Locked Doors and Other Nonsense in May | Why Teachers Are So Tired

This week on Teachers in Transition, Vanessa Jackson explores the exhaustion that comes from navigating modern educational systems — from locked doors and “performative safety” to Teacher Incentive Allotment frustrations, burnout, networking, and why so many teachers feel emotionally depleted by May.

What begins as a bizarre experience trying to enter a secured school campus turns into a broader conversation about hypervigilance, bureaucratic friction, teacher burnout, career transition, and the hidden emotional cost of constant monitoring and compliance.

Vanessa also discusses the Texas Teacher Incentive Allotment (TIA), the growing frustration surrounding how those funds are distributed, and why highly accomplished educators often underestimate the sophistication of their own transferable skills.

And yes… this week’s Teacher Hack is simple, rebellious, and probably necessary:

Go take a nap.

In This Episode

• Locked school doors and “performative safety”
• Why teachers are exhausted in May
• Hypervigilance and nervous system fatigue
• “Move forward, take fire”
• Texas Teacher Incentive Allotment (TIA) frustrations
• Why teachers underestimate their professional value
• Networking as the “inside key” to career transition
• Why relationships matter more than online applications alone
• Rest as resistance to burnout
   
   

Mentioned in This Episode

A Night at the Opera

The Marx Brothers comedy routine referenced in the episode:
 “Two Hard-Boiled Eggs” scene from A Night at the Opera

“Move Forward, Take Fire”
Taken from the book Dear Madam President: An Open Letter to the Women Who Will Run the World by Jennifer Palmieri

Teacher Incentive Allotment (Texas)

Official Texas Education Agency information:
 Texas Teacher Incentive Allotment (TIA) Information

View the letter sent to a teacher about their TIA here

O*NET Online

Career research and transferable skills exploration:
 O*NET Online

Career Transition Reminder

Teachers already possess highly transferable skills:

• communication
• leadership
• crisis management
• organization
• relationship building
• project coordination
• training and development
• adaptability
• strategic thinking
   
   

Sometimes the problem isn’t your ability.

Sometimes the problem is simply that nobody has shown you where the side entrance is yet.

Support the Podcast

If you enjoy this scrappy little indie podcast, please consider:

• sharing the episode with a teacher friend
• leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify
• supporting the show financially starting at just $3/month Support Teachers in Transition
   
   

Connect with Vanessa Jackson

• 💌 Email: Vanessa@teachersintransition.com
• 📱 Call or Text: 512-640-9099
• 📅 Book a Free Discovery Call: teachersintransition.com/calendar
• 🧭 LinkedIn: 
• 🔗 Bluesky: @beyondteaching.bsky.social
• 📸 Instagram & Threads: @teachers.in.transition
• 👍 Facebook: Teachers in Transition
• 🐦 X (Twitter): @EduExitStrategy

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

Transcript

Hi! and welcome back to Teachers in Transition.

I’m Vanessa Jackson, and this is the podcast for teachers who are considering life beyond the classroom, who are trying to navigate burnout, career stress, identity shifts,  transition, and all the other little adventures that seem to come with modern education.

And friends… I had an interesting educational experience this week.

Actually, no. Let me rephrase that.

I had an exhausting educational experience this week.

And the funny thing is, I’m not even teaching anymore.

I was on a school campus for work. The district and the campus are going to remain nameless because they don’t matter. Honestly, this could apply to multiple campuses in the state of Texas right now. Or probably outside the state of Texas…  But this all stems from security policies that have come into place by law by the State of Texas after the Uvalde school shooting.

Now before anybody gets upset, let me be clear right up front: I understand why schools are trying to increase security. I understand why people are trying to protect students and staff. I am not making fun of school safety. I am REALLY not making fun of the need for school safety. 

But what I am talking about is what happens when one-size-fits-all policies collide with the reality of older campuses, older infrastructure, and actual human beings trying to move through their day.

The campus I visited was not one giant building. It was an older campus made up of multiple buildings surrounding an interior courtyard area. Think an older high school design. Multiple entrances. Multiple walkways. Multiple exterior-facing doors.

Now the entire campus itself was already secured behind a locked perimeter gate. I  checked in. I handed over my driver’s license. They ran it through the database to make sure I wasn’t a criminal and printed out a sticker with my face, my name, and the building I was allowed to enter – that I had to wear while I was on the campus.

At this point I’ve been there enough times that the front office recognizes me. They were lovely. They wished me a good summer and told me they looked forward to seeing me next year. Even though it is suspiciously similar to the same procedure as going to a jail to perform a notary public signing, every one was wonderful and lovely and very very nice. 

So I walk toward the building where I was supposed to be working.

And the door was locked… which was slightly awkward because I had already gone through the locked gate.  And there were students standing outside the building too because they couldn’t get in either.  So now we are all just standing there.  Lurking.

