072 - Pit Pony Revisited: The Summer Series - Amy Meade

In our FINAL Summer Re-Issue episode, we revisit the story of Amy Meade, who spent 14 years in education, moving from secondary English to primary leadership and eventually deputy and acting headship.

Amy loved teaching and wasn’t working in a toxic school, but even after a successful Ofsted she realised the treadmill never stopped. Delaying medical treatment, putting family second, and even looking forward to surgery just to rest, Amy reached her epiphany moment: school could not come before her health and her loved ones.

She resigned with nothing to go to, pushed through hundreds of applications, and eventually found a new career in learning and development. Amy now thrives as a Learning & Development Manager, using the same training and organisational skills honed in the classroom to make a difference in the corporate world.

Her story is about people-pleasing, resilience, and the courage to believe that life outside the classroom can be healthier, more flexible and deeply fulfilling.

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

Transcript

Thank you to our sponsors Little Voices. Are you a teacher with a passion for drama, music and performance or feeling stuck in the classroom? Little Voices gives you the chance to step into a role where you can truly inspire young minds through the arts. This is a company I know well and admire. 

They're passionate about child development, highly rated and genuine and transformative. With small group teaching, a focus on confidence and creativity. With the opportunity to guide children through lambda qualifications, you can make a real impact. 

Plus, with the support of a nationwide franchise network behind you, you can run your own successful business, doing what you love while teaching in a way that truly fits your life. Hello lovely listeners and thank you for pressing play. This has been recorded in July, August 2025. 

So, technically school's out for summer and Sarah and I, still teachers to the very core, are taking a little bit of time off. But we still want something dropping regularly to you, so we've chosen a few of our favourite episodes. We've loved doing all of our podcasts but we've chosen a couple that have really struck cards with our listeners, that have had a huge impact and we're going to revisit them. 

There'll be a couple of special episodes as well, this may even be one of them, where me and Sarah are chewing the fat. So yes, we're putting our feet up, so sit back and enjoy what we've got for you. Thank you.

Coming up in this episode... Like we haven't even gone home yet from Oxford and put our feet up and that to me was that sort of, I guess a bit of a, it's never going to stop. It's always, and there's nothing wrong with having, you know, the water next to you, but I think in education in particular, it is absolutely relentless. You don't ever get that moment to breathe.

Hello and welcome to yet another episode of the Pit Pony Podcast. Great one today because we've got Amy Mead and Amy's known to Sarah and I, we spend a lot of time in each other's worlds and we'll come on to that as we get into the podcast. Amy, a teacher for 14 and a half years, started in 2009 as a secondary school English teacher, walked the corridor across to the dark side of primary school. 

So moved from secondary to primary, held many TLRs, assistant head teacher, deputy head teacher, acting head teacher, straight from school. So she's the classic, classic Pit Pony, who's only ever known an educational environment and loved it, loved every single minute of education. So then she left in December, 2022, finished, done with education, had a successful Ofsted at her school. 

Interesting, Amy, that that's okay, because what's your job now? My job now is a learning and development manager and I'll be excited to talk about that because I know that's also an area that quite a lot of people who are thinking of leaving teaching feel quite drawn to. The desire there to still give back or make an impact or influence people positively. And we will get into it, my dear. 

But before we do get into it, take me back to December, 2022. Take me back to that time when you go, no, I need to get out of this environment. What are the circumstances surrounding that, please? So I think it's worth mentioning because whilst we know that lots of teachers do have very, very difficult environments, I can't say that that was mine. 

I got along really well with my colleagues. I was very happy at the school and parents by large, whilst they were challenged, you know, were supportive. So it was not a place where I'd say it was toxic or I was unhappy, which also probably came as a bit of a shock to myself that I still felt like this. 

And a shock, you know, to the school, you know, all the school family environments. It was a bit like, what are you doing? Why are you doing this? And my epiphany moment of, I need to change. I need to get out was immediately after the Ofsted. 

