Are you a teacher who is feeling stressed out and overwhelmed? do you worry that you're feeling symptoms of burnout - or are you sure you've already gotten there? Have you started to dream of doing something different or a new job or perhaps pursuing an entirely different career - but you don't know what else you're qualified to do? You don't know how to start a job search and you just feel stuck. If that sounds like you, I promise you are not alone. my name is Vanessa Jackson; and I am a career transition and job search coach and I specialize in helping burnt out teachers just like you deal with the overwhelmingly stressful nature of your day-to-day job and to consider what other careers might be out there waiting for you. You might ask yourself, What tools do I need to find a new career? Are my skills valuable outside the classroom? How and where do I even get started? These are all questions you deserve answers to, and I can help you find them. I’m Vanessa Jackson. Come and join me for Teachers in Transition.
***Hi! And Welcome back to another episode of Teachers in Transition. I am your host, Vanessa Jackson –a career transition and job search coach specializing in educators. I help you figure out how to make those steps out of the classroom and into whatever is next so that you achieve your goals. I provide tips and suggestions to help with stress and mental health, hacks to help your day, and job-hunting tips. If you are frustrated with your current teaching position, if you are stressed, overwhelmed, and burned out you are in the right place –I am so glad you are here. Today on the podcast, we are going to talk about the power of laughter, a hack that uses a game to teach empathy, and we’ll explore what it costs to leave teaching.
Laughter is such a wonderful thing. It is infectious. It heals. Laughter is a simple reaction to humor – the things we fund funny. Let's dive into how it helps both your mind and body – your physiological and psychological reactions.
Laughter Helps Your Mind because it
1. Kicks Stress to the Curb: When you laugh, your brain releases endorphins, those feel-good chemicals that make you feel happy and relaxed. Plus, it lowers stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. Back to that wonderful quote from Legally Blonde where Elle explains why her friend, an exercise guru, couldn’t have murdered anyone: “I just don't think that Brooke could've done this. Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people just don't shoot their husbands, they just don't.”
2. Boosts Your Mood: Laughter increases serotonin and dopamine, the chemicals that make you feel good and help fight off feelings of depression and anxiety. So, laughing more often can keep you in a better mood. Laughter makes it seem like color has come back to a gray world.
- Brings People Together: Sharing a laugh with friends or family strengthens your relationships. It creates a sense of connection and trust, making you feel closer to others. At a recent family outing, we were laughing so hard, and it felt really good.
- Aids in building Resilience: Regular laughter can make you more resilient. It gives you a lighter perspective on life's challenges, making them seem less daunting and easier to handle.
- Sharpens Your Mind: When you're less stressed, your memory and creativity improve. Laughter gives your brain a break, helping you think more clearly and come up with new ideas.
How Laughter Helps Your Body. According to an NIH study,
- Good for Your Heart: Laughing can improve how your blood vessels work and increase blood flow, which helps protect against heart problems. Over time, it can even lower your blood pressure.
- Boosts Your Immune System: Laughter makes your body produce more antibodies and activates immune cells, which means you're better equipped to fight off illnesses.
- Natural Pain Relief: The endorphins released during laughter act like natural painkillers, giving you some relief from chronic pain.
- Relaxes Your Muscles: A good laugh relieves physical tension and relaxes your muscles for up to 45 minutes after. There was one study that made it seem like laughing was bad for muscle tone, but what they discovered was that it actually put the laugher (the amused individual?) into a very relaxed state which made the muscles appear less tense. So, this is a good thing for relaxation!
- Helps You Breathe Better: Laughing can help clear out your lungs by expelling stale air and increasing oxygen intake, which is great for your respiratory system.
- Balances Your Hormones: Laughter lowers stress hormones and boosts health-enhancing ones, keeping your body's hormonal balance in check.
In a Nutshell
Laughter is a simple and fun way to improve both your mental and physical health. It reduces stress, lifts your mood, strengthens your relationships, and even helps your heart and immune system. So, finding more reasons to laugh each day can make a big difference in your overall well-being.
