Getting Non-Renewed Was The Best Thing That Happened To Me

When we talk about teacher career changes, we often think about a few particular fields: instructional design, sales, customer success, learning & design. So when I first heard Laura Litwiller mention a client who had transitioned into becoming a grief counselor, I knew I had to talk to them.

The person turned out to be Bernadette Noll, an insightful and powerful veteran educator who transformed her losses into a new beginning. I was so inspired by this interview. Thank you, Bernadette!

Let’s start with an introduction. Give us your name, where you're from, the number of years you spent in the classroom and what you taught, and how long you've been out.

My name is Bernadette Noll. I don't have a middle name, but I [recently adopted] “Ama,” to honor my Chilean heritage. It means “light,” which is important to me. I want to bring more light into the world, and more love.

I'm located in central New Jersey. (There is a central Jersey, for those who disagree with that.) I'm a fourth-generation Hillsborough native. It used to be a farming community. 

I was in the classroom for 20-something years. It depends on what counts. My passion has always been multilingual learners. I taught preschool through college, in urban, suburban, rural, private, public and international school settings. The international was fourth-grade general ed in the Philippines.

I’ve been out of teaching since April 2022.

Tell me a bit about how you came to leave teaching.

Teaching now is not how it used to be. You used to have a lot more creative liberties as an educator. There was a lot more trust in your strengths and that you'd been trained in the art form of teaching. 

Things now are very box-oriented. I could see that seeing that things were changing and I wanted to be the voice that was needed. Kids need to be able to think out of the box.

The last group of students I had were multilingual learners. A lot of them had come here by themselves as unaccompanied youth. I created a program to help these kids become part of the school community. One of the things I created my last year was called Bridge to Success, and it helped the students learn what is college, and that even if you don't have papers, you can go to college. 

So I created all these great programs, not extra pay or anything, just because I wanted them to make sure they had a voice. I wanted them to feel that they were worthy and deserving of having an education like anybody else. I was a counselor, a teacher, an advocate, a liaison.

So in April of 2022, my administrators have a meeting with me, and they say they don't want to renew my contract for the following year. It surprised me, and it surprised the whole faculty. I had gotten a 4.0 on my teacher review, which is the highest you can get. 

And so I just sat there, and I was like, “This is fascinating. It doesn't matter how hard you work. It doesn't matter what you do. At the end of the day, it's just, ‘How much do you cost? And are you doing what we want you to do?’” Because apparently I’d been over-advocating.

I never have been fired or laid off from anything, so I was in shock. And I was supposed to continue to do my job in a professional manner. “Put on the pretend face and act like nothing's happened.” 

I had the chance to fight it, and my colleagues wanted me to fight it. But I had been in court literally for 13 years, going back and forth with my daughter’s father. The last thing I wanted to do was go back to court. 

I wasn't offered an exit interview. I asked for an exit interview. I said, “I just I need to know.” When I spoke with the superintendent, he couldn't give me an answer. He fumbled around until he finally said, “The reason you got non-renewed is because you didn't hit the numbers.”

And I said, “What numbers?”

And he said, “You didn't exit enough ESL kids out of the ESL program.”

And it was crazy because I never got that information. That's number one. Number two, that was the year we came back from Covid. So these kids had lost a year. I mean, we all did, but these kids really did. So for me, [the teaching that year] had been more about creating safety and trust—building that trust so that they would come to school. But all that mattered was that I didn’t hit my numbers.

I was very upfront. That's the freeing thing about getting fired. Because if you want me to be professional, I will be, all the way up till the end. But when I had that meeting, I finally spoke my truth to him.

That was the beginning setting my voice free, of not being in this box anymore, where you can't be your whole self. Because it didn't matter. All those years that I was holding back—it didn't matter because in the end, I still got laid off. 

I think that's what happens with a lot of educators: you become a bitter person, or you become a screamer. Or you’re just apathetic and rightly so, because you're not getting the space and support you need. Why are you going to put in all of yourself if you’re not going to be supported?

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Did you consider getting another teaching job?

No. That was the final straw. Because it wasn't just that district, right? I had taken reflection for myself and realized I had gone rural, urban, suburban, private, public international. Like, “Let me try this setting.”

I realized it had nothing to do with the setting. It was still the same thing, just in a different costume. So it didn't matter where I went.

So what did you do once you were let go?

