5. "Who Am I If I'm Not A Teacher?" - From The Classroom To Teaching *Teachers* How To Leave, With JoDee Scissors

13 years in, JoDee Scissors loved her students but knew she needed a change. She decided to leave teaching - a very secure profession that most people, JoDee included, go into thinking they’ll stay for life.  Fast forward a few years to today and JoDee runs her own consulting firm, creates digital content for the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, and co-host her own successful podcast for teachers called The Great Teacher Resignation (TGTR).  But between those steps there were highs, lows, and a lot of lessons learned.  In Episode 5, hear how JoDee:

• Realized she was in denial about wanting to leave her job  
• Found the helpful - and not-so-helpful - places to turn for support
• Translated her experience to different job fields
• Finally took the leap, landed, and now helps others take their own

Check out Episode 5 and others on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts!

Learn more about JoDee - including her consulting work and great new podcast - at:

• The Great Teacher Resignation Podcast:
  • Facebook: @tgtrpodcast or Instagram: @tgtrpodcast
  • Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-great-teacher-resignation/id1614449534
  • Spotify:  https://open.spotify.com/show/67ZxePdjxVYLYMY1xTybdX
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jodeescissors/
• PaperPlanes ED: https://www.paperplanesed.com/ 

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Transcript

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Episode 5 - JoDee Scissors TGTR - FINAL

JoDee Scissors: [00:00:00] I had to take the risk of moving out of the consistent. And the comfortableness of a profession I knew. Welcome to Life 

Life Leaps Podcast: Leaps podcast. Hear inspiring stories of ordinary people who made extraordinary life changes. What drove them, what almost helped them back. Insights for the rest of us considering life leaps big or small, because hearing someone else do it reminds us that we can too.

This week we're with former elementary school teacher, Jody Scissor. 13 years in. Jodi loved her students, but knew she needed a change. She decided to leave teaching a very secure profession that most people, Jodi included, think they'll stay in for life. Fast forward a few years, and today Jodi runs her own consulting firm, creates digital content for the John F.

Kennedy Center for Performing Arts. And cohost her own successful podcast for teachers called The [00:01:00] Great Teacher Resignation. But between those steps, there were highs, lows, and a lot of lessons learned. Today we'll hear how Jody realized she was in denial about wanting to leave her job, found the helpful and not so helpful places to turn for support.

Finally took the leap, landed and now helps others take their. I also love Jodi's story because she really found a way to take the parts of her old job that she loved and really spun them into a career in life that now better works for her. I also think that regardless of whether you're considering her career change or something else, we can all relate to those moments of denial, doubt, an identity crisis when thinking about change.

JoDee Scissors: That was really the heart of why I went into teaching was because I wanted to make an impact on other people's lives and educational opportunities. And 

Life Leaps Podcast: you started as a first grade bilingual teacher in Texas. Then you were in [00:02:00] Kentucky, Illinois, Maryland. So you got a good swath of teaching in a lot of different areas, a lot of different groups, and you were obviously good at it.

I saw that you were a teacher of the year at one point. 

JoDee Scissors: I loved it. I really still have. A huge piece of my heart dedicated to helping children and closing the educational gaps. So each state was different. Each state prepares teachers a little bit differently. They have different expectations. But my first years of teaching were.

Filled with lots of joy and growing pains, and it's really what helped me be the person that I am today because I was able to not only grow as a teacher, but as a person and a person who understands the lives of different families and groups of people. Yeah, it was great. At some 

Life Leaps Podcast: point, obviously you started to feel like it was no longer for you.

JoDee Scissors: What happened? Yeah, [00:03:00] so that was a really tough place in my life to come to that realization because for a long time it was denial. I denied the fact that I was unhappy or unfulfilled because I had set out this goal and this was gonna be my career for my whole life. But state by state, I moved around a lot because of my husband.