Stand-Up comedians are fun. Of course, comedy can be personal and we all find different things funny. Some of my favorite comedians are:
Robin Williams (of course!), Bill Engvall, Iliza Shlesinger, Karen Morgan, Ben Brainerd, Wanda Sykes, Lewis Black, Jeff Dunham…
And heavens knows there are a zillion TikTok videos out there of regular people who are quite funny.
I like to laugh at movies and books. A few recommendations of books that made me laugh:
The Snoopy Waterbed Fiasco that ran from January 14 to January 29 1975 in the comics. I had it in one of those little paperback collections. I was laughing so hard that my mom thought something was wrong with me and came into check on me.
The Alto Wore Tweed – a book by Mark Schweizer – this is one of the funniest first books of a series I’ve ever read. This is even funnier if you’re musically inclined, but you don’t have have to be to enjoy it.
Comedy tends to be a bit personal – I’d love to know you who find funny. I’m always on the lookout for something new to lighten my day. I have put a few links in the show notes – definitely go check out the Snoopy comic strips.
And take a moment to share what makes you laugh with someone else. Laughter is best when it’s shared.
And now it’s time for our teacher hacks. Our hacks are designed to help you in some way –Here’s a hack to have a lot of fun and then learn a lesson in the process: play a game. And specifically the game, “Hot Words”
We recently had a family day – where family members get together for the sole purpose of enjoying each other. This time we met at my daughter’s for pizza and board games. We played this really neat game called Hot Words. It is hot pepper themed.
It is like that old 100,000 pyramid game in that one person is feeding clues to another person who has to guess the word. You can have teams of two or more and you have more up to four teams.
There are four rounds in this game, you pick either mild-medium- or hot pepper that gives you a limitation. Maybe you can't say um. Maybe you can't use words that start with T. Maybe you can't use 3 letter words in the clues. The other team gets to buzz you if you mess up and you have to jump to try the next clue. You get 90 seconds to guess as many as you can.
There are four rounds. Each round you draw another pepper with another limitation. And as the game progresses, you do not get to drop limitations from earlier rounds - you only add.
The difficulties and mental gymnastics involved in thinking about how to deliver clues gets more intense each round. In one game, my team had the limitation that we couldn’t use 1-, 3-, of 5 letter words. OR use to/two. And you have to work harder and harder to find ways communicate
This game would make a GREAT teacher in-service game. Here’s why – that hard-to-communicate feeling is exactly what it feels like for people who have things like dyspraxia, dyslexia, or a processing disorder. It’s a great way to teach people how that feels because that’s a hard thing to understand.
5 out of 5 stars highly recommend – and it would be a GREAT way to make inservice less dull.
Let's talk a little bit more about what it costs to leave teaching or to leave the classroom. The job hunting tip this week is to really consider the real cost of leaving teaching. It might not be what you think.
It is going to cost something. In some states you might have to pay to get your contract out and even in a right-to-work state, there may be penalties you have to pay. Those penalties might be in the form of your certification, they might be monetary. It might depend on if you work at public or private school.
Let me paint a picture.
For example in my home state of Texas, they take your daily rate of pay times the number of days you work divided by 12, and they start paying those days from your very first paycheck.
So let’s say that you start the school year in August but tragedy befalls you immediately. You take an entire week off of work. Now you’ve used five of your days already. Let’s say you had none banked up, and you just had the 10-15 days that you got for the year. You decide in mid-October that you can’t take it anymore. You’re out. Goodbye. See you.
In that case, you have actually been paid for more days than you’ve worked, plus you took leave for your tragedy. If you earn those leave days at the rate of 1 or 1.3 per month, you have taken leave that you technically hadn’t earned yet - so you would owe the district back money for the days both for workdays you hadn’t work and sick days you hadn’t earned.