Luckily, I had saved up enough money and realized that I was experiencing grief. It was a loss of myself as a teacher. So I listened to my body. When I needed to sleep, I slept. When I needed to eat, I ate. I didn't work. I just allowed myself that gift and it was awesome. 

My now-fiance was a great heart-with-ears for me. He just listened. And he said, “Yeah, that sounds really disappointing.” “Wow, that sounds like really painful.” He didn’t judge me, criticize me, fix me, say, “Get another job.”  And that really helped me too. 

Then my kids go off to college at the end of fall. So I was in the house by myself for the first time with our 16-year-old cat. As a single mom for over 13 years, the loss of identity as a mother was a big deal.

That was August. Then in November, my dad dies.

So then it was December and I still didn’t have a job. I was doing all the typical things—sending the resumes out, following through, all this stuff I’d been trained to do, not knowing that there are algorithms now. Because I'm a 50-something person. We don't know these things. We're not using—what do you call them? Keywords? I had no idea.

So then, come, January, I'm desperate, right? I’m like, “I have nothing like. I'm going on credit. This is not good.”

There was an organization I’d been in touch with when I was a teacher, helping my kids. I was desperate to find glasses for one of my students, to find where they could get their vaccines, all these sorts of things. So I found this group called CIACC, Children's Interagency Council. It’s all these non-learning education associations and social service organizations, like the food pantry, a substance abuse support group, a free clinic.

They had helped me so much and I was still getting their emails. So I got creative and thought out of the box. I sent a group email to them and said, “Thank you everyone for all the work you did to help me with my kids. You have no idea how much it changed their lives.” 

And I said, as a two-liner on the bottom, “If you happen to know anybody who's looking for a teacher who's taught X amount of years in these kinds of settings, here's my resume.” 

Within 20 minutes, I get a response. She says it's a part-time position that pays $50 an hour to help homeless kids. Are you interested?” And I was like, “I'm taking it.” 

It was a grant-based job, so there were no benefits. But it got me to know this law, the McKinney-Vento Act, that if any kid who is living in a hotel motel, a shelter, campsite, or the typical definition of homeless, like on the street—they have a right to education, and nothing should impede them from coming. Whether it's transportation, immunizations, whatever, they can step into school and the school’s supposed to make sure that they have food, clothing and shelter.

It was a powerful law. I have my master's degree in education and I had never heard of this law. Every school in every state has a McKinney-Vento liaison.

I got that job and two weeks later, I had a fire in my house. So this law that I had just gotten this job for—now I'm actually living it. I'm living in three hotels in six weeks because the housing market is crazy, and then I'm living in another county because there wasn't enough housing where I live. It made me really aware of families who are temporarily housed, how school is their kids’ home. That's why this law was put in place, so that they have one thing stable in their life. 

When that happened, I got to a really dark place. Because I'd lost so much in a year.

I called my therapist and she said, “You need to find a grief support group. You have so many losses in your life.”

I talked to a grief counselor I knew through my new job, and she talked about this thing called the Grief Recovery Method, which is not therapy. I was interested. I'd gone to therapy gazillions of times and I love my therapist, but so much of what I’d experienced—and what so many of us experience—is basically loss and grief. And there hasn't been healthy education around that.

So I start to take the course. It's eight sessions, with two hours of homework. [One thing I learned was] grief is for any tangible or intangible loss: loss of safety, loss of trust, loss of a job. Most people think of grief as death, but there are over 40 different kinds of losses.

After four sessions, I got re-educated around how our society and culture puts myths and misinformation around grief and loss. We go around saying, “I'm fine,” when there are other things happening behind the masks that we wear. And we wonder why people are exploding. Well, it's because those feelings didn't have a place to go.

People are either stuffers, which a lot of teachers become, or they're exploders. That in-between is only possible when there's a space for grief to show up.  

One definition they use for grief is “the normal and natural reaction to any significant emotional loss.” A second one is “the conflicting feelings around the end of a familiar pattern of behavior.” Oh my God! [That’s like leaving teaching.]

So the idea is basically this respect of all these different kinds of feelings. In the course, you learn tools on how to be with different losses. It's not just bedeviling [the source of loss]. It's not just enshrining [it]. It’s being able to see the whole picture.

And then the end [stage] is getting complete, the forgiveness part. It's saying goodbye to what you wish could have been more, better or different.

I can really see a lot of ways this could apply to the teacher transition process.

Right.

There are so many resources for getting a job. But there’s this whole internal grieving process that people largely do privately. There's not that space to be like, “How do I process this?” And, “How do I process all I went through teaching?” 

