Here’s a type of post I see often in teacher transition groups:

First off, my heart goes out to anyone in this situation. Judging from the number of posts I see on Facebook groups and Subreddits, there are a lot of teachers who desperately want out of the profession but have too many financial responsibilities to just up and quit.

While it might seem like applying to every job opening would be a good approach (you know, odds and all), casting a wide net is actually a lot less effective than shooting arrows at a few carefully selected targets.

Yes, this sounds counterintuitive, but here’s why the I’ll-take-any-job approach isn’t effective.

Your Expectations Are Too Low

In an upcoming interview, senior instructional designer and mentor Mandy Brown delves into the I’ll-do-anything mindset:

“I've seen with a lot of my mentees is this thing of, ‘I can do anything. I'll take any job.’ And I have to say, “Okay, hold on a moment. I know what you mean is that you are really skilled and that there's lots of things you can do... However, when you say that to a hiring manager or recruiter, what they hear is, ‘I don't care who I marry. I just don't want to be alone.’” 

Oof. So are we basically just giving off pick-me vibes? Mandy takes it a step further:

“When we date, we don't go, ‘I just want someone who won't beat me.’ That's not what we say, right? We say, ‘I want someone who's gonna go to sporting events with me, and I want someone who wants to be a parent with me.’”

Damn. Did Mandy really just liken the teacher transition process to leaving an abusive relationship? 

She’s not the first. Nope. Definitely not.

Just this week, I saw a post on LinkedIn where a frustrated teacher announced she just wants a job that gives her bathroom breaks. And honestly, I related to this so hard. Being able to pee was truly one of the highlights of pandemic teaching.

But the post and flurry of likes it garnered also made me wonder: is this really how low our bar is? Has the job really beat us down so much that we literally just want to be able to perform a basic bodily function? If this were dating, to use Mandy’s analogy, would we value ourselves so little?

Maybe. I’ve actually heard women in LA say, “I just want a guy who’ll call me back.” But I hope not.

You’re Overly Confident

On the other side of this low self-esteem lies a kind of overconfidence. Jen Roberts makes this point on an episode of the Twisted Teachers podcast (which I highly recommend you go listen to): “I see people on LinkedIn come in like, ‘I am a teacher, hear me roar.’ And they post the ‘teachers can do anything’ post.”

She warns that this is a generalization and that in fact, not all teachers can do everything. “All teachers are not created equally. There are a ton of great teachers. Some teachers are great at some things, but not so great at others. Every teacher is not going to be able to come out the classroom and transition into the same job because everybody is different. Everybody excels or de-cels at different things.”

Vic Snow talked about being on the other side of this overconfidence in their interview: “I’ve reviewed a lot of portfolios with mediocre work and projects that clearly showed that the teacher didn’t take the time to actually learn what an instructional design is. They assumed it was a few Storyline and Rise projects thrown in, or worse, projects made as a teacher.”

Does that mean you shouldn’t have confidence in your skills and abilities? Absolutely not. It’s a fine line between roaring, “I can do anything” and wallowing in, “No one values my experience.” But it’s a line you’ll need to learn to walk if you’re going to successfully transition.

“Don’t sell yourself short,” Vic advises, “but also don’t pretend that you’re an experienced instructional designer because you simply aren’t.”

Teacher Stigma Is Real… Remember?

Remember that teacher stigma we talked about last week?

The whole world is not out to get teachers, but there are some folks who really just don’t value all we do and what we bring.

Back on the Twisted Teacher podcast, Jen remarked that “everybody hasn’t had positive experiences with teachers. You may be turning someone off just because you were a teacher and they’re not giving you a fair chance. When they look at your resume, they’re gonna see that you were a teacher, but it can’t be your whole identity if you’re trying to leave your job.”

This is where reframing and translating your experience comes in. We delved into that last week, but if you’re ready to put it to practice, it may to time to revise that resume.

Businesses Don’t Take Chances

I saw a post this week where a teacher bemoaned that despite having a master’s, “all companies see is ‘teacher for eight years’ and won't take a chance on me.”

Okay. While I totally get this sentiment, stop and think about this from a business’s perspective: do you really want to take a chance on someone new to your field and hope it will work out? Hiring is a laborious and expensive process; most companies just want to get it right.

This idea comes up in another Twisted Teacher episode with Melissa Chapman: “So many teachers say, ‘Hire me! I’ll do anything! Take a chance on me!’ And I’m like, ‘No, they won’t take a chance on you. That’s not how the corporate world works.’ They need to know the value you bring. They will only know the value you bring if you spell it out in their language, so they understand it.”