Like a collection of extremely polite trespassers.

And honestly, at some point the whole thing started reminding me of the old Marx Brothers movie A Night at the Opera. There’s a famous comedy routine involving hard-boiled eggs where every solution just creates another layer of absurdity (and a request for two more hard-boiled eggs. I’ll put a link to that Youtube in the show notes.

That was this experience: Every time I thought I had reached the final locked door… surprise! Another locked door.  Eventually a staff member with badge access walked by and let us in.

Excellent!   Surely we have now arrived.

Nope.

Because then I had to go down the hallway and knock on another locked interior door.  So the people inside that room had to stop what they were doing, get up, walk over, and let me in.  Every solution created another interruption.

Now here’s the thing: I understand the reasoning behind locked doors. but there’s a difference between actual safety and what I sometimes refer to as performative safety.

Because in the event of a genuine emergency, every child trapped outside in that courtyard area now has no quick way to get into the building and the safety of the interior locked doors made of steel inside the rooms made of cinder block.  In the name of safety, we have created a situation where students standing outside the building are infinitely more vulnerable.

And that’s the problem with one-size-fits-all policies. Different campuses have different layouts. Different campuses have different age groups.  Different campuses have different traffic flow patterns.  And older campuses especially were never designed with modern security expectations in mind.

My own high school campus was very similar to that. it was a collection of 26 buildings spread across a small town city block. The map they gave us at orientation was intense for a Freshman.  Honestly, I can only imagine what a nightmare it must be to secure campuses like that while still allowing human beings to move around like… human beings.

But while I was standing there waiting to get into the building, the students outside started talking, and the conversation itself became another perfect example of why teachers are so tired in May.

These girls were seniors, and they were discussing graduation practice.  It turned out that one of the girls had no idea it was happening.  Apparently, parents had been emailed the night before.

Now that alone struck me as odd because these were graduating seniors. Many of them are eighteen years old. They’re about to move into adulthood.  They all have a school email, and I am sure there is a filter to send to all students in grade 12 in the CRM 

And it also struck me as funny because schools will simultaneously tell parents that they can’t discuss certain academic or disciplinary issues because students over eighteen have privacy protections under FERPA… but apparently we still need to email Mommy about graduation practice.

And even after all of that, they still interrupted classes with an announcement telling students to report to the gym for graduation practice.

So let’s recap.

We have:

A locked gate.
 Locked exterior doors.
 Locked interior doors.
 Badge systems.
 Interruptions.
 Announcements.
 Parents emailed.
 Students confused.
 Teachers interrupted.

Staff constantly stopping what they’re doing to grant access to another human being.

And somewhere inside all of this, people are still trying to teach things like chemistry. Or music for graduation.

And that, my is why teachers are tired in May.  It’s not one giant catastrophe. Sometimes it’s death by a thousand tiny cuts.

Tiny interruptions.
 Tiny barriers.
 Tiny policy decisions.
 Tiny layers of vigilance.
 Tiny extra steps.
 Over and over and over again.

And there’s a psychological cost to constant vigilance. Human beings are not designed to spend all day navigating endless procedural friction even when the policies are well intentioned and even when the goals are understandable.

There is still a nervous system cost.  Teachers are constantly monitoring.

Monitoring behavior.
 Monitoring safety.
 Monitoring communication.
 Monitoring email.
 Monitoring emotions.
 Monitoring data.
 Monitoring compliance.
 Monitoring schedules.
 Monitoring movement.
 Monitoring themselves.

So. Much. Monitoring!!!

And eventually all of that hypervigilance becomes exhausting.

Which brings me to another story that landed in my orbit this week.  I recently heard a phrase that has stuck with me.

“Move forward, take fire.”

Apparently it originated as a Secret Service phrase. The idea being that when things are uncertain and you don’t entirely know what’s happening, you still move forward.  You take action.

And if criticism comes, if metaphorical fire comes, then so be it.

Move forward. Take fire.  And honestly? That feels weirdly relevant to modern teaching because teachers spend an enormous amount of time moving forward while taking metaphorical fire from every possible direction.

Parents.
 Politicians.
 Administrators.
 Testing systems.
 Policy changes.
 Social media.
 Budget cuts.
 Politicians running for office

SPEAKING of which… this week I saw a circulating letter related to the Teacher Incentive Allotment program in Texas.

Now if you’re outside Texas, let me give you the short version.

The Teacher Incentive Allotment — usually shortened to TIA — was designed as a way to financially reward highly effective teachers. 
 Teachers complete observations. (So Many Observations)
 Documentation.  (all that extra work)
 Performance metrics. (I don’t think it rounds)
 Additional requirements. (whatever those are… please email me and share your experiences, because I am learning everything I can about this new room in purgatory).

