Transcript
00:00:04
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? A new job 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 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.
00:01:22
Hi and welcome back to another episode of Teachers in transition. I am your host, Vanessa Jackson, a compassionate career transition and job search coach who specializes in working with burnt out teachers who are ready for a career change but are not sure where to begin or who need a little extra assistance in reaching their goals.
00:01:42
Today on the pod, we are going to talk about the importance of laying the groundwork for a successful job hunt and reducing frustration. A hack to help save you a little time and ease some of the decision fatigue that so many teachers suffer from and we are at our final section of our self-inventory from the book. What color is your parachute by Richard Bulls with Katherine Brooks where we'll explore our purpose in life as you are getting ready to embark on your job search, or perhaps if you've been a little stuck in what you're doing, it is so important to lay the groundwork for what you are wanting to accomplish.
00:02:23
And one of the first steps is to really know yourself. That is why we have been taking the time over the last eight weeks to go through our self inventory from the book and today we get to complete our last portion of that. But it is difficult to know what career you want to move to if you don't know yourself.
There are some career tests out there and some personality profiles that you can take which are very useful, and in those you have to be a little bit careful because often times they will tell you that you were born to be a teacher. No surprise there, but you can also look for what it says next is a good job for you.
00:03:08
And you might need to consider what levels of responsibility you are interested in. As teachers, we literally carry the world on our shoulders. OK, well, maybe not literally, but absolutely it feels that way from day-to-day. So some things that you're going to need to do is you are going to need to set aside time regular time in your schedule. Now it would be great if I said you need one hour per day to work on your job hunt skill. But we all live in the real world, and that may not be possible, and you may not be able to reserve the same time every week, but prioritize yourself. Put that time on the calendar. That way it's yours and you don't accidentally schedule something else on top of it.
You're going to need space to work, you'll need of course an Internet connection. You will need your laptop and you will need to be able to focus on what you're doing. If you can do that at home, that's awesome. But I would also suggest to you that many public libraries have quiet spaces where you can work and focus. If you actually need to get out of your house to be able to have that focus.
00:04:27
You are going to create a resume template because every resume has to be different, but you want to start with a resume that has every last little thing on it that shows how amazing you are and what you can do.
00:04:42
And then as you come across job postings that you're interested in, then you can take that resume, save it as a copy and customize it. We will talk about that more in a future episode. You're going to want to bookmark places where you can make word clouds. You may already have a favorite because you may already do this as a teacher. You're going to want to check out places like jobscan.co and you're going to need to have a frank talk with family. The younger your kids are, the more difficult this is. If you're a single parent, this also gets very difficult. But to explain to them that for everyone to be happier In the long run, we're going to have to work a little harder and pull together and take care of Mom (or Dad) right now.
00:05:33
When I was looking to leave teaching, I was absolutely miserable and overwhelmed, and I just couldn't even decide what thing to do first in the mornings, and my husband asked what he could do to help. I realized I needed breakfast fuel in the morning.
So I told him I need you to feed the women.
The women being me and our dogs, who were all female at the time. So he took on that task where he would make sure the dogs were fed and then he would also make sure that I was fed and I was pretty easy. I just wanted a a breakfast smoothie with some protein powder in it. Bananas. Peanut butter. That's my favorite. But he made sure that I got that, which gave me a good breakfast start to the day so that I wasn't having to grab coffee and a doughnut, which really just adds to jitters and sugar drops later.
00:06:36
And laying this groundwork is so very important, but you won't necessarily feel like you're making headway on your job hunt, but you are, and you need to give yourself grace because odds are you are not just juggling a job hunt, which is basically a job on its own. You also have a day-to-day job as a teacher, which should be 40 hours a week, but it's often 60 or more and then you are also quite possibly a parent, a spouse. There are so many things that you are, and you have to be nice to yourself.
Let's explore how bamboo grows. Hopefully you've heard this story when you plant bamboo, you don't often see what's happening. But they say that it can. It can take five years before you start to see the Bamboo coming up, but then when it comes up it can grow a foot in a day or more? It takes those first five years using all of its energy to put the roots down and to create a strong root system so that when it's ready to grow.
It really grows.
So, think of this time as you creating a strong root system and putting your systems into place so that you can job hunt with a confident focus.
00:08:08
And our Teacher Hack for this week is designed to help you find a little more time in your day at home and to deal with some of the decision fatigue that comes up. I don't know about you, but often times when I got home, I just couldn't handle the thought of what to make for dinner.
I would go in and, I would stare at the pantry or the refrigerator and I just could not deal with one more decision in my day that always turns into asking another family member, “what would you like for dinner?”, which seems to usually be met by, “I don't care -whatever you want for dinner.” And then you go back and forth, and then you finally end up ordering pizza, which is a little more expensive than today's economy can bear. Plus, in the long run, it's not all that healthy and the less healthy you eat, the harder it becomes to be resilient in the face of stress at your work.
00:09:07
So - the simple tip here is to meal plan.
It's very easy for me to sit here and sanctimoniously, say, plan your meals because there really is more to it than that. You have to look at your calendar and you have to see what days you're going to be home or if a kid has a game or a concert or something else is going on. But I am going to give you a few tips to make this easier for you.
I would start with two or three meal plans, -weekly meal plans.
You can use things that are already put in place, like a Taco Tuesday, but keep it simple and then just rotate through those three weeks.
