Should You Leave Teaching This Year? What to Know First

Teachers are more valuable than you’ve been told, and if you feel like you’ve lost your sparkle, it might not be you… it might just be the lighting. 

This week, Vanessa shares a story about Llanite, one of the rarest rocks on Earth (found only near Llano, Texas), and why it’s the perfect metaphor for teachers whose skills have been overlooked for so long they’ve started to overlook themselves.

You’ll also get a ridiculously simple grounding reset (no “wellness routine” required): step outside for 2–5 minutes and look up. When “Small Human meets Big Sky,” your nervous system settles and your perspective widens.

Then we get practical about the big question that shows up during testing season/end-of-year chaos: “Is this the year I leave?” Vanessa explains why this is often the worst time to make the final decision and the best time to start preparing, because the rest of the working world does not run on a school calendar.

In this episode:

• The Llanite lesson: rare value is easy to miss when it’s “always been there” 
• Why teachers underestimate their own skills (and others do too) 
• The fast grounding hack: change your environment, change your state 
• Why constant evaluation can disconnect you from your own worth 
• The guilt economy (“stay for the kids”) and why guilt is a terrible career strategy 
• Vanessa’s transition framework: Decide → Clarify → Build → Refine → Attract 
• Job search reality: it often takes 6–12 months, so planning matters 

Teacher Hack of the Week

Go outside. Two minutes is enough to shift your breathing, your vision, and your brain. Change the lighting—then see what you notice.

Links to Resources

Your one-stop link for the calendar, the podcast, and anything else: https://teachersintransition.com
Ep. 290 (Fear, Burnout, and a Smarter Job Strategy): https://www.buzzsprout.com/277608/episodes/18785109
 
 

Support the podcast (optional, but always appreciated to offset production costs!): https://www.buzzsprout.com/277608/support

Until next time… take a moment, look up at the sky, and remember: you are amazing. 

CONNECT WITH TEACHERS IN TRANSITION
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Email: Vanessa@Teachersintransition.com

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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!  Today we are going to talk about the rarest rock on the planet, a hack to ground you, and some practical talk about the decision to leave the classroom. 

Before we really get into it, I’ll take a quick moment as a throwback all the way back ot last week when I was talking about how AI is not ready to fly solo and certainly isn’t ready to do so in a classroom where so much of happens is not as predictable as policymakers might expect. 
 
 So of course, now that I’ve said it, I see more evidence of it everywhere and most recently on a Rottweiler page that I follow because I have two of those floofy house bears.  The real dog in the story was a Husky, (which is why we dig in and check our stories because it is just as believable with a Rottie and their picture showed a Rottie!) It seems a team was working on a robot in 2023 that could help with tasks like walking a dog.  They got it where they thought it would work and tested it on a walk out in the real world.  A Robot and a husky, what could go wrong?  If you guessed SQUIRREL!, you are correct! The dog dragged the robot ruining a $100,000 piece of equipment. I would love to hear if you’ve also run across evidence of AI/Robots not being fully prepared for the chaos that is Real Life. Please send me an email or a text message (details will be at the end – I’ll remind you!)  
 
 And on we are going to move on to our regularly scheduled Perspective Pivot – where we look at things from a new angle with a fresh set of eyes. 

So I am in my ‘change the world’ phase of life, and I was on my way to a convention a couple hundred miles away to work on just that. And Somewhere along the drive I realized I was heading through the town - the small town - of Llano, Texas. And that stopped me for a second, because the last time I’d been there, I was fourteen years old on a geology field trip with a group of middle schoolers from two rival schools… which, in hindsight, feels like a bold logistical choice. I don’t know who looked at that roster and thought, “Yes, this will be peaceful,” but bless them for that optimism.  First, let’s take a moment and shower some respect at the two teachers (Ms. Rogers and Ms. Moen) who were brave enough (crazy enough?) to take a couple of carloads of kids for a long weekend 250+ miles away from home.  Also, still convinced their first names were Ms). 

