Vanessa Notes

You might wonder why the logo for Teachers in Transition is what it is now. 2023 was just not my year, personally, and it affected every area of my life. I'll skip the details because it sounds a bit like an old-school country and western song. Either way, I tend to embrace the philosophy of 'get knocked down seven, get up eight," but suffice to say my life now is completely different than it was before.

The logo is a blue phoenix - the mythical bird that appears in so many different cultures. A phoenix is reborn from its own ashes after bursting into flames. It reminded me of my own journey and that of so many other teachers who leave the classroom. And if you're wondering why I made it a blue phoenix instead of normal "fire" colored one?

That's because blue is much hotter fire.

I wasn't done trying to make the world a better place - and neither are most of the teachers who are ready to leave the classroom. We're just finding new ways to do it.

Should I hire someone to write my resume for me?

Well if you're a resume writer, I will apologize in advance but my answer is - no.

It is not difficult to learn what to do to write an effective resume for yourself - it just requires a little guidance. Once, I paid a resume writer to write my resume for me. And to be fair she did a beautiful job. She got everything in there and she made me sound amazing! I was ready to hire me!

The thing is - that resume did not get optimized to the individual job profiles to show that I could meet the needs of that job, and it was cluttered with a lot of stuff that wasn't necessary. Not every achievement goes on every resume. All job descriptions are a little different, so your resume for each job description should be a little bit different – just like differentiating for student instruction. And my guess is that you’re already a whiz at that. Apply that skill to job descriptions.

And remember how the resume writer made me sound amazing? Sure - and while it's nice that someone made me feel very good about myself, a company or potential employer doesn't care if I feel good about myself. A company cares about how my ability to work for them improves their productivity and bottom line. Ergo, a resume is really just explaining how you can do that for them.

My professionally-rendered resume was very dense – there was no wasted space on that page. Nobody wants to read what we call the wall of text - this includes hiring managers and recruiters. For those of you who have worked with students in special education, you know that more white space on a page makes it easier for people to absorb. The more dense it is, the less that they absorb that info - your info. You definitely want your information to be absorbed. Make sure your resume is easy on the eyes.

COOL RESOURCE

Sometimes there are so many things to do that it feels impossible to narrow it just one thing - and then I often feel like I avoid all the things and get nothing done.

I have recently been combatting this a by gamifying it. I have an app on my phone (I have been using the free version), and it is a spinning wheel. You might even have used one to put names in for a drawing for class or a meeting. I have been using it to pick the next chore. There are multiples of these out there.

This one is called Spin the Wheel. I see this is available on Apple aps and Google play. Google is showing 10 million dowloads, so there's a decent chaNce you already have this one! It is simple and intuitive to use. The ads are annoying in the Apple version, but for 6.99 they go away. And after it spins and selects a slice, there's this fun little "ta-da" sound. It's very easy to customize and there are a lot of options.

Spinning the wheel can be a great way to convince your children or teenagers to do things. It can also be a great way to help you focus on one task at a time if you are still in the classroom and setting up your room. This handy hack can reduce the side quests that seem to get in the way. If your side quests were like mine, they were GREAT ideas that sprang up in the moment, but they were time consuming and could technically wait.

Here's a picture of it:

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