I just continued to feel unhappy, which is unusual because my last years of teaching were the most, I had grew professionally, so I was growing to my maximum potential. Yet my unhappiness was growing as well, and so it came down to I couldn't create, I'm a creator. I'm a maker. Of all types of art forms, and I just felt like I was boxed in and I couldn't teach in the way that I felt students [00:04:00] wanted to learn, needed to learn, and it was a really tough position to be in.

And when you say you couldn't 

Life Leaps Podcast: express yourself creatively, Was this the classic standardized test debate, which I will not ask you to dive deep into. I'm not even 

JoDee Scissors: sure enough to have it, but the state of education has become extremely standardized, and I think that standards are fine, but when you use the standards to teach to a test, it does not allow a teacher to teach.

In a way that they can differentiate creatively for students learning styles, it means the end goal is to make a certain score on a certain test. And so at the end of my career, we were literally given scripts to read During class. It meant taking away stem or learning. And when you take those things away, student happiness is not at an all time high and neither is teacher [00:05:00] happy.

Life Leaps Podcast: Wow. You were reading a script, like they had , they had you reading a script. Was this public or private 

JoDee Scissors: school? Public school, yeah. I was at one school where. They gave us scripts to, uh, teach students how to write say this. And I, at one point in a meeting was like, so you want us to read the script? And they're like, well, it's not really reading a script.

And I was like, but you just told me to read this word for word. And I was flabbergasted. I was like, this is unbelievable. And I took it as they don't trust teachers. And so that really was like a catalyst for my understanding of the state of education and why I needed to go.  I've

Life Leaps Podcast: heard part of your story both personally and through the podcast, and I know that one thing you talk about is it's hard to leave any career. It's hard to change in that way because as you said, you usually go into a career like teaching because you're passionate, you wanna be there, you wanna stay.

And that's your plan, and then that doesn't [00:06:00] work out. You've talked about feeling shame, guilt, and I think you're not alone in feeling that. You've said among many teachers and maybe folks who leave careers, period. What was your experience? How long did it take you? I would 

JoDee Scissors: say that itch started about six years.

Six or seven. That was my denial phase where I tried to supplement with grad school and taking on different projects and stuff like that. And the summer before my last year teaching, I was sitting in a coffee shop and I'm editing my sister's script. She's, she works in the film industry and I'm sitting there and I'm like, this is so much fun.

I was working on side projects during the summer because most teachers work in the summer anyways, but I was doing it freely on my own time at a coffee shop while my daughter was at camp, and I got to drive her to camp. Prior to that, [00:07:00] I was not able to do much for my daughter while I was working because I couldn't leave school.

And so that flexibility and being present. Felt so good. I was present in my work. I was present in my parenting. I was present as a spouse, as a friend, and that was so liberating and that was it. I sat there in that coffee shop and I was like, this is it. I went home and talked to my husband about it and I knew going into that school year, I just, I made that decision.

I had to go. So 

Life Leaps Podcast: you said a couple things that have stuck with me. First you mentioned the denial phase, and in my head I was like, ah, yes, the denial phase , we all know it. Oh, so well, yes. And sometimes we often, of course, because it's denial, don't recognize we're in the denial phase. Mm-hmm. until afterwards and we're looking back and we're like, uh, so your denial phase was how long?

Like when did you have your aha moment [00:08:00] in the coffee? Editing your sister's script? 

JoDee Scissors: Yeah, I would say denial was about three years, and I tried supplementing the denial with other things, and then the last three years I knew I was ready for a transition because I had begun mentoring teachers. And I thought I had this vision that no one could teach my kids if I leave, who was gonna take care of all of these kids if I leave.

And so as I was mentoring teachers, amazing teachers, I looked out and I thought, wow, that was really selfish of me to just be thinking that I could handle education all on my own , like very self-centered. And I saw that other educators were building their repertoire. And that my teammates were growing too, and I felt good about passing the torch that last year.