But we were there for a reason. It was a Geology Scavenger hunt with rock formations. Very cool to me. One of the items we were out to hunt was something called Llanite—L-L-A-N-I-T-E and it is named after Llano, TX where it was discovered. And at the time, I just thought it was cool because, you know, field trip, rocks, getting out of class… all the important priorities of a fourteen-year-old. But coming back to it as an adult, I realized just how special it all was. Llanite is one of the rarest rocks on the planet, in the world. It’s only found in that one place on the entire planet.  ALL of Earth!  The WHOLE planet!! We were so lucky because as we pulled up there was a geologist there from the University of Texas who also took the time out of his day to talk to us about it and help us chip off a few pieces to keep. I still have mine. It’s a cool memory for me. (And my apologies to our teachers if the trip was not a good memory for them )

I thought to myself how fun it would be on this long trip to stop by and check it out. I can relive a memory and get a little mini-hike in.  And while I was hiking VERY carefully around the cacti, I was hit with this epiphany. 

It’s not protected. It’s not guarded. There’s not a visitor center or a sign or a gift shop or even a sad little picnic table just trying its best. There’s just a cutout on the side of the road just past a place called Baby Head Cemetery (and the reasons behind THAT name will keep you up at night – I also stopped and read the Texas Historical Marker). To find this rarest rock on the whole planet, you pull over, you get out of the car, and it’s just… there. You can pick it up. Nobody stops you, nobody questions what you’re doing even if you’re hiking with a crowbar - nobody even really looks twice. It’s just sitting there like it’s nothing.

And when the sun hits it just right, it sparkles. Not in a flashy, over-the-top way, but in this quiet, almost surprising way - little flecks of shiny, blue quartz catching the light. And I tried to take pictures, I really did, but the pictures do not do it justice. They never do. Because the sun has to be at just the right angle, and if it’s not, then it just looks like… rock. Just ordinary granite that you would never think twice about as you drove past it at highway speed.  

And standing there, looking at it, I had this moment where my brain just sort of… clicked.

Because it is infinitely more rare than something like a diamond - just with much worse marketing - and yet most people drive right past it. So many passed me at 70 mph (no doubt wondering why I was hiking with that crowbar, hi ho hi ho) And I thought, “How many things in our lives are like this?” How many things are actually rare, actually valuable, and just… sitting there, unnoticed, because no one has pointed them out and said, “Hey. That’s something.”

And then it hit me: It’s y’all.

This is teachers.

Because teachers have these incredible skills, these really rare combinations of abilities - communication, adaptability, crisis management, relationship-building, content expertise - and we’re surrounded by them all the time. So much so that we stop seeing them. We call them “just part of the job.” We shrug them off. We assume everyone can do what we do. And if it isn’t us, it’s the everybody else assuming they can do what we do (au contraire, mon frere – sorry, my inner middle schooler is awake and snarking at everything)

There’s an old phrase, “familiarity breeds contempt”.  and it goes all the way back to Aesop, it’s a moral to a fable,,so it’s been hanging around for a while. But contempt doesn’t mean hatred in this context.(or Aesop’s). It’s not that we hate these things or even dislike them. It’s quieter than that. It’s dismissal. It’s overlooking. It’s the slow fading of something into the background because it’s always been there.

So maybe it’s more accurate to say this: familiarity erases perceived value.

Because when something is always in front of you, you stop recognizing what makes it special, what makes it amazing. You stop noticing the sparkle, especially if you’ve never seen it in the right light. And if you’ve been working in an environment - especially one with fluorescent lights and no windows for most of the day - it’s really hard to see anything sparkle. Even you. 

So if you’ve been feeling like nothing you do is particularly special, like you’re just getting through your day, like there’s nothing remarkable there… I want you to hear this.

It might not be you. It might just be the lighting.
 
 Every week, the last phrase of my podcast says “You are amazing”.  Because you are.  Don’t forget that. 

