Ep 3. How Teachers Can Avoid Burnout While Changing Careers (Bonus AI & Chat GPT Tips)

Ever find yourself at the crossroads of passion and practicality? I've navigated those tricky paths, transitioning from teaching to user experience, and in this heart-to-heart, I impart my top strategies for keeping your wellness in check and avoid further burnout. Balancing a demanding teaching career with the hunt for new opportunities can seem daunting, but I break down how intentional scheduling and leaning on your support network can keep you grounded and healthy through it all. For any educator looking to pivot careers without losing their sanity, this episode is your lifeline.

We wrap things up with a reminder that you're not alone in the trenches of resume building and portfolio polishing. My website, uxteacherprep.com, stands ready to support you with personalized sessions to boost your career transition. Plus, tap into a free 15-minute call focused on wellness, because mental health is not just a buzzword—it's the foundation for achieving your dreams. Subscribe for your weekly dose of insights, and let's keep this conversation alive on Instagram and YouTube. I'm here to guide you through this journey; let's push forward to a fulfilling career and a healthier you.

Resources:

• Grab your free UX transferable skills cheat sheet to get started on your transition journey to UX.
• Ready to find balance and unleash your creativity? Explore uxteacherprep.com to see how we can support you.
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Transcript

Zee: 0:00

Hello teacher friends. Coach Z, here and today I want to talk about wellness. As you're going through your career transition, it's super important for you to maintain your mental and physical health, and I'm not just talking about drinking water. So today I'm going to share three tips to help you balance your time while transitioning and working full time as a teacher. Today's episode is for every transitioning teacher, regardless of the path you plan to take, ux or otherwise. So if you're in the process of job hunting or just mentally preparing for the transition and you feel like there's too much on your plate, this episode is for you.

Narrator: 0:32

Welcome to the UX Teacher Prep Podcast, the ultimate destination for educators who aspire to break into the field of user experience and product design. Your host, Z Arnold, a 15-year teacher turned UX researcher, is here to guide, coach and mentor you through every twist and turn as you make your career transition into tech. If you're ready for a more satisfying career and lifestyle and you want the balance to unleash your creativity, this podcast is for you. Now for the show.

Zee: 1:05

So if you have visited my website, uxteacherprep. com, or my Instagram, then you know that I prepare teachers not only with the skill set and tool set to successfully transition, but also with the mindset. So that prep work involves physical, mental and emotional health. And the key is strategy. It requires planning, prep, prep, prep. So we're going to start with the idea of wellness. So what does it mean to teach well? Teaching well is addressing the whole teacher.

Zee: 1:36

So teaching well means the opposite of teaching sick, right, we go into the classroom and sometimes we're not 100% well, we're not mentally well, we wake up in the morning and we're not mentally prepared to enter the classroom. But we go in and we teach. We wake up and we're not physically well. We have ailments, we have pains, we have aches, we have things going on with our bodies. Our doctors have diagnosed us with so many different diseases, but still we go in front of students with good intentions but we teach unwell. Be honest, how many times have you woken up in the morning and we're not feeling well, whether mental or physical, but said you know what I'm going to push through? I'm going to go in and I'm going to teach because I'm doing it for the students. I'm doing it because I don't want to have to worry about a subplan or confronting my principal or asking permission to be sick, because teachers have summers off right, and teachers have all these vacations during the school year, so how dare I be sick? So you know what I'm going to push through and I'm going to go in and I'm going to do it for the students Sound familiar, but what we forget is that if we go into the classroom at 50% and we're trying to give 100% to students, then we're doing a disservice to ourselves and to our students. If you would have just taken that sick day to rest your mind, your body and your spirit and gone in the next day, you could have showed up better for your students, you could have showed up better for yourself. You could have showed up 75%. It's not 100%, but it's better than 50%, right? So the idea of teaching well is the idea of showing up your best self for you and for your students, and that means mentally, physically, emotionally, all those things. And I'm not saying every day is going to be perfect, but we have to get to a place where more educators are waking up, looking forward to going into the classroom, not waking up and wishing they could sink into a hole or wishing they could be something different.

Zee: 3:23

I've heard and read so many stories of teachers like this, and it's because of the stress, because of the burnout. Teachers are teaching unwell, and this concept keeps going through my mind over and over again. And we know that we can't pour from an empty cup. So if we're teaching unwell, we're not going to see the change in the trajectory of teachers. So I know what you're thinking. Yes, z, I feel you. I'm burnt out and tired. What can I do? Well, if your goal is to transition out of the classroom, the burnout is likely even greater as you look to make this pivot.

Zee: 3:54

So now let's talk about the strategies to balance teaching while transitioning, because that's what you came here for. So the first tip is to carve out time to work on your transition. If you're going to look at job boards by chance every time, you have five minutes on your hands. That's not going to work. You have to be more intentional. You've probably heard that job hunting is like a full-time job, and it is. You'll need to approach this like a project, because that's what it is. So this is the perfect time to put those teacher project management skills to use. You don't want to burn yourself out trying to work on this project every three minute of the day, so put it on the calendar.