I was like, okay, I'm ready to pass the torch, but what? What am I gonna do? Who am I if I'm not a teacher? [00:09:00] Which is the question I ask myself in my podcast. Is, who am I if I'm not a teacher? And so that was where the identity crisis came in.

Life Leaps Podcast: You know, someone much smarter than me has probably thought of really fancy social science terms for this. But what I'm hearing, and I'm hearing this in a lot of these conversations, is yeah, like denial, aha. Moment. Identity crisis , and then like, oh, okay, here's what I figure out what's 

JoDee Scissors: next. Okay. So, and I don't think it's cyclical.

Everybody's phase cycle could be a little bit different. Yeah. And 

Life Leaps Podcast: you probably revisit each of those phases a bunch of different 

JoDee Scissors: times. I know that's probably going to happen to me in my life again, because this is who I am. I am not a person that thrives on just the same. I like change. I'm a very adaptable person and I just need to do it in a healthy way.

Did anything 

Life Leaps Podcast: almost hold you back from making the change once you [00:10:00] realized you really 

JoDee Scissors: wanted to? I think the only thing holding me back was money. Having a stable income. So teaching is a really stable income. You know exactly how much you're gonna make every single year. There is a predictor, there's a table for that.

And so that consistency was hard to leave because I grew up in a household where money was an issue or was too much money. There wasn't enough money, there weren't healthy relationships built around money and finances. That was what was scary to me, was that something financially would happen. And I would be putting my daughter at risk of enduring a financial hardship in the way that I did as a child, 

Life Leaps Podcast: and that is really powerful.

And probably really intense stuff that you were working through because when we talk to people who are making changes, when we ourselves think about making changes, [00:11:00] I feel like it goes into two buckets. One is what I perceive to be my own limitations, the psychological stuff, and that is very real. And then the other one, Dollars and cents.

Geography real hard and fast limitations that are just reality. This is not like my limiting self thoughts. This is like, how do I make it work? So Jody, what did you do? I 

JoDee Scissors: sought help from all of my closest peers and family members that I trusted, who knew me well and knew me as a teacher. That was my identity to them as well.

And so I started. Just my closest relationships and talked about it. I had to talk about it out loud because I live in my head a lot. I go to bed at night and I have a billion thoughts in my head and I can't rest until I've either jotted resolved, or like I've had to develop healthy ways for that. So talking about it.

Helped. I [00:12:00] also sought professional help to talk about the way that I was feeling, and then once I reconciled with my feelings are normal, my feelings are real, it's okay to feel this way, and I was fine with the way I was feeling. Then I started to build. My network to help me make a career transition. And that meant people connecting me with other people.

So like my husband connected me with several people, my sister connected me with several people. I got really involved on LinkedIn to see what people were doing, what former teachers were doing. And so that was the piece that led me to the next career was being. Knowing I am a smart person, that I have many skills that I can translate them into another career and that my support system is rooting me on.

I think 

Life Leaps Podcast: that that's an important thing to pause on is that [00:13:00] you knew that. You couldn't and shouldn't just totally do it all alone in your own head, and it sounds like you really wisely turned to talking to someone totally separate from your normal network, people within your network. LinkedIn, great resource.

And I think that's important is it's a multifaceted approach and no one thing works for everyone. When you were getting connected to other people, what were you even asking for? What were your asks? Were you like, does anybody know a former teacher who's done something cool? Can I talk to them? ? 

JoDee Scissors: Yeah. Yeah.

So one of the key people that my sister introduced me to, my sister's a master networker, and she introduced me to the vice president of. Austin Community College, which is a huge college, and so she was a former kindergarten teacher and she's now the vice president of a college, and she's also creative.

She was the first person [00:14:00] to implement a fashion design program in. A community college. And I thought, that's really, that's really cool. And so she happened to be in Washington, DC with my sister for an event. And we went to dinner and we walked to the Kennedy Center to see a show. And during that time I said, how do you do what you do if you were a kindergarten teacher?