And if those teachers earn the TIA designation, additional state funding is attached to those designations.

In theory, it sounds wonderful. Reward excellent teachers for their excellent teaching and the excellent things they do.

Encourage retention…Recognize expertise… Fantastic!!!

Except… what has many teachers upset right now is the growing realization that the actual distribution of these funds may not look the way many people expected it to look.

And to be fair, that was always in the fine print. Up to 10% of the funds earned by the teacher in the TIA program can be used to administrate the TIA program in their district.  Because of COURSE the state of Texas didn’t send any money over to offset all those extra observers and time (of COURSE they didn’t!!) 

The letter that made the top of my head come off and spin around that has been circulating basically congratulated a teacher for earning this designation and then explained how the associated funds would be distributed. The full 10% was being reclaimed for administrative costs.  And it didn’t sound like that the other 90% was fully going to the teacher either. I’m linked an image of that letter. You decide what you think. 

And teachers are… not thrilled.

Not every district is using the 10% allotment, but more and more will as funds dry up in public education. 
 
 And teachers aren’t thrilled because from their perspective, they did exactly what the system asked them to do. They jumped through every hoop.  They completed all the requirements.  They endured all the observations. They generated all the documentation.
 
 They did all this extra... stuff… at personal cost in time and stress (and probably money somehow), and now they’re discovering that the reward structure may not work the way they believed it would.

That emotional reaction makes sense to me because the emotional core here is not really politics.

It’s betrayal. Again Teachers are constantly being asked for more.  The system is basically a toddler screaming for more. 

More documentation.
 More sacrifice.
 More flexibility.
 More data.
 More accountability.
 More emotional labor.
 More unpaid work.
 More compliance.

 (Y’all count yourselves lucky that I don’t launch into a tune from Little Shop of Horrors right now…)

And at some point, people start wondering whether the goalposts will ever stop moving. There’s also a larger frustration underneath all of this. Texas leaders often point to programs like TIA when discussing teacher pay and talking about how well teachers are paid.  You’ll hear statements about how teachers can earn six figures in Texas.  Can they? Really? In TEXAS?

What frequently gets lost in the conversation is just how extensive the requirements are to reach those designations… and how inconsistent the implementation may feel from district to district.

And that matters because trust matters.

Especially in retention.
 Especially in burnout.
 Especially when we are talking about highly skilled educators who already have transferable skills.

And honestly, one of the things I found myself thinking while reading about all of this was:  If you are capable of navigating the complexity required to earn one of those designations… you are probably capable of succeeding in other industries too.

Because the amount of organization, documentation, strategic thinking, relationship management, data analysis, communication, adaptability, and sheer persistence required to survive modern teaching is extraordinary.

Teachers routinely underestimate how advanced their skill sets actually are because the environment normalizes the chaos.

And that’s one of the reasons I spend so much time talking about translation because when you’ve lived inside a system long enough, you stop noticing how hard the things you do actually are.

You just think:  “Well… everybody does this.”

No. No they do not.

Most professionals are not simultaneously managing thirty human beings, adapting plans in real time, navigating emotional escalation, documenting behavior, answering email, solving logistical problems, tracking compliance, and trying to remember whether Aiden’s mom prefers phone calls or email.  All while someone from somewhere comes in and watches how you do it. 

That’s not normal. That’s not normal workload. That’s organizational triage. Under a microscope.

And yet teachers become so accustomed to the pace and the pressure that they stop recognizing the sophistication of their skill set.

Which brings me to the career transition and job search segment.

(Don’t worry. Our Teacher Hack is still coming at the end. You’ll love it!And frankly, y’all probably need it this week )

There’s an old musician joke: “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?”
 (in Russian Accent) “Practice, practice, practice.” (trying my imitate my old piano teacher, there)

Well in career transition, especially outside education, the question is more like:
 “How do you get your foot in the company door?”

And the answer is: “Network, network, network.”

Because outside education there are a whole different set of locked doors.

Applicant Tracking Systems. (We’ve talked about these a lot)
 Internal candidates.
 Ghost jobs.
 Recruiter overload.
 Corporate jargon.
 Confidence barriers.
 The hidden job market.
 Entry-level jobs somehow requiring five years of experience.

And teachers often find themselves frustrated because they are used to a more linear system.  In education, the pathways are generally understandable:  Degree, Certification, Application, Interview, Employment. Boom

Outside education, things can feel much murkier.

Sometimes jobs are technically posted even though there’s already an internal candidate lined up to take the spot.  They post it because they are legally obligated to do so. 

Sometimes hiring managers receive hundreds (thousands) of applications.  Sometimes your resume never makes it through the ATS. Sometimes the issue isn’t your qualifications at all. Sometimes the problem is simply that nobody inside the organization knows who you are.