That's what's called your backpack of losses. When you go through a bunch of losses like I did, finally it gets to the point where it’s like, “Take a look already. Look at us!”

The backpack has broken, and that's what happened to me. That's why I say the fire saved me. Because it exploded my backpack. I could not not look at all these different losses, including the loss of teaching, until that fire.

So what do you do? You look at all these losses. They’re like the rocks in your backpack. They might be small or they might be boulders or something in between. Just look at them, see what feelings come up. And if you don't, it's going to catch up with you, whether you like it or not. 

So the other thing we talk about in that course is what's called STERBing. STERBs are short-term energy-relieving behaviors. It can be alcoholism, overeating, over-exercising, overworking. What do teachers do all the time? Freaking overwork!

So when people said to me, “Oh, Bernadette, you're so good, why don't you just get another teaching job?” Well, it would just be doing the same thing again. I still needed to say goodbye to [teaching].

So circling back to the beginning of all this, I took that time to grieve. What I needed was a person to stand in front of me and say, “I see you.” They didn’t have to say it; their presence was enough. 

And that's what the people in this program do at the end. I'd never experienced that before. That's what I needed. And then the stuff came out. 

After four sessions of the grief course, I was like, “I want to get certified.” I was still doing Mckinney-Vento. It was a grant-based job and the grant ended in February. 

[Because I’d done the grief course], things just started flowing. I was playing. The energy changed. Doing that grief work and getting complete with loss freed me so much to play.

When did I get a chance to play before that? [Laura Litwiller’s career clarity course] gave me permission to play with possibility. I was like, “What would it look like if I had my own schedule? What would it look like if I only worked Monday through Thursday, and had Friday off? What would it look like if I worked in an art museum?” 

That’s such a shift from being a teacher in a box. We're supposed to allow the kids to play, but we teachers don’t play ourselves.

Schools have become so robotic. Like, “We need more robots. We need more yesers.” That's why I got kicked out, and I'm glad I got kicked out because now I'm on the outside looking in.

What are you doing for work now?

I got certified last year and now I work as a grief counselor. I have my own business. I can't believe I have my own business! I get to make my own hours. I get to be me. I get to say, “yes,” and I get to say, “no,” and I know how much I need each month.

Now I'm presenting to superintendents who didn't want me before. I'm presenting to the State of New Jersey. I am going to conferences. I just did a podcast. I’m really able to be my whole self, and I’m able to do that because I can accept those conflicting feelings in me, whether they're unpleasant or pleasant, or both.

Until we can all do that, we're not going to be free. We're still going to be stuck.

What would be your advice, tips and wisdom to share with teachers specifically around grief in the transition process?

Pause.

We're trained not to pause. We've been arranged not to pause. I mean to have an adult human being have to call down to the office to ask to go to the bathroom is inhumane. It's abuse; it's abusive. I feel very strongly that our education system is an abuse system. It's dysfunctional. 

I’m a survivor of abuse, and I started to make that link [with teaching.] We get all excited for September, right? We're in love. By the time Christmas comes around, we're done, we're fried. But then we have that break, that honeymoon, to get us to January. And then we have February blues. And then, “Oh, wait, spring break. Here's another honeymoon for you.” And then comes testing all the way until June, and it’s just, “Get me the hell out of here.” 

Then we have the summer, and we wonder why we're still not in a groove. We're still unsettled, and it's because we've left all those feelings. They have to catch up with us. And now they're there. And now there's all this space.

So what are you going to do? You're going to get another job, so you can push those feelings down again. And then rinse and repeat. 

Like I said, the best thing that happened was they laid off me. I probably would have stayed in this abusive situation. So I'm grateful that they said, “No, we don't want you anymore.” Because I had been trying for three years before that to understand, “What's wrong with me?” And when I figured that out, I was like, “Oh, my God, I'm in an abusive cycle.” I needed to get out.

And how do you break that? You have to pause and be really real with yourself. You have to be strong and you have to be ready to say goodbye. I lost a lot, but I also gained me back—that little girl from a long time ago.

That's what I wish for every single human being. Everyone deserves to have that little one inside express themselves. 

So pause and listen to what he or she or they have to tell you. Because they've got messages for you. You are the one who has the power to take care of them, or to say, “No, I’m not ready yet.” And that's okay, too.

At the right time, you will be ready.

You can find Bernadette’s services and offerings here.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.