Like how. Is it possible? Do you use your skills? And she looked me, she like, we're like walking down the street and she stopped and she said, I use my kindergarten teaching skills every single day. I do it for multitasking, working with different personalities, juggling lots of different projects, thinking outside of the box, and that little piece of advice.

Help me feel seen. I felt, oh, you understand who I am and you understand that I can apply these skills somewhere else. And that was really [00:15:00] just a moment of validation and understanding of this is why I need to connect outside of the schoolhouse because everybody in the schoolhouse can help me with what's happening in the schoolhouse.

And she was an example who can help me outside of the schoolhouse. 

Life Leaps Podcast: That's amazing. And I bet. Here's the other thing I think to flag. My guess is of however many people you reached out to, every conversation wasn't as amazing and extraordinarily valuable as that one is. Is that. 

JoDee Scissors: Right. Yep. It was totally explorative.

I would call it like the exploration phase of career change, where you're just talking to everyone to learn about their industry, how it relates to you. Some people's advice was stuck a little bit more than others, but. All the conversations were meaningful. I was able to learn either way. So yeah, it's just, I call it ex exploration and just being okay with having those conversations and knowing that you may [00:16:00] get a really solid piece of advice and you may get advice that steers you in a direction that you thought you might go.

You take a little bit different path. There were a people who wanted me to take the traditional path of a teacher, which. Teacher, instructional specialist, staff specialist, assistant principal, or central office figure. And that piece of advice was what they knew. And I don't hold anything against those people who gave me that advice, but they couldn't see me, they couldn't see my struggle or who I.

And so they were giving me the advice of every other person that has tried to mobilize in their teaching career within a school district. And I knew it was not for me. I could not identify with a single person that I looked out to, to say, can I do that? Yeah, I can do that. Do [00:17:00] I want to do it? Is my heart full?

Am I passionate? The answer was no. And it was such a no that I would get these overwhelmingly depressing feelings like no one can see me. And so it was those outside people that really made me feel seen. And if I go back to all of those people within the schoolhouse, they see me now. I hear 

Life Leaps Podcast: you. It's like you can't fault people for sharing what they know, but you have to acknowledge that people are more likely.

To give advice that falls within the wheelhouse of what worked for them or is comfortable for them. And so I think you made a really important point of stepping outside of that world. Yeah. I'm like scared to even begin a recap of all the things you're doing. Cause I think I'm gonna miss one , so stop 

JoDee Scissors: me.

Yeah, sure. Yeah. So this is would be the leap phase where I actually am fulfilling the leap. I had to take the [00:18:00] risk. Of moving out of the consistent and the comfortableness of a profession. I knew how to work in, and I wanna start it off with, I have always been a person that has made different leaps in my life.

And so this leap at the beginning, I didn't associate it with the other leaps I had taken. So as a young child, we moved around a lot and I had to adapt to different situations. I went to college out of state. I've lived in different countries where I chose to work or study, and I've moved with my husband's job.

I've adapted to acquiring a new family, my husband's family. There are situations where you learn to adapt. And build positive relationships. So you really 

Life Leaps Podcast: gain courage from other leaps and other times of change in your life knowing you had navigated it then. [00:19:00] So let's talk about that risk space that, how do I.

Figure out what's next space. Did you know what you're doing now? Was even a possibility at that phase? 

JoDee Scissors: So I knew that creating something outta nothing was a possibility.

I think having that mindset early on is really valuable . If you can have an entrepreneur mindset, you don't even have to be an entrepreneur, but as a teacher, I had an entrepreneur mindset because I could see curriculum. And think of ways to make it better to improve it, and that's what entrepreneurs do.

They take something old and improve it, or they create something totally new. So keep for 

Life Leaps Podcast: describing that , because I think that No, really, because you really just boiled it down to something that simple. If I can look at something and say, how can I make it different or better? And then eventually spin into something that makes some money, huh?

