029 - Sliding Doors Stories - Part 3

We’re thrilled to bring you another Sliding Doors Stories bonus episode! This special collection features incredible moments from our guests that truly capture the magic of life after teaching.

In this episode, we revisit the inspiring reflections of:

✨ Rae Dillon – From classroom teacher to copywriter.

Celebrating her dream wedding in Bora Bora - something teaching would never have allowed.

✨ Hannah Jones – Former teacher turned Head of Prison Education.

Sharing an emotional and deeply personal story about resilience, family, and how leaving teaching saved her future.

✨ Jonny Millard – From classroom to Managing Director.

Taking control of his success, enjoying financial freedom, a dream trip, and making memories.

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Edited with finesse by our Podcast Super Producer, Mike Roberts of Making Digital Real

Transcript

Hello, fellow pit ponies, and welcome to our special bonus episodes that we've put together for your pleasure, which capture those beautiful moments at the end of our episodes in which our guests share with you the magical experiences they've enjoyed since leaving the classroom. We refer to them affectionately as the sliding door stories. The stories are different, unique and incredibly powerful and serve as an inspiration to us all. 

So on behalf of myself and Sarah, enjoy Rae Dillon, Classroom Teacher to Copywriter, a sliding door story. Well, I mentioned earlier that since coming back to the UK, I got married. So we got married in September 2022 in Bora Bora, French Polynesia. 

And of course, if I was a teacher, there's no way I could have done that. On what date, what date did you get married? It is the 9th of the 9th, 2022. So the chances are the 9th of the 9th could have been an inset day.

So in class, yeah, probably would have been in school. So Friday and you're on the beach, it sounds absolutely beautiful. Hannah Jones, Classroom Teacher to Head of Prison Education, England and Wales. 

Sliding door story. Okay, so this one is maybe going to be slightly longer one than others have done. And I will give a bit of a content warning for any listeners that I will be talking about cancer. 

So as I said, I'm a carer to my son, when and I share that responsibility with my husband, my dear husband, who is the same age as me, so mid 30s, young and healthy and fit. And through COVID started having back pain and went to the GP a number of times. But it was, oh, you're sitting on the wrong chairs. 

No, we were because suddenly he had to start working from home. He was working at a dining room table. So we spent money and got him a proper chair and desk and rising desk, etc. 

We moved up to Yorkshire and the pain was getting worse. So I think kind of another mental strain I had through the time I was at school was this, this kind of beginning of shift of my relationship with my husband where he was just in pain, this kind of like constant discomfort and his mood was starting to change. When I started at the Civil Service, so I started in May 2022.

He'd been in significant pain for a while. I'd nearly rang an ambulance for him in March 2022. But it was around the time where they were saying if you ring an ambulance, you might be, you know, in an in an ambulance bay for 48 hours while we wait for you to go to hospital. 

It was all through this time. And I thought he'll never forgive me. He's in so much pain. 

If he's stuck in an ambulance for 48 hours, he'll never forgive me. And I didn't. But the GP finally referred him for an MRI after agreeing it might be something more, you know, more than, than, than just sitting on the wrong chair. 

So he had his MRI just before I started the Civil Service in August. So I was, was it May, June, July, August has four months in. So it's a six month probation in August, August bank holiday. 

We were, we were down with his parents and we got a phone call on the, the Friday afternoon, just before bank holiday weekend to say, we've looked at your MRI and we can see that there's a slipped disc. And we were like, Oh, almost a bit disappointed because he'd been in so much pain that we were thinking this is surely like, that's not going to be the level of pain you're in, but Hey, maybe it just is. I think I was thinking like, Oh, bloody men, it's a slipped disc. 

And he's just like, at this point, he wasn't sleeping. He was losing weight. His hair was falling out. 

He was so ill with this pain. And anyway, on the Tuesday morning, we were just packing up to go back home. And on the Tuesday morning, we had another phone call and it was the same GP and she said, Oh, I'm really sorry. 

I, the, the MRI report was sent in two parts and I read the top and it was done in two. And she said, I just read the top and the top does show a slipped disc, but it shows a slipped disc because there's a, there's a, well, they never said the word tumour. They said mass and lesion that essentially was pushing his disc out. 

So the top MRI did show a slipped disc, but the bottom MRI showed why. That was the beginning of our cancer journey. Um, and it took a while for diagnosis and it took a while for, uh, because he's got a very, very, very, and had a very, very rare form of bone cancer. 

So this is in terms of my career. I'm six months into the civil service and dealing with this news, I take in a pay cut. So I started, um, at SEO level at the civil service, which senior executive officer level, which actually is a really good entry grade for the civil service and does pay well. 

And I'd recommend any teacher to enter into, you know, that grade or HO a really good entry grades and still pay fairly amount, but it was less than I was being paid as a teacher. And his salary was, was, was what we lived off. And we'd just taken out, we just bought our kind of forever home in Yorkshire and we'd taken out a huge, whacking great mortgage to have this with.

