouraged and put down by your boss or co-workers.
Want to learn more? Listen in.
Download the pdf referenced in the show, *10 Things You Need to Know if You Want to Make a Job or Career Change* at https://kittyboitnott.lpages.co/changing-career-considerations/
To make an appointment for a 20-minute complimentary consultation, sign up here: http://kittyboitnott.coachesconsole.com/calendar.
Transcript available: https://coachesconsole.com/v3/uploads/supplements/teachers-in-transition---episode-7---4-signs-you-need-to-change-careers_b30a63966dcbe.pdf
Changing jobs represents a unique set of challenges, but changing a career can feel like a daunting task depending on the level of education you may have invested in or the amount of experience you have racked up. In spite of those challenges, however, the time does come for some when the writing is on the wall. You realize you aren’t happy anymore in the career of your first choice, and it is time to assess what you might be able to do to transition into another line of work. Here are what I would offer are four distinct signs that you are not only ready to change careers, but you need to change before your health, or your primary relationships suffer anymore.
1. You find yourself dreading Monday mornings.
2. You feel stuck and unhappy because you don't see room for advancement or promotion.
3. You feel that you have no control over your work or your projects.
4. You feel discouraged and put down by your boss or co-workers.
Want to learn more? Listen in.
Download the pdf referenced in the show, *10 Things You Need to Know if You Want to Make a Job or Career Change* at https://kittyboitnott.lpages.co/changing-career-considerations/
To make an appointment for a 20-minute complimentary consultation, sign up here: http://kittyboitnott.coachesconsole.com/calendar.
Transcript available: https://coachesconsole.com/v3/uploads/supplements/teachers-in-transition---episode-7---4-signs-you-need-to-change-careers_b30a63966dcbe.pdf
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 some other kind of job, or perhaps pursuing a whole different career, but you don't know what else you're even qualified to do? You don't know how to start a job search. You just feel stuck. If that sounds like you, I promise you're not alone. My name is Kitty Boitnott. I'm a career transition and job search coach, and I specialize in helping burned out teachers just like you deal not only with the stress and overwhelm of your day-to-day job, but to consider what other careers might be out there waiting for you. Join me for"Teachers in Transition." In some episodes I'll be speaking to stress management techniques and how you can manage your stress on a day-to-day basis. In other episodes I'll be talking about career transition. What tools do you need to be successful in a job search when you're moving from one career into a totally different track? These are questions that you need answers to, and I can help you find those answers. My name is Kitty Boitnott. Welcome to"Teachers in Transition." Hi, this is Kitty Boitnott of"Teachers in Transition," and welcome back to another episode. This is actually"Episode 7" of the YouTube Channel and the"Teachers in Transition Podcast." And as I have explained, I am going to be alternating each week between talking about career transition and stress management strategies. This week I’m talking about careers, and specifically I want to suggest that there are at least four signs that you need to change careers. When you start to experience certain thoughts repeatedly or experience certain feelings often...when you find yourself feeling unhappy and unfulfilled and like there must be something else"out there" that you could be doing with your life but you feel stuck. So these are specific signs that I want you think about. You may even want to jot them down to ponder them. Take more than just a moment to think about a few of these things because they are important. You may be experiencing signals or signs that it is time for to make a change in your career. So the first big red flag, red flashing, flashing red light that you need to pay attention to is that you consistently dread Monday morning. Not the occasional, you have a Monday morning meeting coming up in a few weeks and you're dreading the meeting because either you're in charge or you just, you're not looking forward to the meeting for whatever reason. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about when you specifically, every Sunday afternoon or Sunday evening, start to feel depressed about Monday morning. You dread going back to"that place." Now you know, I work specifically with teachers, but these signs that I'm talking about today are pertinent to anyone in any job or any career. And I can remember back in the day when I was a younger teacher, I had more than one colleague on different occasions mention that they actually cried on Sunday night about having to start a new work week. And I never experienced that. So I couldn't even imagine how miserable or unhappy they must be now. In some cases it was understandable, especially for the younger moms who really wanted to be at home with their children, their babies--babies especially. It's hard taking, uh, an infant or a toddler who cries when you walk out of the room. It's hard to leave them with someone else and, and I've never had to do that either. But, uh, I can only imagine how difficult that is and yet you have to do what you have to do. So that I'm not even addressing that so much. That's, that is something that will pass with time. Um, or it may just be, it's not that you hate the job so much, it's just that