So let’s roll into your teacher hack for this week, and I know it’s going to sound almost too simple.

Go outside.

And I don’t mean you need to block off an hour or go on a walk or suddenly become a person who has a “wellness routine.” I mean two minutes. Five, if you can manage it. Step outside, stand there, and look up for a second.

Because something shifts when you go from a small room to a big sky.

I used to see this all the time with kids. You take a class outside—even the ones who are bouncing off the walls, the ones where you’re like, “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you today”—and something changes. Small Human meets Big Sky. The energy shifts. The behavior settles. Not because you suddenly became a different teacher in those five minutes, but because the environment changed. The context changed.

Sometimes what we need isn’t more control. It’s more context.

And somewhere along the way, we started taking that away. The first time recess disappeared from my schedule, I was in third grade. Third grade. We notice it was never put back in our schedule.  Younger kids seemed to get it back, but that horrid experiment for my graduating class lasted all the way through to graduation. And I remember thinking, “Well… that doesn’t seem right.” It was a bad idea then, and it’s a worse idea now. Kids need recess. I said what I said.  

Because we are not designed to sit under fluorescent lights all day and expect ourselves to function at a high level. We’re just – we’re just not. And yet… here we are, doing exactly that, and then wondering why everything feels a little flat, a little heavy, a little harder than it should be.  Most of us don’t even have windows in our rooms.  Maybe not most of us but many of us don’t’ even have windows in our rooms.  This is super common for performing arts teachers.15 schools and the only window I ever had was because I was in a classroom that faced a dirt hill with only enough room for a bus to pass through. I don’t count that as a window.   When I started working from home, one of the things I noticed was how much it meant to me to see the weather, the day, and the neighbors go by.   
 
I will never again work in a room without window.  I need my vitamin D, y’all. 

So, when you step outside, even for a couple of minutes, your body starts to settle. Your breathing changes without you having to think about it. Your field of vision expands. You go from staring at something a few feet in front of you to seeing something much, much bigger. And that shift matters more than we give it credit for.

And if you give yourself a second - just a second- you might hear the birds. And I love that part.  (happy sigh) I love birdsong; I find it calming. Because the birds do not care if I like their song or not. They’re not performing. They’re not being evaluated. They’re not waiting for feedback or a rubric or a score. They sing because they sing. That’s it. And it’s beautiful.

And there’s something about that that feels like a reset in the best possible way.

Because not everything valuable exists to be measured. Not everything meaningful needs permission. And if you’ve been spending your days in an environment where everything is evaluated, everything is observed, everything is quantified (#TestingSeason)… it makes sense that you might lose connection to your own sense of value.

So step outside.

Not to fix everything. Not to solve your entire life in five minutes. Just to change the lighting for a minute and see what happens.

Now let’s talk a little bit more – as we rolling into our career transition and job search segment - about where we are in the year, because this part matters and affects 8smore than we sometimes realize.

We’re in **that** stretch. Testing season. End-of-year events. Concerts, celebrations, field trips - everything stacking on top of everything else. It’s busy, it’s loud, and it’s emotional. And underneath all of that, there’s this quiet question that a lot of you are carrying around, whether you’ve said it out loud or not.

“Is this the year I leave?”  “Is this my last year?”

And I want to say something that might feel a little counterintuitive at first.

This is the worst time to make that decision.  And yet, it is also the best time to start preparing for it.

Because right now? It’s noisy. There’s pressure, there’s exhaustion, there’s emotion, and there’s probably a layer of grief in there too whether you’ve named it or not because the year didn’t go the way you planned. Because leaving teaching isn’t just changing jobs. It’s changing identity. It’s changing community. It’s letting go of something that mattered.

Of course it’s loud internally AND externally. 

And on top of all of that, you’ve got what that guilt economy going on. People will tell you to stay for the kids. They’ll tell you you’re needed, that you’re making a difference, and again - those things may all be true. But they’re also part of a system that runs on emotional obligation.

Guilt is a powerful emotion, but it is a terrible career strategy.