There does come a point in the year where you hit your break-even point and you know the number of days you worked and the number of days they pay you for catch up to each other and find equilibrium. And AFTER that point, you have now worked more days than they’ve paid you for. Let’s say you live the dream and walk away at spring break. You leave for spring break, but you don’t come to experience the testing season and spring crazies. Your district is required to pay for you the days you have worked that they are “storing” to pay you later during the summer. And if they let you go, odds are high that they have to pay out what they owe you THEN. Every state’s rules are different and if you are working with me, this is something I would be happy to help research with you so that you make the best, informed decision for your life if this becomes a possibility.
But as always I am not a lawyer and I do not play one on TV. I am not a financial advisor either. Or a doctor. Or a Racecar driver. You get the point. But I do love poking holes and finding loopholes.
It has been my experience that schools will very often tell you a thing that isn’t true, but sometimes they present an idea they’ll present it as if it was vetted by the Supreme Court! I think that bad policy is confidently expressed assuming that teachers are not in a position to know differently or stick up for themselves.
One of the things that makes me very angry is when a teacher is told that they have to go home - perhaps they got sick and they had to leave and there was only an hour left in the school day but they get charged a whole day or a half day leave. I’ve seen this presented in Texas. At one district in Alaska, it was only the hours you were going to be out. Once, I was being sent home (I was not sick or spreading anything) with only 35 minutes left in the school day - maybe a little more? It was definitely under an hour. It was presented to me like this: “You’re going to go home and we’re going to charge you a half day.
I responded remarkably calmly in the moment “no. We’re not going to do that” I was told “that’s our policy.” like that made it OK. I had to explain that their policy was actually in violation of labor law based on a lawsuit that a family member’s company just lost. SImply put, You can not dock people time that they’ve worked. In my case, they couldn’t dock me for half a day when I put in my forty hours in my salaried job. That’s a form of wage theft. I’d already hit the forty hours, and it wasn’t even Friday.
I tell you this to tell you that it is a very good idea to know your rights. Better yet, join your union or your professional organization ( if you live in a state where they tell you can’t have an actual union).
Here's why
If for no other reason you have access to lawyers. A lawyer’s bill is several hundred dollars an hour. That adds up very fast. Just having access to and talking with that union lawyer ONCE - having them help you with ONE issue covers several years of your dues.
I strongly advise that you join your teacher organization or your teacher union. I am in general a fan of unions in that they are meant to band together to improve working conditions and to increase pay for workers. Not so much in favor of unions that are so big that they’re as bad as a government but that’s neither here nor there. But that’s why you join. You join and you consider that you’ve joined an organization with a staff lawyer that will have your back. (vet your unions or organizations carefully. Some are better than others).
More and more teachers get falsely accused of things and it’s very costly to fight these things on your own.
Let’s talk about other costs of leaving teaching:
It is my observation that you're going to spend more on toilet paper if you are working from home, but you’ll spend less on gas, tires, clothes,
There’s that cost of getting out of your contract, if necessary.
You might need different work clothes or supplies. Then again, when I got my first corporate job outside of education, it was remote. They said they’d send me a laptop. They sent a laptop, a docking station, extra power cord for travel, a 24” monitor, a headset, a mouse, and a keyboard. That was cool.
Benefits are definitely going to be a concern until you have that next job. COBRA (benefits you can retain for awhile until the next job kicks in)
A lot of teachers worry about the pension. (here’s where that I'm-not-a-financial- advisor kicks back in) - my own personal act of burning a bridge was pulling my teacher retirement our and rolling it over into something different. And it’s been gaining at a higher rate than it did with its mystery match here in Texas. And what good does that pension really do when you can’t get a cost of living raise. We had to VOTE here in Texas not too far back to give our retired teachers their first cost of living increase in over ten years. In over 18 years for some. This wasn’t voting to give teachers new taxpayer money - this was money from their own pensions that they funded! I suspect there was hope than some anti-teacher sentiment would fail the measure and politicians could claim ‘too bad, will of the people…all that” but that initiative passed with 87% voting for it. Everything else we voted on was fifty-something to forty-something and fairly close. So just how good is that pension?