Zee: 4:28

Here's what I did when I was transitioning I carved out four hours per week to work on upskilling or learning new skills for my next role. I chose my least busy teaching days so I wouldn't be too drained when I got home, and one hour on Sunday mornings I read UX books, I listened to UX and teacher transition podcasts and I did my coursework from the online courses I was taking. Later on, I secured a volunteer role, which I committed to five hours per week because I didn't want to do too much while I was still teaching, and I also put that on my calendar. So two hours during the weeknights after work and three hours set aside on Saturday mornings. I had to tell my kids and my husband that I was going to be focusing on learning new skills for my new career and I needed them on board to help out around the house and to give me some space to do what I had to do. Believe me, it wasn't always peaches and cream. Sometimes I had to wait till my toddler went to sleep and get stuff done super late at night, but I always made sure to balance things out so I didn't get overwhelmed. If I stayed up late the night before to work on something, then I gave myself grace the next day and took a break, alright.

Zee: 5:31

So tip number two Use your prep time. Slash lunch time wisely. No more hanging out in the teacher's lounge or sitting in your besties classroom gossiping about parents or students. No more getting distracted and shopping on Amazon. This is the time you want to be listening to your podcast that's helping you transition, whether it's a self-care, motivational, practical tips like this one, reviewing your resume all these things are things that you want to do during your prep time. So set it up where you can close your classroom door, maybe even turn the lights off if you have to, the same way how you do when you're hiding from students and use this time to review your resume and look for those jobs and do those things during those prep periods, which means, of course, you have to plan your lessons ahead of time. And here's a pro tip Use your personal computer, not your work computer, when you're doing these things and start to pull back on any extra clubs or activities you may be volunteering for after school All right, because you're going to need this time to really focus on your transition.

Zee: 6:30

So I want you to use some type of AI virtual assistant, like Elena ALAYNA, to offload some of those tasks that you can really automate to get some time back for yourself. Because I know you're probably thinking I have all these things to do. I have to do my lesson plans, I have to do my teaching, I have to do my grading. I have to do all these things. Get those assignments digital so that they can be automatically graded. I want you to leverage chat GPT to give you some ideas for lesson activities instead of searching on Google for 25 minutes. I've recommended Elena to many teacher friends and they've come back and thanked me because it saved them tons of time. So you're going to have to find ways to automate your teaching process so you have more time back for yourself to work on your transition. And now is the time. Ai has taken over the world and you need to use it to your advantage.

Zee: 7:17

And tip number three is to apply the skills you're learning to your classroom practice. So when I was building up my UX skills, I was learning about the visual design principles. I was learning about balance, hierarchy, colors and contrast, and I was using those principles while I was creating my Google Slides for my students. Also for my slides I was using for my professional learning with teachers. So I was learning about accessibility guidelines for color contrasts and I started to see that I was pairing the wrong colors together in some of my slides, so I made them accessible. So the key here is to take what you're learning for your new role and apply it to your classroom practice, and that way, you're really learning how to put what you're learning into practice.

Zee: 8:01

And so, when it came to building out my portfolio for UX, I knew I wanted to look into ed tech roles, so I started working on a project that I called an ed tech tutorial. It was around the time when we shifted to remote learning and teachers at my school were having lots of problems using the technology, so I saw it as a perfect chance to solve a problem for them. It involved doing some research with students and teachers while using Google Classroom. I used the user research skills that I was learning to design the portfolio project on my own. So my co-teachers were my target audience, and the goal was to improve their workflow while using the site. So I was able to create a solid portfolio piece about solving a problem teachers were having and it showed the impact of the research I did. Later on, when I was interviewing for UX roles, I walked hiring managers through that same project and I used it as a showcase piece to get the UX research role that I have today.

Zee: 8:53

So look for ways you can incorporate the skills you're learning about your new role into your current practice and potentially create a project or portfolio piece out of it. So let's recap Strategy number one is to treat your transition like a project and plan it out on your calendar. Make time for your transition. Number two was to use your prep time or your lunch time wisely no time to play around. And the third was application of knowledge. You always want to mirror the skills you need for your new job and your current practices. Once you learn it, try it out in the classroom.

Zee: 9:29

So that's it for today. If you're looking for more one-on-one support with a resume or a portfolio building, head to my website, uxteacherprepcom to book a session with me. And if you just need to talk to someone for a mental health check-in, I invite you to book a free 15-minute mindset and wellness call with me. I hope you got some value from this episode and you can reflect to see how you can improve your health and wellness on this journey. Thanks for listening and we'll talk again next week.

Narrator: 9:56

Subscribe and share on Instagram. If you're listening on YouTube, like, subscribe and share Until next time be well.