I remember our governors kind of instantly talking about the, you know, the what's next and what we need to do. And I was sat in the staff room, you know, looking around at all these teachers that had, were absolutely frazzled. We'd given it their all for two days. 

And I just thought, we just need a moment. We just need to celebrate and sit with it. Like we haven't even gone home yet from Ofsted and put our feet up. 

And that to me was that sort of, I guess a bit of a, it's never going to stop. It's always, and there's nothing wrong with having, you know, the what next and things like that. But I think in education in particular, that is absolutely relentless. 

You don't ever get that moment to breathe. You know, we've done well at something because it's straight on to the what's next or what are we going to do that's even better. And I did also, myself, I delayed having an operation because I felt such, you know, as many teachers do, we always hear of it and see it in a group where people put off, you know, medical appointments. 

They put off their, you know, life decisions about if they start a career because they are so sort of entrapped in teaching and sort of the teaching mentality that you feel that the school almost own you to an extent. And I put off having this operation and I delayed it until the September because I was due to have it, you know, around the time Ofsted was coming in. It's now, you know, can't possibly be off. 

We think we're so indispensable and within it. And I remember in the kind of the build up to my operation, I had three weeks at school before. And I remember feeling like really, it sounds odd, but I was almost excited. 

And it was quite a big surgery and I know operation is pleasant. And but there was about a three-week recovery afterwards. And I remember always feeling excited about having this operation because it meant I could just stop for three weeks. 

And to me, I thought that's really odd. Like, you know, I've got none of my family members are in teaching. They're all in different corporate jobs. 

And, you know, they just look forward to having time off as a holiday. I was looking forward to an operation as my holiday. I think as well, Amy, Lara could probably relate to that a lot because you, you worked around chronic illness and multiple surgeries, five surgeries in 10 years, and they were all arranged for exactly what you said, Amy, that make it work around school rather than make it work for me. 

And perversely, I didn't have the thinking about this is great. It gives me a bit of time. Yes, I needed the recovery time, but I was wanting to get back.

And my recovery time on the side, one of the big operations, it actually took me 14 weeks. And I was more concerned about what was happening at school in my absence, who I was letting down, all the rest of it. Now I look back and go, that's absolute madness. 

But at the time, I didn't focus on me. I was still, I was still doing work. I was saying work is crazy.

I've seen that as well through other colleagues when they're off. And when I was deputy head, I was always, because I was a teaching deputy head, and I think that's really important to mention, I very much was at the cold face still, so knew exactly the demands of what was going on. And I didn't want teachers to be, when they were ill, sending in work or messaging or worrying.

It was just to get better, but teachers find it really, really hard, nothing by nature, a lot to do. And whilst I was off as well and recovering, there were two instances that happened quite close together. So one was that my house was broken into. 

And then again, I remember it sounds really odd, but I remember thinking, God, this would have been a nightmare if I was at school, you know, having to deal with this. And then another sad news that a really close family member was diagnosed with MND, which is, people know about it, it's a life-limiting illness. They're still with us just about, but I also remember thinking, I want to be there for them as much as I can over these, you know, I don't know how long they were going to have left, but it was really, again, it was just that sort of epiphany moment of, I can't be, school can't be my life anymore.

And there's other things now, you know, myself, people in my family where it just needed to change. It just needed to come first. So I, yeah, so that was my moment. 

And I did what lots of people agonised about doing. I resigned with no job, nothing to go to. And I'm a, what I call a 50-50 household, you know, I'm, I pay 50% of the mortgage bills, I have two children. 

It wasn't a safe step for me to do or an easy step for me to do at all. But with me, I thought, well, there's nothing that's going to motivate me or drive me more to get a job than by an imperative need. And, and also I had watched the Pit Pony videos and I just thought, well, what's the absolute worst that can happen? If I can't get a job, I will do, you know, I will do supply, I will bring in money, I will do tutoring, I'll bring in money, I will do cleaning, I will do, you know, shifts at Tesla. 