So instead of forcing yourself to make a life decision in the middle of all that noise, what if your job right now was just to create a little bit of space? Five minutes. No phone, no multitasking, maybe even outside if you can manage it. And just ask yourself, “What am I actually feeling about this?”

Not what you think you should do. Not what other people are telling you. Just… what’s there.

Because clarity isn’t loud. Clarity is quiet. And once you start to hear it—even just a little—you can begin to orient yourself.

When I talk about the path out of the classroom, I talk about five steps: Decide, Clarify, Build, Refine, Attract. And most of the time, by the time people find me, they’ve already made that first decision. They’ve already said, “I’m done.”

But this step? The Decide step? It matters more than we give it credit for.

Because deciding shouldn’t be about reacting. It’s not about hitting a breaking point and jumping. It’s about making a choice with as much information as possible… and a strategy.

Part of that strategy is understanding something that a lot of people don’t tell you. Corporate America does not run on a school calendar.

There is no three-month reset. There is no summer job shuffle where everything lines up neatly and you just slide into something new in August. It takes time. It takes positioning. It takes intention. If you look it up on Google, it will tell you it takes six months to get a job, but anecdotally in talking with my friends in the corporate space, it is taking 6-12 months.  So if this has been on your mind, you don’t have to leap today, but you do need to start turning and orienting towards what you want.

Start paying attention to what you’ve been standing on this whole time.

And if your brain is already jumping to “what if this doesn’t work,” we’ve talked about that. Go back and listen to that episode. There will be a link in the show notes. You’re not walking into this blind. 

Because sometimes nothing about you has to change… except the direction you’re facing.

So wherever you land with this…

If you’ve decided to stay for another year, I see you. I really do. And I can promise you this - there will be another year of podcasts here, reminding you that you are doing incredible work, even on the days it doesn’t feel like it. Because sometimes you just need someone to keep pointing at that Llanite and saying, “No—look again. You sparkle and you matter. That matters.”

And if you’re starting to think about what it might look like to leave- not in a panic, not in a rush, but with a plan - that’s exactly why Teachers in Transition exists. There isn’t just one way to do this, and you don’t have to figure out which path talk walk by yourself,  Teachers in Transition has been helping teachers since 2012 first with our founder, Kitty Boittnott, and now with me. 

If you want someone walking alongside you, asking the questions, helping you see what you might not be able to see yet- that’s the one-on-one work. If you want structure that you can move through at your own pace, something you can come back to after a long day- that’s where the courses come in. And if you’re still figuring out whether this is even the right move, that Decide step matter because there’s support for that too.

And if you just need to turn a few degrees to get your bearings, to start seeing what’s possible that’s exactly what Find Your Bearings package is for.

I do want to say one more thing, though, because I would be doing you a disservice if I didn’t

The rest of the working world does not run on that three-month reset.

There is no summer job shuffle where everything lines up neatly.  So if this has been sitting in the back of your mind, you don’t have to leap today, but this might be the moment to start taking action. 

Because the earlier you begin, the more options you give yourself. And the longer you wait, the more pressure it creates. 

You don’t have to do this alone.
 You don’t have to do it blindly.

You just have to find your bearings.

Until next time… keep moving forward. Even if it’s just a few degrees at a time.
 
 Teachers in Transition is an independently produced podcast created to support educators navigating burnout and career change, and is completely created, produced, and edited by me, Vanessa Jackson. If this show has helped you feel less alone or gain clarity, I am asking for your help to support the podcast.
 
 You can support the podcast in a variety of ways. You can support the podcast by subscribing or reviewing wherever it is that you like to listen to your podcasts, you can share it with a teacher-friend also in need of support, and you can even support the podcast financially for as little as $3 a month to help with our production costs. You can head over to the Teachers in Transition page on Buzzsprout.com to learn more. There is a link in the show notes. 

Until next week – take a moment and look up at the sky – and remember just how amazing you really are. 

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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!