Are you a teacher who's 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 burn 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 and transition.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to episode 91 of teachers in transition, the podcast and the YouTube channel. My name is kitty Boitnott. I am the owner of teachers in transition and Boitnott coaching. If you have listened to me in the past, you know, that I alternate topics each week between stress management strategies for teachers and overwhelmed mid career professionals. And on alternate weeks, I talk about career transition strategies, techniques tips, because I am both a certified stress management coach and trained and experienced career transition and job search coach. And last week I indicated that I would not be doing a podcast this week. And I changed my mind because it dawned on me that I wanted to offer a Christmas greeting and a thank you to anyone who is listening to this podcast. As we enter the last couple of weeks of 2020, it has been a year. It has been stressful beyond anything. Anybody could have imagined a year ago for Christmas of 2019. I know for myself, I had huge plans for growing my business and launching in of 2020, my brand new revamped, we recorded, updated and expanded jumpstart. Your job search 2.0, I was excited and we were hardly into our first cohort of 2020 when word of the pandemic started to seep out. And then we learned more and more about what was happening and suddenly boom, everything shut down. And it has been a stressful year for teachers in particular. I mean, let's not even talk about first responders and nurses and doctors and the heroes. True, true heroes who have worked endless hours in hospitals and patient inpatient care with patients who were coming down with COVID in faster than, than we could cope. They're in a whole, honestly, they're in a whole separate category of hero, but I don't want to overlook that our teachers have been heroes too. They have stepped up. And as I have said to the class that I teach, I'm an adjunct professor at a local university. And I taught a class this fall virtually by zoom for the first time ever. And I, I heard some of their tales of, uh, anecdotes of how it was to be teaching virtually with kindergarteners and second graders and middle schoolers and high schoolers. And what occurred to me was that they, they were in, if you are a teacher listening to this and you were in the same boat, trying to figure out what to do on the fly and doing the best you could to catch up to what you were being told by your district, whether it was to teach in-person or to go back in the hybrid or, or to teach completely virtually, you were being asked to build an airplane while you were flying it. And as I've said before, you didn't have the benefit of having an engineer on hand or even a, even a FA islet. You're being asked to create something out of thin air curriculum, lesson plans, ways to teach online virtually with little kids whose attention will be anywhere. I mean, I know how hard it is to teach adults in my master classes when they are multitasking and doing half a dozen different things while they're attempting to listen to me. So I can't even imagine trying to engage a little one whose attention span is already yeah, small short. So my, I wanted to say, thank you. If you were a teacher who taught this fall in the midst of this pandemic, wherever you happen to be in the country or in the world. Thank you. Thank you for stepping up and thank you for doing your part. I appreciate you whether anybody else does or not. And I know that at times you haven't felt appreciated because parents have gotten frustrated with schools not being open everywhere. They've blamed the teachers it's been, it's been total chaos and craziness, and it's nobody's fault. The pandemic is not anybody's fault. It happened. It's something that happened that we had to respond to quickly. And I want to suggest that we've all done the best we could with the tools that we were given and the circumstances that we faced. So thank you for whatever your contribution has been. Thank you for your sacrifice. I also wanted to take today as an opportunity to invite you. If you have been thinking in this fall semester, while you were trying to teach in whatever method you've been asked to teach, if you've been thinking that this is not what you signed up for in this is not what you want to be doing for the next five to 10 to 15 years, maybe you've been thinking before the pandemic, that it was time to make a change. And then the pandemic hit and all bets were off. You had to stick with what you had, but as the vaccines get administered, and we start to get back to some semblance of normal, we're going to have a new kind of economy. I I'm just certain of it. There are going to be some jobs that are not going to come back as robustly as they were before the pandemic. There'll be some jobs that don't come back at all, frankly, and there'll be new and different jobs that will be created because of the need for meeting the needs of individuals who are recuperating mentally and emotionally from this past year, which means we're going to need more mental health workers, more counselors, more psychologists, more psychiatrists, more medical folk who can help people recover after the trauma that we've all experienced this year. And there'll be other, I think, ways of making a living things like more virtual teaching. And