you hate leaving, leaving your child. What I'm talking about is when you dread the job, when you dread coming into work, and I'm reminded of a text that I got once from a teacher who, who wrote me in a moment of desperation and she said"Kitty, I am literally sitting in the parking lot of my school waiting until the last possible second to walk into that building." If you feel like that it is time to make a change. I'm just saying it is time for you to confront what it is about the job that you do not enjoy, that you are dreading so desperately and to consider whether it's something that you can change or whether you simply need to change the job. So that's sign number one. You consistently, each week on the weekends you enjoy being away from work and Sunday afternoon into Sunday evening you feel a sense of dread. Monday morning you have to drag yourself out of bed. You have no sense of joy, no sense of happy anticipation. You're simply forcing yourself to go to work. I've only really experienced that once in my life on a consistent basis and it was the first year of my teaching career and it wasn't that I hated the job once I got there. What I hated was the commute. Dragging myself out of bed. Oh dark hundred to drive 46 miles, one way to work and then 46 miles back every day. That makes for a long day, and so I didn't enjoy that. And Monday mornings were particularly hard. But it wasn't the job itself that I did like, so that's, that's sign number one. You dread Monday mornings. The second sign is you feel stuck and unhappy because you don't see any room for advancement. You know, there are people who feel ambition that's very normal. It's natural that you want to be rewarded for hard work, that you want to be appreciated for the contributions that you make and that particularly if you're contributing to the growth of a company or the health of an organization, you'd like to be recognized for that and you know, uh, pay raises or periodically or nice. That's one way to recognize your achievement and being promoted along the way is another way of feeling appreciated and you can see yourself growing individually and personally and professionally in your organization or your corporation. Again, specifically for teachers, there is very little room for advancement in the teaching world unless you want to become an administrator. And some people do. Some people become administrators because they want the extra responsibility or because they feel like they have uh the, the specific skills that are required to be the administrator, a building. Some people simply want the extra pay. And they see becoming a principal as a way of improving their status. That's really not the best reason to be doing it. But that is a reason. But if you don't particularly want to become a principal, there are a few, or in this, if you don't want to work in the Central Office, there are really few places that you can advance. I mean, you can go from being a classroom teacher to being the department chair, I guess. And that's one kind of advancement. But there's usually very little monetary reward that goes along with that. And yet there's a lot of extra responsibility that goes with it. So the pay isn't commensurate with the work that you wind up taking on. So one reason that people will decide to make a change is that they currently don't see themselves being able to grow and develop into a new, more responsible role. And if you feel stuck and unhappy because of that, then it's time to think about making a change. The third sign that it may be time for you to make a change is that you feel like you have no control over your work or your projects or, um, the, all of the decisions have already been made for you. There's no professional judgment that you are allowed to exercise. And in fact, very often if you attempt to make a decision and someone doesn't like it, you get called on it. I mean, we might even be censured for it in some way. Punished. And that happens, it happens in every field, not just in the teaching world, but teachers have had less and less. uh, authority in running their own classroom over the course of the last few years. When I first started out, many, many years ago, we had a lot of flexibility. We were given a fair amount of autonomy. We were considered to be professionals who had a responsibility for exercising professional judgment. I mean back in those days, we even created our own assessments. We, we taught the curriculum that we weren't even given so much. We were given textbooks and guides that we could craft lessons of our own, and we could teach in the way that we felt most comfortable. And then we wrote our own tests and assessed the performance of our students, determining how much of the curriculum and content they had learned and what kind of remediation you might need to go back and offer so that you could bring on board some of the ones who had perhaps missed it. the first go round, the teachers were allowed to do that. That that is a thing of the past. If you're a newer teacher, that whole concept is totally foreign to you because you've been handed everything including possibly a script to read and you've been given a pacing guide that you're required to keep up with no matter what other distractions may occur. And Lord knows there are enough distractions between assemblies and, um, different kinds of activities that disrupt your routine, your, your best laid plan. Uh, you may or may not be able to keep on the pacing guide. And then when an administrator walks in and asks you for your lesson plan and they see that you're a week behind you, you get marked down for not keeping