Yeah, that's entrepreneurship. 

JoDee Scissors: Definitely. So I'll be fine. Yeah. [00:20:00] So I had this entrepreneur mindset, so I knew that I was going to have to approach the career transition in that way, that I was gonna either have to make it on my own or I was going to have to use that mindset to apply for other jobs. I ended up applying for lots of jobs in the arts.

And really tailoring my resume to what they needed, but doing it with fidelity because I was gonna go in there and apply and pretend I was someone else. I can do this. And I did this in teaching in this way, so I had to be able to transfer those little line items from teaching into another profession.

And it was really challenging because making 60 plus resume. Applying for hundreds of jobs over the course of eight months. Wow. 

Life Leaps Podcast: And you're teaching at this 

JoDee Scissors: time, like you're still teaching?

I am teaching at this time, but at that time I am [00:21:00] liberated. From the burden of what my identity crisis was, and I am motivated to apply. You're in hustle phase. I'm in the hustle phase, which everybody that knows me, they know that I grind hard at the things that I want and I will be so laser focused.

While I had some self doubt, I just, that's how I work, is I'm like, I'm going all. Okay, 

Life Leaps Podcast: so you are going through the mental labor of how do I take my experience in the classroom and make it applicable to this non-classroom job application. You're engage in the art of translating, the art of the pitch, the thing we all have to do, which I think can be really overwhelming and you're trying to do it in a really authentic way, but at a certain point you gotta spin what you did cuz maybe they aren't in a classroom, they don't know.

So you're educating the people you're applying for jobs. 

JoDee Scissors: I'm guessing. Yeah, so a lot of principal skills and jobs [00:22:00] translate throughout many jobs, and so when I was looking at job descriptions, I could easily see the way that, let's say, making data informed decisions about a product in the classroom. We make data informed decisions about our instruction, and so while we might be looking at percentages regarding downloads for a product, I'm looking at student data for percentages of students that achieved in math and.

I'm applying that to make an informed decision, and so that's an example of how I took something I did and translated to the rest of the workforce, . Nice. 

Life Leaps Podcast: Okay, so eventually you get a job. What happens? 

JoDee Scissors: Yeah. Somebody gave me a chance, is what happened. Eric Friedman, I've interviewed him on the podcast. He gave me a chance.

I [00:23:00] took a part-time. Role with him and he saw my potential. He saw my need to transition, and it was one of the most honest and open interviews I've had where I again felt seen. When somebody gives you a chance, you never forget those people, even if your transition is not what you would hope.

They saw that the skills of a teacher are valuable and they respect them, and so I took that role. It was digital redesign specialist. The Kennedy Center and my life changed a lot.

Life Leaps Podcast: So the Kennedy Center, which is , no small potatoes entity, , 

JoDee Scissors: John F. Davis Center, perform National . Yeah. National Performing Arts Center. So 

Life Leaps Podcast: they hire you and it's a part-time gig and it changed your life. 

JoDee Scissors: Yeah. Having a flexible schedule. [00:24:00] Taking my daughter to and from school, working in a healthy environment with a solid team, I immediately, first day, they're like, okay, let us know what you know about our resources.

So I spend two days analyzing their entire collection of digital resources. I create a presentation and I just go hard on this analysis, and then I meet up with them in two. And they are completely flabbergasted by my like thorough analysis . They thought I was just gonna come in and just have talking points.

But no, I had like full presentation where everything could be improved and what were the gaps and how are things not culturally responsive? And I think at that point they were like, she's got this . 

Life Leaps Podcast: All right. So you're working on digital content creation for them and you're still doing. Yeah. Yeah. 

Is that what spurred you, to start your consulting firm? Yeah. So you started 

JoDee Scissors: consulting? Yeah. There were [00:25:00] budget limitations to keep me honest, part-time. So then I decided to go contractor and from there I was able to build my clientele through word of mouth. And so with my job, paper planes Ed, I work with arts institutions mostly.