This doesn’t mean you’re SOL because you don’t have years of experience in XYZ field. It just means that you need to really make your value clear to companies, using the metrics and language they understand. Your years of curriculum mapping could totally qualify as project management experience, but it’s your job to show that to companies.

So if the I’ll-take-anything approach isn’t effective, why do teachers use it?

They’re burnt out. They’re exhausted. They’ve been beaten down for years and their health is impacted and they’re crying in their cars and they’re struggling to get through the day and they still have papers to grade and a student just cussed them out and they don’t think they can make it one more goddamn day—basically, they’re in flight-or-fight and don’t have the bandwidth to really stop and think about what they want to do next.

They’re desperate and they need out.

Again, I feel for these folks so hard. It’s an impossible situation to be in and it breaks my heart that this is what our education system does to so many dedicated, talented teachers.

To get out of the I’ll-do-anything’s, you need to find clarity on what it is you actually want to do. If you’re in full burnout, this may feel like a luxury you can’t afford, but please believe me that you are worth it and you deserve it. (There are a few specific readers I’m writing that sentence to—I see you and believe in you.)

So how do you find clarity?

Aside from seeing a psychic (don’t knock it!), here are some ways I’ve seen teachers zero in on their next career move:

Strengths and Interests Inventory

This is a simple method I’ve heard a lot of successfully transitioned teachers reference. Cedric Scott details his approach in his interview (and offers affordable coaching services!):

“You take a sheet of paper and draw a line down the middle. On one side, you write strengths, all the things that you've been successful in within your work as a teacher. On the other side, you write interests, the things you care about, even causes. And then you try to find overlap between those things. From there, you can begin to actually look into your job search based on those things: where are you, what do you care about, what are you intrigued by?”

Vision Writing

This is the method I used, which is part of a larger program (free and not a cult!) that I’m happy to share with folks if interested. These writing exercises are designed to help you unearth your vision, AKA what you want to do with your life. This obviously includes career, but it encompasses more than just that. It’s really about drawing out the full picture of what you want your life to be.

You select a set of questions based on where you are with your vision. Then here’s the important part: you journal ten minutes a day on each of the questions, for a total of four weeks. This is not a quick bullet-point list. The magic really comes with the continual writing—writing past the point where you think you know the answer. I’m telling you, surprising things will come out of your pen.

Coaching

I will recommend Laura Litwiller’s career clarity coaching until I’m blue in the face. No, I don’t get any kind of kickbacks. I just truly think she’s the real deal and she offers guidance on a crucial part of the career transition process that a lot of teachers skip. You can Google your way through resumes and interview prep; you can’t as easily uncover your true calling.

Research and Networking

Career coach heavyweight Daphne Gomez recently weighed in on this topic: “Picking a new career path is one of the hardest parts of a career change. I found two of the main reasons teachers struggled with it was based on lack of exposure to other industries and the sheer amount of different paths possible.”

It’s hard to know what else you want to do if you don’t even know what else is out there.

“Coming from the education world, I had no idea that there were so many possibilities out there,” Jami Cope says in her interview. She stumbled into Project Management, which she didn’t even know was a field, and has been doing it successfully for six years now.

Again and again, I hear transitioned teachers talk about the importance of networking. Yes, this can happen via the Big Bad LinkedIn (I promise it’s not as scary as it seems), but networking can also be talking to your neighbors, friends and acquaintances. Let them know you’re thinking of transitioning; ask them questions about their jobs and industries. This is the method Heath Madom recommends in his interview.

If you’re ready to brave LinkedIn, search “transitioning teachers” and start following people. Look up companies you might be interested in working for and connect with people who work there. Keep your eye out in particular for former teachers, who are some of the most generous and helpful people on the internet. Ask them to do a coffee chat on Zoom with you for fifteen minutes. This is what Dr. Robyn McPherson did, and she didn’t have a single person tell her no.

To get out of the I’ll-take-anything’s, give yourself time and space to explore what you truly want. If you’re already in an emergency burnout mode, this may be really difficult and you may need to attend to your health and safety first. But if you’re just starting to think about transitioning, if you’re not totally to-a-crisp burnt-out, start exploring possibilities now.

“Give yourself enough time and allow yourself to ask the question, ‘What's going to be best for me?’” Jami Cope recommends. “It really leads you to a place where it's like, ‘Okay, this is something that I will enjoy.’ Don't get into project management just because you see a bunch of people doing it. If you end up hating it down the road, it's gonna be same song, second verse.”

Which may be scarier than not leaving the classroom at all.

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