Ironically to afford the mortgage, we'd also cancelled our critical care cover that would have paid off our mortgage had one of us got cancer because we'd said to each other jokingly, we're only in our mid thirties, like how likely is it we'll get cancer? So we'd cancelled our critical care cover cause that was really extensive. So yeah, so he got the, in September, we were sent down to Birmingham, back to Birmingham for no, no link in terms of, because we used to live there just because that was the centre. We were sent down to Birmingham and we were told it was likely to be malignant cancer. 

They were very worried about it being malignant cancer. And the way that they, they diagnosed sarcoma, which is bone cancers, is that they start with the, they take a biopsy and then they start kind of profiling it against the most common and there's about a hundred types. And so it can take about a week if it's one of the more common ones, or it can take a few weeks if it's one of the less common ones.

And it was for us, it was, it took weeks because it was the, it was one of the, the, the least, least common cancers. He's got a type of cancer called mesenchymal chrondosarcoma, which is a very rare cancer, a very aggressive cancer. We were given this news in October.

So I'd just, just about passed my probation period with, with my team. And I was, we were told that he was going to need a life altering surgery. We didn't know kind of to what extent that life would be altered. 

We were told it'd be a life altering surgery. And then we were told with a likely need to have nine months of chemo and radiotherapy following that. So we were kind of going into Christmas 2022 with that knowledge. 

So he had his surgery booked for the end of November, 2022. So I, at this point I've been there six months. He was down in Birmingham.

The surgery was very dangerous. I didn't know this. I'd never seen it, but he filmed like a goodbye to me and my children before, because we didn't know how that was going to go.

My line manager, but I was, I was still in teaching mode, right? So I, I said to my line manager, well, he's having a surgery on the Wednesday. So I'll take Wednesday, Thursday, Friday off and I'll see you on Monday. And she just said, if you need to work, I'll see you on Monday, but otherwise come back and see me in January and we'll see how you are. 

And without any question, she just signed me off on full pay for the, for five weeks. And I'd only been there for six months. I'd only just passed my probation. 

And she just, she just said, don't worry about it. You said, if you want to log on and work, because that was good for you, then do, but just, just come back and see me in January. And obviously I couldn't work and he was really ill after the surgery. 

And we had a rough few weeks and I was just so grateful that I was not having to worry about cover lessons. And so he came home and we got home just before Christmas and we had the weirdest Christmas. All his family came and they all cooked and kind of celebrated as you can. 

He doesn't remember any of it because he was so on so many pain meds, but we got through. On boxing day, we went to Leeds sarcoma center where they were going to do his chemotherapy. And they told us that we needed to have the full nine month regime. 

And they were going to give him, for those who know about cancer, they were going to give him the Dr. Rubison, which is the called the red devil, which is I think the most powerful chemo drug there is. And it was going to make him very ill. And he was going to be very immunocompromised.

And for me, that's where then the sliding doors moment starts because straight away, I was due back to work in January, but I was really kind of on and off because I was needing to take him to all these appointments while we kind of got ourselves settled. So kind of two big things. One of them was around his health and this immunocompromised. 

And I remember keep on thinking, what would I have done if I was in school? Because I would have killed him if I'd have gone into school, but then there's no mechanism for me to not have gone into school and still earn money. And he's been off work now from November. This is January. 

So we're three months into his six months full pay sick. So he had five months full pay. So we're three months into his five months full pay. 

Then he was dropping to half paid, then nothing. So I knew we're going to be okay for a few months. We can pay our mortgage and our bills, but I'm going to need to step up and I'm going to need to earn more money now because otherwise we're going to have to sell this house. 

And actually the first, when we kind of first got his diagnosis, I was thinking we are going to have to sell this house. There's no other way around it. I've only just started this new career. 

How can I earn more money? But from the minute I started the civil service, they'd seen me and they'd seen my potential. And from kind of day one, they'd gone, you should have been a grade seven, which is then the next grade above. And it's quite a significant pay jump between SEO and grade seven. 

It's about a 15,000 pound pay jump. So it's a huge increase. They're like, why did you come in as SEO? You should have been a grade seven. 

So already I had this positive talk in my head that I was capable of this. And I spoke to my line manager kind of in January. This is after just coming back from six weeks of leave supporting my husband. 

And I said, I'm going to need to leave this team because I'm going to need a promotion because I've got no option. I have to earn the money to support my family. We cannot lose our house on top of everything. 

So in the kind of worst months of my husband's treatment, so he had the doxorubicin. He was on a chemotherapy regime that was one week on, one week off. So he'd be home for a week. 

But there was a period then through end of January, early February where his cell counts were so low, they didn't let him home and he'd lost so much weight. He was, they were talking about like feeding him through a tube because he just, he was so poorly. And through that period, I was applying for grade seven jobs and my line manager was supporting me every step of the way.

She was helping me draft them. She was coaching me for interviews. She was that constant, you're going to be brilliant. 

You're going to do it. I had, I applied for a lot of jobs. I had, I got two interviews. 

The first interview I missed by one mark. It's almost like a test. I missed it by one mark. 