up. That goes into your evaluation that you're not keeping up with the pacing guide. So it begins to wear on some individuals, not everybody. Some people appreciate having everything laid out for them, makes it easier. But if you're one of those people who'd like to have a little more autonomy about what it is that you do, then you will feel constricted and you will feel the lack of control to be something that begins to wear you down after awhile. And that's a third sign that perhaps it's time for you to look for other occupations. And finally, and this is the most demoralizing sign, I guess. You feel discouraged or put down by your boss and or your coworkers. In other words, when you go to work, whether it's Monday or Wednesday or Friday, your relationships with your administrator, your supervisor, your co-coworkers, the people in your department, people on your staff and faculty, they don't appreciate you. They don't respect you. And in fact, they may be openly disparaging of you. Now, I hope that that isn't the case for many people who may be listening to this today, but I know it is the case for some. And if you happen to be one who feels disrespected and disparaged by your boss, and or your coworkers, then I want to suggest to you that you're in the wrong environment, and you need to relocate your environment. Find a new place to be. Now, if you're the reason for they're not respecting you because of your actions, that's, that's something else. That means you need to work on yourself. I'm talking about when you're putting your best effort forward and you're doing the best job you can and you're asking, even, for help if you need it, And yet you don't feel respected. And you don't feel like you're in fact more than you don't feel respected, you feel disrespected. Then I want to suggest to you, it may be time to move on. So now are those the only signs that you need to make a career change? Absolutely not. There are other reasons, but these are four specific ones that I offer in an eBook that I wrote a while back called the*10 Things You Need to Know. If You Think You're Ready for a Career or Job Change,* it's a free pdf and I'll offer the link to it in the notes below. You're welcome to sign up for it and download it and read it for yourself. This is simply one of the, one of the chapters,"Four Signs You Need to Change Careers," and I want to suggest to you that if you think you are ready for career change, things have changed to the extent that I would also offer that you shouldn't try to do it alone. Get some hell fine. Find a mentor who's willing to walk you through the process. Talk to a friend who recently changed jobs and find out what strategies he or she used. Go back to your university or college and check out their alumni career center for help. There may be groups of job seekers in your area, depending on where you live. Here in my city, there are at least two organized groups who meet weekly that are specifically designed to offer support and--technical and emotional support--for people who are suddenly between jobs and need help with their career transition. So, if do you live in a midsize to large city or near a place like that? Check out Meetup.com for job seeker groups and check them out. Find out what kinds of services they offer and then you know, if, if you really need or want, Help that will be designed to help you be successful. And we'll teach you everything you need to know about a job search and a, how to undertake a job search strategy or how to transition from one career to a totally new career path...you may consider hiring a career coach. Certainly I'm not the only one. I am one and I'd be happy to chat with you. I offer a 20-minute complimentary conversation to see if what I offer is a good fit for people or not. And if I'm not a good fit, I'm more than happy to say I don't think I'm good, good fit for you, but it may be that we would be a good fit and you know, certainly 20 minutes of your time is not a lot of time to give up and there's no cost involved for the 20 minutes. So you may want to check out either me or some other career coach who is similarly trained to help you make this kind of change in your life. And that's it! Four signs you need to change careers. So what I would ask you to do is if you got something from this episode, please subscribe, leave a review, or write a question. Let me know if you have any questions about any of these four signs or any other aspect of this particular episode. And stay tuned for new episodes by subscribing. You'd be alerted to new episodes as they come available each week and check out if you're on the podcast, check out the YouTube video and vice versa. If you're on the Youtube channel, check out the podcast and subscribe each. Leave a review. Let me know what kinds of things you'd like to know in the future about stress management, which I'll be talking about next week and career change or career transition or job search strategies, which I will be talking about in, again, in two weeks. So there you have it, an episode of"Teachers in Transition." I hope you enjoyed the information and I hope you'll plan to come back. Please subscribe to"Teachers in Transition" so that you can be alerted of future episodes. And let me know if you have any questions or topics that you would like me to specifically cover in a future episode. I'm more than happy to help with individual questions as well. So email me at Kitty Boitnott@boitnottcoaching.com. If you are interested in finding a new career or just enjoying your life more, this is the place to start. Hi, I'm Kitty Boitnott and this is"Teachers in Transition."