Cross out anything that you won't be home for, or shuffle the days around to make it work for you. You do not have to sit and create a new meal plan every single week for the rest of your life. And you can have a shopping list that goes along with that, and then another tip to help you save time if this is in your area (and I hope it is), it is in more and more areas after the pandemic.
Put your shopping list online. My family keeps a running shopping list on a Google doc so that anybody can put things on it at any time. and if they don't put it on there, that's on them.
But then order your groceries online. So instead of spending another 30 minutes to an hour in the store, often buying more than you intended to, you go, you pick the groceries up and you leave.
00:10:46
I tend to be an impulse buyer, and I tend to buy for the person that I wish to be. Oh, look, look at this healthy food that I may or may not eat, and so every time I go to the grocery store, I spend way more than I thought I was going to spend.
My grocery store nearby has a 5% up charge to do the shopping for you, but I save a lot of money with that 5% upcharge because I'm not doing the impulse buying in the store, I stick to my list. I stick to my plans.
And there you have it.
I hope you can find this tip helpful. I hope it helps you create space, in your life that you can use towards your job hunt and I will post a link to a sample meal plan.
This is not intended to be dietary advice. It is just an example of how simple it can be to still be very useful
and on to our third segment. We are going to do our last petal in our flower for the what color is your parachute book? This one is about your purpose and your sense of mission in your life.
00:12:02
Our goal here is to know your moral compass and your spiritual values by which you want to live and guide your life. We probably have a theory or a thought as to what these are, but we're going to put these on paper and look at them. What we're looking for is definitions of our goals and our purpose to help us pick the kinds of organizations or places where we would like to work. If you find places that serve the same mission as yours, you will be much happier.
Side note, I think one of the reasons that teachers are so frustrated with teaching right now is that teaching doesn't seem to be about educating the kids as much as it seems to be about storing the kids during the day. That's a bit of a general assumption, but I think it holds true, but back to the petal.
00:12:57
We are dreaming here about the broad outcome of life, not just this year's job search. What legacy do you want to leave behind? What footprint do you want to leave behind?
Purpose can be split along 9 paths. There is the senses, the body's possessions, the will or the conscience, the heart, entertainment or relaxation, the earth, the spirit, and the mind.
The book calls these spheres as in spheres of influence and in Sphere 1, ‘the senses’. It's asking when you finish your life. Do you want there to be more beauty left behind because of you? As in the arts or music or crafting?
00:13:55
Are you interested in the sphere of the body? Do you want there to be more fitness and health and more healing?
00:14:03
The sphere of the possessions - is it that you love possessions and that do you want there to be better stewardship of them? Do you want to have things to pass down when you are gone? Do you prefer simplicity or an overabundance of things?
00:14:22
The sphere of the will or conscience. When you finish, do you want more morality, more righteousness? In what areas do you think that this is necessary?
00:14:34
The sphere of the heart, when you have finished your life on Earth, do you want more love and compassion everywhere?
00:14:42
The sphere of entertainment. Do you want to lighten the load of others with entertainment? Do you want to help them forget their problems in their life for a short period of time?
00:14:55
The sphere of the earth. Do you want to be a good steward of the earth? Do you want to protect it in some way?
00:15:04
The sphere of the spirit - again, looking for more spirituality and compassion. More forgiveness? Family.
00:15:14
And the sphere of the mind. When you have finished your life on Earth, do you want there to be more knowledge? Truth? Clarity?
00:15:25
All of these spheres are important. What matters most to you? What can you focus on for you? Our exercise for this puddle is we are going to write our philosophy of life. And that may not be as quick as you think. It may take a while it may come to you over a day or a week or a month, or possibly longer,
00:16:04
You'll need something to write on and to put this on paper or in a word, or Google Doc.
Try to write a few sentences about each of these pathways or spheres
00:16:11
The ones where you automatically have more than just a couple of sentences are areas that mean a lot to you. The book has a list of values and some explanations of them that can be a wonderful foundation or map to help you contemplate your philosophies, and what is important to you - and why it is important to you. Once you have done that, go back and edit. Rewriting is writing.
00:16:41
And you're going to want to distill it down to the most important points, and that is your 7th petal. There is a sample of a filled-out page in the book from a student of Richard Bowles. And that individual has stated that he has kept that piece of paper as a guiding force throughout his entire life as he was looking for other positions and to make sure that his goals aligned with his vision. Hopefully you can look at your flower and get a sense of where you want to go in life next. Maybe it sends you to several different fields that you can explore, but this will help you lay the groundwork to have a targeted career and job search approach. This will help you to create strong answers to potential interview questions. This will help you be confident in an interview because you know deeply what you feel that confidence will shine through and increase your chances of being looked at more seriously.
00:17:50
If you would like help exploring these questions in a more one-on-one targeted fashion, please send me an e-mail at teachersintransitioncoaching@gmail.com and we can set up a complementary discovery call We can talk about what your interests are and if we can help you here at Teachers in Transition. We would love to help you go through this inventory, and our program, which can help you learn how to write resumes to optimize your LinkedIn profile to know how to really target a job description and how to be more confident when you interview for jobs.
00:18:32
The discovery call is at no cost to you, and it is a great opportunity to just chat a little and see how we can help.
00:18:41
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. TuneIn Weekly to teachers and 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 Teachersintransitioncoaching@gmail.com or leave a voicemail or text at 512-640-9099.
00:19:09
I'll see you next week. And remember, you are amazing.