The context in the morning was that my, that was when my husband was, it was in hospital with sepsis. And so I was quite pleased. I'd only missed it by one mark, to be honest. 

And then I got called for a second interview in a different role. And I was, I was not offered the job. I was offered to go back on the reserve list and the reserve list has come back to save my life again, because as luck would have it then, my own team had a vacancy for a grade seven. 

So I was able to stay in the team that had supported me, but as a grade seven. So that for me, my side in doors moment is if I was teaching while all this had happened and if that school hadn't been as bad. So my, you know, if I'd have managed to stay for a year, we would have been homeless. 

We'd have been bankrupt. Like what could we have done? We'd have both been, we'd have both had to be signed off work. So my pay would have run out the same time that my husband's pay would have run out and we'd have had nothing, nothing that we could, no money that would have supported us. 

We'd have had to sell our house. We'd have had to move. We'd have probably had to go and live with parents through the worst times of our life. 

And instead I, I'm in a career that fulfills me that really through some really dark times last year became like a really positive outlet to my, I never thought work could be that for me in a way because teaching made it so negative towards the end, but it's like, it's my positive outlet. Like I get to direct all my nervous energy into doing good and doing amazing things and really supporting vulnerable people and develop myself and have something that gives me something back of who I am and who I was all through that time. And I cannot thank my team and my line managers at the civil service enough for just how they've met me with that, with that flexibility and with that, we know what you're going through and that openness to talk about it. 

But at the same time, without it being, Oh, aren't we doing you a favor? It's never been that. It's just been, of course, that's what you need. Of course, that's what you're going to get.

Of course, we'll give it to you. So that's, that's my sliding doors. It's not a moment, but that's my sliding doors of life. 

And it's, so not only did walking out that day save me, but it's, it saved, it saved my family and it saved our house and it's saved our future. Brief interlude to dear listener. A couple of questions. 

Are you a tutor or even a pit pony considering tutoring? And do you fancy getting in the room with myself and Sarah Dunwood, learning about the wonderful world of tuition? Then why not join us at the National Tutors Conference hosted by Conexus Tuition on the 29th of July, 2025. It's at Chesford Grange, Kenilworth. Links to the tickets are in the show notes below, and we will both see you on the other side. 

Jonny Millard, classroom teacher to managing director, sliding doors story. Well, there's so many, there is so many things, I suppose. I mean, we won an award early this year, a local business award. 

We were the best new business. And that was a wonderful moment. Got a nice little trophy downstairs in our, in our reception. 

But that actually isn't my moment. My moment is it's sort of a moment in time, a snapshot in time, I suppose. Something that could never have happened if I was in teaching is in the January of this year, my wonderful partner turned 30. 

That's in the January. Well, if you're in teaching, you can't go away. And we were able to go to Orlando, Florida, and we spent her 30th birthday in Florida, which we never could have done had I been in teaching. 

And I've been totally and utterly honest with you. And this is, I've tried my very best not to sound arrogant, but I'm going to say something now that I earned a lot more money than the head teacher who basically told me I was incompetent. So, and I'm on course to make a hell of a lot more money in my life than he probably will ever make. 

So trust me, we went to Orlando with no budget. We just did what we wanted, when we wanted, how we wanted. And there are certain things we didn't get a chance to do.

So we've rebooked to go again in another couple of years for a lot longer period of time. So that's wonderful. But two months after we came back, I had been living in my nan and granddad's home and I was able to buy it. 

This is my first home. I bought my first home and that was in the March of this year. And I'm currently renovating the property. 

And it's a real privilege to live that house because my nan and granddad lived in that house since the sixties. And it's, you know, it was a wonderful family home. My mom grew up in that home and now it's my home.

And it's meant that my granddad has had some legacy as well. And I realized one day I'm sort of outside and I was looking at the sky, you know, so nice sunny afternoon. And I thought you could have gone to Orlando, but you couldn't have gone when you did.

And you could have bought the house, but you couldn't have done both. There was no way on this earth that you would have been able to afford to go to Orlando. And there's no way you would have been able to afford a home within a two month period of time.

And that for me as an ambitious person, and yeah, look, I know that I don't, I don't want to make this all about money. It's not all about money. I am somebody who's driven by success and I am somebody who's driven by money. 

That's probably why I was so depressed in teaching because that's what I wanted. I wanted to have money and get on in life. And obviously I'm being held back.

But to get to that point where you can buy your first home and go on holiday and not really care that much about the money and you can protect and provide for those around you. That was all I ever really wanted. And now I've got it. 

And to look at the, look at the sort of lovely afternoon and go, you're the man, you've done it, man. You are, you are the man. Do you know, and like now I drive a £90,000 car and I'm on a six figure salary and everything that I knew I deserved, I now have. 

Well, we hope you enjoyed the sliding door stories of our guests. And please remember to subscribe to our channels and follow along for the magical pit pony moments that you will find at the end of our episodes every week. On behalf of myself and Sarah, see you on the other side.