To produce direct redesign, create new resources for the classroom, and I get to work with lots of artists and musicians who inspire me. I learn from their crafts, so that feels good. I know. That wherever I am, I have to be learning and growing or I will fall into depression. That's who I am. I have to be, yes.

Connection. 

Life Leaps Podcast: I'm pointing to myself. You can't hear me cuz it's a podcast. . I think a lot of listeners do wonder about the money piece. You went from a teacher salary to part-time at Kennedy Center. Were you able to still make [00:26:00] it work 

JoDee Scissors: financially? So I did take a small salary cut because I was working in that, one of the highest paid districts in the nation.

So the, I had the option to propose what my consulting rate was going to be, and so I consulted a. On a six month contract that made it where we didn't have to really supplement much. And then the next 12 months, I negotiated up after thinking about my. Worth and what I'm bringing to the table .

And they honored that. They honored my proposal. And so we were in a position where we could make the move based on our personal finances. And my husband is now, at that time he wasn't, but he's now a financial advisor. And so he's always been very good about planning. He has a good understanding of the full scope of our [00:27:00] finances, which has been really good for me because he and I came from two totally different financial backgrounds, where on both sides of the spectrum weren't exactly healthy, and so we kind of have like this healthy middle ground of our backgrounds.

And so I think that it just comes down to personal finances, planning. It's okay to take a pay. If you are achieving all the things that were driving you out. So I was able to take a slightly smaller pay cut, but fulfilling that creative piece, that happiness piece, that flexibility piece. And so it was worth it.

And now I'm back to the point where I'm in a position where, I'm making too much that I don't even know if I could apply for a job because I don't know if they could compensate me appropriately or I'll just have to take a pay cut, and I'm okay with that if the right opportunity comes around and it feels good to have that freedom [00:28:00] and knowing that I could do it, and I did do it.

So 

Life Leaps Podcast: at some point you also get the idea to start a podcast. 

JoDee Scissors: What's that all about? I'll be asking you the same question. 

Life Leaps Podcast: Um, I don't even know the answer, . 

JoDee Scissors: So after I left teaching, a lot of teachers were like, what are you doing now? That's so cool. I need to learn a few things from you. And during the pandemic, I met Allie, my co-host, and she's a former teacher, and we had this play.

Where our children would meet up at the park and play for a few hours, and one parent would just stay there and watch. She and I would stay and talk about teaching and how others wanted support on how to transition or just handle career dissatisfaction and. I was like, yeah, I'd like to do a podcast. She said, I wanna do a podcast, or might have been vice versa.[00:29:00] 

And I was like, I think I can produce a podcast. Like I have the skills for that. And she's like, I have the voice for that. And I'm like, you do . So like, we're like, okay, you have a really good voice. We have really good stories. We have the skills to do this. All right, let's keep talking about it. And had she also left teaching at that point already?

She had left, yeah. Okay. She is a project manager now, and so we just decided one January. Let's do it. This is the time. Teachers are in crisis, they're leaving. We are seeing a great resignation. The respect for teachers is down tremendously. Teachers are getting yelled at on Zoom. People are protest. You know, it was at an all time low and we thought, oh my gosh, we have to help people.

And so we went from. Having our classroom of students, which mine was probably 28 and hers was probably more around 150, to [00:30:00] helping teachers or people that wanna hire teachers or community members that understand teachers or support them. And we've reached over 15,000 people already, and that's a different style of teaching.

We wanted teachers to feel heard and we. We have to do this. 

Life Leaps Podcast: It was a January when y'all had this conversation. Was this January 20, 21? We're still in the height of Covid remote teaching. Everything's online. When you say teachers are in crisis, I think it's important, like that is the time period that this conversation was grounded in.