And that’s why we network friends.

Now when I say networking, some people immediately picture awkward business card exchanges and fake smiling at conferences. The word Smarmy comes to mind. 

That’s not really what I’m talking about.  Networking is human beings connecting and building trust with other human beings.  And your network is everyone you know and everyone THEY know. 

That’s it.  And honestly, sometimes the best strategy is simply having somebody on the inside open the door for you.

That doesn’t mean cheating. It doesn’t require manipulation. It just requires human connection.

And the funny thing is, every locked door I encountered on that school campus eventually opened because another human being walked by and let me in.

Not because the system itself was smooth but because another person helped.

That’s networking. That’s referrals. That’s informational interviews.

That’s somebody saying:

“Oh, you should talk to Vanessa.”

Or:

“You know who would be good at this?”

Or:

“I know somebody who works there.”

Teachers often think networking sounds fake because they associate it with self-promotion and teachers are trained (often through negative reinforcement and peer pressure to never never to do that). 

But teachers network in an authentic way constantly.  You already do it.

You share resources.
 You connect people.
 You recommend colleagues.
 You problem solve.
 You maintain relationships.
 You collaborate.

The only difference is that outside education, networking often directly impacts access to opportunities.

And here’s the other thing: Networking is especially important because so many teachers are trying to break through metaphorical locked doors using only online applications.

That’s exhausting.

It’s like standing outside hitting refresh on a badge scanner that doesn’t recognize your credentials.

Sometimes the better approach is finding a human being, finding a conversation, finding a connection, or finding somebody willing to say:

“Hey, come on in.”

Does that mean that networking connection or every opportunity will magically work out?  Unfortunately, it doesn’t. 

But it does mean your chances improve dramatically when your application arrives attached to a relationship instead of arriving alone in a digital pile of six hundred resumes.

And teachers are actually very good at relationship building once they stop thinking of networking as something sleazy.

Because teaching itself is fundamentally relational and you already know all the things you need to build trust, communicate in meaningful ways, and connect with people. 

Those skills matter enormously in career transition. 
 
 And if you don’t feel confident about your networking skills, fall back instead to those same skills you use to make students and parents feel comfortable on that first meeting.  It’s the same set of skills. 

And now, after all of that… It’s time for the Teacher Hack.  Our teacher hacks are designed to save you in one of the three ways we pay for things in life:  Time, Money, or Stress. This way you have the energy and focus to do the things you want to do. 

This week’s Teacher Hack is very simple.

Go take a nap.

I am completely serious.

This week’s Teacher Hack is not a planner.  It’s not an app.  It’s not color-coded organization.  It’s not a productivity system.

Go take a nap.

Because the only real cure for exhaustion is rest.

Not hustle. Not guilt. Not powering through. Not cleaning your entire house that’s been neglected for months. 

Rest.

And I know some of you are listening to this while mentally composing seventeen emails and figuring out whether there’s still yogurt in the refrigerator.

I get it.

But your nervous system is not designed for endless vigilance.  Remember?  Constant vigilance is exhausting.  

You’ve spent the last 9-10 months operating in states of hyperawareness.

And eventually your brain and body start waving tiny white flags.

So if you can:

Take a nap.

Other alternatives include: 
 Sitting outside in the sunshine.
 Take a short walk.
 Hydrate.
 Breathe.
 Listen to the birds

Let your nervous system unclench a little.

Because exhaustion is not a moral failing. In the month of May, it’s simply the natural outcome of carrying too much vigilance for too long.

And if this episode resonated with you — especially if you’re beginning to realize that many of the locked doors in your life may not actually be about your value or your intelligence — I hope you’ll stick around.

Because one of the things we do here at Teachers in Transition is help teachers recognize the extraordinary skills they already possess and learn how to translate those skills into new opportunities.

Sometimes the door really is locked, but sometimes the problem is simply that nobody has shown you where the side entrance is yet.

Thanks so much for spending part of your day with me.

If you enjoyed today’s episode, please consider sharing it with a teacher friend, leaving a review, or supporting this scrappy little indie podcast financially for as little as $3/month.  You can find a link to that on Podcast homepage and also in the show notes.  

We’re going to spend time this summer working on resumes and LinkedIn pages and building networks – summer is a great time for that.  But first you HAVE to rest.  I’ll be here when you awaken.

👋 CONNECT WITH VANESSA

• 💌 Email: Vanessa@teachersintransition.com
• 📱 Call or Text: 512-640-9099 
• 📅 Book a Free Discovery Call: teachersintransition.com/calendar
• 🔗 Bluesky: @beyondteaching.bsky.social
• 📸 Instagram & Threads: @teachers.in.transition
• 👍 Facebook: Teachers in Transition
• 🐦 X (Twitter): @EduExitStrategy

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!