I know I've had some of my clients this year to tell me that they actually love the virtual teaching and they want to continue to do that. Even after the pandemic, others have said, you know, I'd, I'd rather work in behind the scenes in a creative way, doing curriculum design or, or some sort of curriculum writing. And that's a possibility too. So what I want to invite you to is the masterclass that I'm going to be offering on the Saturday after Christmas, the 26th of December at two o'clock Eastern, I'll put the invitation and the registration link below. If you are interested in starting to lay the foundation for a new job search in 2020 or beyond, you know, it's never too early to start building the foundation to learn what you need to know so that when the time comes, as the economy opens up and jobs are more readily available. Now don't get me wrong. There's still jobs that are being posted even right now, jobs that teachers can do. But they're going to be more plentiful as we get later into 2021. And you could be using this this time while we're still sort of in the in-between time to start building your foundation of understanding what it is to start looking for a job. What kind of mindset do you need to develop? If you want to switch career lanes, if you want to change jobs altogether, if you want to leave education and go into some other field, what kind of mindset do you need to adopt to make that possible? That's where every job search starts. And then there's the challenge of deciding what it is that you want to do next, that can't be overlooked. You can't just start applying for jobs without some sense of direction. Well, gosh, you can, but it's not going to be very successful. You need to learn how to write a resume for the applicant tracking system. You need to understand how that applicant tracking system is not your friend. You need to create a stellar LinkedIn profile and, and you need to know how to write a compelling cover letter. Most people screw up their cover letters because they don't know how to write a compelling one that speaks to why they would be a good candidate for the job. They typically regurgitate. What's already in their resume, which is a mistake that you might not know that because nobody's told you you'd, haven't been job searching for awhile, and let's not even get into what the interview entails these days, how you need to prepare how you need to be ready to execute, uh, an interview online, probably as well as perhaps in person, how you respond to a panel interview, how you can start to take control of the conversation and turn the interview into a conversation instead of a, a grilling. All of these are important parts of a successful job search. And I'm going to speak to some of these things in the masterclass on Saturday. And then I'm going to offer an opportunity for people to sign up for my program at a reduced price. Everything is going back up to the original prices that they were back in 2020 January when I rolled out jumpstart 2.0, and then I started offering a pandemic price. Well, the prices are going back up January 1st, but I'm offering pandemic pricing through the end of this year. So if you want, that's a substantial savings, frankly, between now and the end of the year. You don't want to miss this masterclass on Saturday. So sign up, register at the link below and put it on your calendar. I hope you'll join me so that you can learn how to jumpstart your job search for 2020, 20, 20, 2021, and how to do it correctly. Avoiding the typical mistakes that most rookie job seekers make. So that's it Merry Christmas, happy holidays, happy Hanukkah, happy Kwanzaa, whatever holiday it is that you celebrate personally, if, if you don't celebrate any particular one happy day, no, that you can see from my sign behind me, that I wish you peace. And my little Christmas ornament that I have had out for 10 years, 10 years or more that I keep out every day. I wish you joy in this season. Light is at the end of the tunnel, my friend, and we can start to see it. So I want you to celebrate. This may not be the Christmas you normally have. I hope it isn't. I hope you're safe. And then a small bubble of people that you usually hang out with and you can enjoy them more deeply. And you virtually visit all of your other family and friends. That's what I'm going to be doing. Uh, I will be virtually meeting for Christmas lunch with my brother and sister who were scattered and ordinarily we would get together, but we're not doing that this year. So stay safe, stay well. We're getting close to the end of this thing. So don't, don't put yourself at risk unnecessarily right here when we're so close to getting the vaccine. And let me know as usual, if you have any questions, please review the podcast teachers in transition, if you would. And, uh, that helps other people find the podcast. And thank you again that my original message was, thank you for listening. I don't know who you are, but I appreciate you. I know there are people out there who are listening and I appreciate each and every one of you so happy, happy day next. I'll see you next week.
Speaker 1:So there you have it. An episode of teachers in transition. I hope you enjoy 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@kittyboitnottatboitnottcoaching.com. If you are interested in finding a new career or just enjoying your life more, this is the place to start. I'm Katie Boitnott and this is teachers in transition.