I really didn't care at this point. I was like, I will bring in money somehow if I don't get a job and while I'm still looking for a job. So I just sort of had to completely swallow that fear, put it to rest and just then began the process, which we can talk about, of then relentless job hunting. 

I think, I think what you've done there in essence is you've taken the Pit Pony advice from the video. I am going to generate income by any means necessary because a job had become my life. Yeah. 

And not just it's become my life, it's all consuming. It had become more important than your life at the point where you were putting your medical needs second, putting friends and family second. Yeah. 

Because this imaginary hole that's surrounded with guilt, this, these particular kids, this particular class, there will always be the next exam class, there will always be the next set of children. But you had devalued your own needs so far down because I don't know about you and I think it's a good time to say at this point, Amy is one of the moderators in the Life After Teaching Facebook group. She works tirelessly with Sarah and I. Amy is the person who gatekeeps a lot of the comments and a lot of the posts, keeping our group members very safe in what they are posting.

But in the main, the people who are posting in our group, and I think this word will possibly chime with you both, are people pleasers. Yeah. Teachers by nature want to please other people.

And that's not just the definition of a people pleaser. A people pleaser pleases other people. It's almost going to sound like a tongue twister this now. 

Are you ready? People pleasers please other people through their own detriment. That's the difference. They don't have healthy boundaries for themselves and they do everything so they're not letting people down.

And I'd go beyond that, that even when they are given the healthy boundaries, told exactly what the healthy boundary is, and there's a big one to do with employment law and part-time workers' rights, which comes up time and time again, and you empower people with that information, but they are frightened to use it when it's their right to use it. It's the fear of getting in trouble, the fear of letting people down. You're absolutely right. 

The people pleasers, they're trapped in fear because they, we can talk about the psychology that sits behind that another time, but you'd stepped away and you'd gone, enough. I am now putting myself first and that's okay. It doesn't make me selfish. 

And you then did the initial pit pony, which is the lifeboat. We always talk about your next steps out as what you need to do for the moment. So then you've alluded to this job hunt, which is frightening for people who've only ever been interviewed for school, filled out a job application for a school. 

So how do you take all of your skills that you've had as assistant head, deputy head, acting head teacher? How did you then go, right, well, let's see if I've got some skin in the game in the corporate world. I think for me, what I, or how I began was I started thinking about what are really nights doing? Cause I thought if I was going to be leaving education, changing career, it is a chance for you to be able to try to find something new that you would enjoy. And I really enjoyed part of my role as a deputy. 

I was also an SNA for English in the county as well. So I delivered lots of training and insets and I really enjoyed that. And then found out in the corporate world, the equivalency out there exists of learning and development, but I didn't just sort of focus in on learning and development. 

I kind of thought about other similar roles. So some were sort of HR based, some were instructional design, which is more where you're building the materials. And I really just, I guess you could say it's sort of, you know, incessant belief, but I know that teachers do all of these skills. 

We design and deliver training day in, day out. It might just be to a younger audience, but it's exactly the same principle. You know, learning is learning. 

And, you know, we, you know, quite often make the most amazing presentations. We're engaging, we can talk, you know, we can inspire people to take action. We can inspire the toughest audiences, which is, you know, children and teenagers and the older people, you know, to often take action, to want to learn something or to want to do better.

Then we can absolutely do it in a corporate world where, you know, you've got what I call these, you know, compliant corporate citizens. So I really started thinking about, you know, the skills and I spent, I mean, I can't sort of downplay how many hours I spent reading about learning and development, but finding people on LinkedIn that work in learning and development, because it was also a new language I had to learn as well. And working on my CV, so I worked with, you know, my sister who works in corporate, other half who'd also made a transition, he left the military after 16 years and then had to join civilian life as well. 