Which brings me to a book recommendation: Prince Charming Isn’t Coming by Barbara Stanny. It is a book that encourages women to take responsibility for gaining wealth and knowing about money. It’s a great listen on audible or a great read. And teaching tends to be a predominantly female occupation, so it doesn’t surprise me that we’d be patted on the head and told how wonderful our Texas teacher pension is when it may or may not be.
I’m tapped out. Please write in and tell me things that cost MORE by leaving teaching. You can email or leave me a message. Facebook is still dead to me, but there you have it.
But I know for sure here are something you WON”T pay for:
You don’t pay for school supplies for a bunch of other’s people’s children. Almost every teacher that I’ve ever met will dig deep into their pocket and help a kid whose parents just cannot afford some of the things. Over the years, however, it's become increasingly common that teachers pay for a lot out of their pocket because some parents simply don't want to. Either they don’t want to invest in their children that way, or they feel the school should just provide it. And as the economy squeezes harder and harder, more and more children will need supplies. I have teacher friends sharing their wish lists in MAY trying to get ahead of things for next year. And of course, sometimes teachers pay for things out of pocket because the system takes too long to get things in. Who wants to wait a couple months for a box of pens? How many of you out there FURNISHED your classroom with actual FURNITURE or rugs or lamps. You know, things like flexible seating, commercial grade pencil sharpener. A printer so you can print one page instead of running to the machine at some point in the future.?
So you won’t pay for THOSE things anymore.
You won’t have to pay for the t-shirt of the month for this or that. Oh my goodness, how many t-shirts a year do you pay for while teaching to support this group or that team?
You won’t have to feel guilted into buying from all those fundraisers. Because of course we don’t fund our schools - we’ve turned out schools into little sales showrooms with eager tiny salespeople trying to scrounge up enough money selling nonsense so there is some vestige of fun in a school day instead of just drudgery and testing.
You will not have to pay for last minute, unhealthy food because you were at school all day and you were just too tired to think about it. How many times have you bought food that was not healthy for you because you were either so physically or mentally or both exhausted that you just couldn’t think about it? Pizza or McDonald’s was a much easier way to go.
I remember sitting in a seminar about some music thing and this legendary female band director delivering the talk was standing there saying “You know, I was getting dinner ready as I was listening to my daughter practice upstairs …”
I felt this IMMEDIATE wave of inadequacy wash over me - OMG this woman can cook AND be master band director AND oversee her children?? Just WOW!!!
But then she stopped and said “Who am I kidding? As I was unpacking the McDonald’s from the bag” And that sounded much more familiar to me. Much more like my life. We’ve all been there. So it is endemic. Everyone is overworked.
And it’s hard to really gauge how spending for your health might go. You might actually get to pay attention to your health - which might cost more. Or you might just not be exposed to a million germs a day - which might cost less. Perhaps you wouldn’t need to talk to a therapist about how you feel at your teaching job, but you might need therapy (and I highly recommend it) to deconstruct some of the limiting beliefs and gaslighting and the like that you experienced. Maybe you’ll finally have time to exercise and eat right - that might save you in the long run. There are a lot of variables to consider.
Take a quick moment and do a little homework on your own. What would it cost you? What might it save you?
Thank you so much for listening today – your life is busy, and I appreciate that you thought this podcast was valuable enough to have your attention. If you like this podcast, please share it with a friend, or post a link of an episode you like on your page.
If you are ready to talk about your options, you can reach out for a complimentary discovery call. You can email me, call, or you can schedule it right through the website at teachers in transition dot com. That’s teachers in transition dot com. I want to help as many teachers as I can because y’all are my favorite people and if your school won’t treat you right, then it’s time to find somewhere that will! To paraphrase a Chinese proverb: The best time to start working on your transition plan was about six months ago. The next best time is now!
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 Teacher in transition coaching at gmail dot 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!