JoDee Scissors: Yes, and January, 2022 was when we hit the ground running. We were like, talked about it and talked about it and at that point Allie had moved to New Orleans and by April. We were ready. We were ready to roll full of this year. Yeah. Yeah. There were over 500,000 resignations over the pandemic. And so [00:31:00] what were all of those people doing?

How do we help with either retention or transition or career happiness? We had to, Jody, I 

Life Leaps Podcast: love how. You make your own transition, you make your own leap. You figure out your own job, and really almost immediately after you land on your feet, and success wouldn't just be the point, but I would be remiss if I didn't point out.

So you guys only started this podcast in March or April. You've got like, you're like 15,000 followers, aren't you in the top quarter of podcasts you 

JoDee Scissors: mentioned or, yeah, it's surprising. . We weren't sure what was gonna happen. We, we just kind of dove in and we dove in for the reason to help others we're like, if we don't get paid, if we do not get recognition or publicity, We're okay with that as long as we've helped someone.

Life Leaps Podcast: And I think that as a non-tea community member who has listened to your [00:32:00] podcast, I will say, I think that you all have struck a chord. I know your podcast is a great teacher resignation, but it might as well just be the 

JoDee Scissors: great resignation. Yes. So I now have built this company where I can do that, but. I've elevated my income to be able to work on passion projects such as the Great Teacher Resignation podcast, the books that I am writing, the services I pay for that I can do all of those things all whilst being 100% present, and that feels really great.

You 

Life Leaps Podcast: mentioned that time in the coffee shop, you were like, wow, I reviewed my sister's script. I'm doing something creative. I love, I've been present for my kid today. I'm, I feel connected with what I'm doing. Is that the experience you have with your work now today? 

JoDee Scissors: It is. It is exactly achieved what I was looking for, and it was because I had to take the risk.

Of moving [00:33:00] out of the consistent and the comfortableness of a profession. I knew how to work in. What 

Life Leaps Podcast: insights or advice or bits of wisdom, and you've already shared a ton, so your answer may be, Karen, nothing. I'm done . But would you have to share for folks who maybe they're teachers looking to change 

JoDee Scissors: or maybe they're just one of our average 

Life Leaps Podcast: listeners who's living a life that has nothing to do with your background, but they're trying to make a change and they don't really know where to.

JoDee Scissors: So I'm gonna address this to teachers first and then the general audience. So teachers, yeah. My co-host Ally says it best. That door for teaching will always be open. Education right now is in a retention crisis and there's always been shortages for as long as teaching has been around, there [00:34:00] is always a position to be filled.

So you taking the leap. To try something new. You can always turn back and go, but you'll be so proud of yourself in taking a jump to put yourself first and decide what you really want in like and to a general audience about leaps if you are. Adaptable . If you are okay with a plan taking risks, I think you'll find your way.

You're already thinking outside of the box you're already in that scope. So you're listening 

Life Leaps Podcast: to this podcast, . 

JoDee Scissors: Yeah, it will be okay. I worry about even like, I'm one of those people that like thinks about something and I think about the worst case scenario. That never happens, ever.

But if you can plan and build your circle up a really solid one and know your worth, you're gonna be. [00:35:00] 

Life Leaps Podcast: Jody Scissors, everyone follow her journey, including links to Paper Planes Ed and the Great Teacher Resignation podcast in the show notes for this episode.

Thank you all for being here. We're a brand new podcast, so if you enjoyed it, go ahead and follow rate and review us in your podcast app so that we can know what you liked and others can find us. It would mean. Last but not least, we'll keep you posted on brand new episodes each week when you follow us on Facebook or Instagram at you Guest it Life leaps podcast.

Till next time, next Wednesday on Life Leaps podcast. And I 

Jheanelle Wilkins - Next Episode Preview: remember this moment where I say, you know what? I wanna be at the table. I wanna make the laws. I wanna help change this. I realize that I wanted to run for.

Life Leaps Podcast: Till next time,