So he'd kind of gone through a different, but, you know, similar transition. And it's about, for me, it was really about just selling the skills. I was so sure of the skills and I'm sure of all the skills that teachers have because they are absolutely there. 

And we do see members of the group finding jobs and things. So, you know, other people see it and notice it as well. And I often said to myself, oh, you know, I'm just a teacher. 

And I found that I had to, again, become somebody that I wasn't really poor. I would just message people and say, look, I'm trying to change career. I'm really interested in this. 

Can I talk to you about it? Can we meet about it? And I ended up meeting a head of learning and development for lunch one day who just happened to live locally. And I just absolutely, you know, it's a bit like a mentor, absolutely picked her brains about, you know, what is it you do? What does your day look like? Because again, as a teacher, it's people's other jobs can often be shrouded in mystery. We're not aware of what it means to have a job that's not based in the school. 

So, I just, I really spent, and I spent so many hours sort of working, reworking my CV. It's always down to personal choice. I did a professional CV writer to look at my CV. 

I have to say there weren't that many changes by the time I got it back. I think it was just that polishing and tidying. So, I invested a lot into it. 

And the other thing I want to say, because when you see somebody, and I'd always see, when I was thinking about leaving, I'd see the post in the group of, I'm out, I've done it, I've exited, I've got a job. And I remember, you know, half feeling pleased, but if I'm honest, I would half feel a bit jealous or a bit defeated thinking that's never going to be me. And I had those feelings as well. 

And I think what I really want to share with everybody is just, you know, I had to apply for a lot of jobs. I got really comfortable with doing that. The first job that I had out of teaching, because I'm on my second one now, I applied for somewhere between, because I was keeping count until it got to the ridiculous, but between 400 to 500 jobs. 

And some of them were, you know, in long applications where, you know, I've seen it where you spend hours tweaking it or changing your CV or personalise it, filling an application form, doing cover letters. Some of them were what I call the one-click applications that you just ping over your CV. And I never expected that number to come out of your mouth. 

I've got to be honest. I know about 60 in my head and wow. It was more, but I was also, again, and I got really comfortable with applying because, you know, my sister who works in the corporate world, you know, she's super senior, gets headhunted, but she'd often say, oh yeah, I apply for between 200 and 300 jobs every time I want to move job. 

And she just said it like it's absolutely normal. And I was thinking, well, okay, if I'm leaving one career going to another, I'm probably going to have to at least double that number because I'm up against people who are already working it. And whilst it sounds like it, it might seem, you know, it's not to put people off. 

It's just to put people that you never know which application might be a yes. I ended up having eight interviews, two of which I was offered jobs from. And again, these interviews were all, you know, multi-stage interviews, things like that as well. 

So I more than had my fair share of no's along the way. And I really held on to some mantras that of no means next opportunity. It's a redirection, not rejection. 

And I kept saying these things to myself just to really, you know, and what's meant for you won't cost you buying. I had to keep saying these things again and again because, you know, I've experienced the same disappointment that other members experience when, you know, you think that you read a job and you think that's perfect for me. You know, I'm made for this job. 

And then, and you don't, you sometimes don't even get a rejection email. It's just nothing, silence. And so I've, it really is a roller coaster. 

And I think that for me, again, because I had no job, I was like, I can't just do nothing. I can't just, just stop. It's a bit like if your house was filling up with water and flooding, you wouldn't just sit in the room and let it all submerge. 

You'd have to get up and swim out. And that's, that's what I was doing. I was like, well, I can't just sit and, and, you know, I knew my backup plan. 

So I knew where the lifeboat was. But I absolutely, you know, I knew I had to keep going. And I also scheduled in breaks as well. 

I'd have nights off. And I think that was really important as well, because you can get complete burnout from applications, too. And all kind of always looking on the job sites can become quite, you know, quite tiring.

So I absolutely scheduled in nights off. Like, I'm not doing anything to do with job hunting tonight, or days off at the weekend, you know, not doing it, not touching it, not looking at the computer. And I really needed that. 

And that really helped sort of stay, you know, stay in it for the job hunt. And to be honest, once you, once you get your offer, or your yes, it's a bit like when people talk about, you know, if anyone's had a kitchen refitted and the pain you go through. Once you're sitting in your new kitchen, and it's all big, you kind of forget, or like, you know, children and things that you do just kind of forget, you know, because it all becomes worthwhile in the end. 

So I'd say one of the things I really sort of implore and encourage, you know, members or people listening or members of the life arts teaching community to do is really get comfortable with the idea that it is normal in the world outside of teaching for people to apply for quite a lot of jobs. And it's no reflection whatsoever on your value, on your skill set, or what you could bring to a job. And one of the other things I learned as well is that sometimes you didn't hear back or, you know, you didn't get offered an interview because they were already so far down the road in the process. 

You know, the advert was still open, because there were some companies where I kind of reached out and they were, you know, we're actually already down to interviewing the final, final three now. So it's not necessarily that you didn't put in a good application. It's just the timing was off again, teaching, you know, deadlines, there's everything so transparent, you know, when the deadline is, you know, when they're going to be shortlisting, and you know, if you don't get 24 hours, that's it. 

The world outside of teaching is you don't often have that information. Not many adverts I've seen sort of say, you know, they might say when the deadline is, but not always. So it really is. 

I think that's really helpful, because yeah, especially if somebody's come out of teaching, they've made the leap. There's been fear surrounding it. It would be so easy then to start to take things personally. 

Yeah, what have I done? They don't want me because there's a vulnerability. When you step outside of that, you come up above ground. And I think you did incredibly well with your mantras, staying strong, because at that point, we see a lot of it in the life after teaching Facebook group with the civil service. 

Yeah, many, many of our members move towards the civil service as another job that they can be doing. And they become incredibly anxious about not hearing anything. So I think that message was so powerful then. 

So what then? Yeah, well, I'll share with you. I also applied for civil service, like several jobs. Didn't even get, I got, I think I applied for eight civil service jobs and got one interview. 

I did get offered a job from, but it wasn't, it's hard, the civil service. Now I know lots of members move into it, but it's a really different process. So my first job that I ended up getting was actually a learning and development business partner. 

And that was in a financial services firm in London. So it's a firm that basically works with the tier one banks. And the people sort of at my company would go into these tier one banks and they would do like a lot of troubleshooting, like implementing new systems, stuff like that. 

And the first question for that particular job that I always get asked is, oh, do you have a master's degree? Or, you know, did you have to do any finance training? And it's no, I have neither, not a master's degree. I have no finance training whatsoever. And then the second question that often comes is, how did you work in financial services then? And again, it's about, A, they wanted somebody that could present, that could engage, that could deliver information or complex information, like we often do as teachers, in a clear and understandable way. 

And the other side of it is I didn't have to be the expert because we had what we have, subject matter experts. So in the business world or corporate world of learning development, your subject matter experts are the people that essentially know and write the curriculum. So it's a bit like following the national curriculum. 

You know, these are the things you have to teach. I had subject matter experts saying, well, these are the things that this course needs to contain. So they had all the knowledge of the content, but what they didn't have the skill to do was then, how do I present this in a way that people can learn it? What are the key learning points? You know, how do I time, you know, how do we make a day's worth of training out of this and that? And that was really where I came in. 

So it really was a partnership with the people who were the experts in the build. And I, you know, really just facilitated, I sort of helped pull out and tease out all this information to put together the training. Sometimes I would deliver the training, other times I would coach other people how to deliver the training. 

So there was a little bit of a mix there. And I think, again, that's sort of really why, you know, they were learning the jobs in all different kinds of industries. You know, lots of companies over a certain size, we usually have some type of learning and development function. 

So don't let the industry put you off because, again, you know, there are just like you get great people everywhere, but great recruiters will really look at the skills. Now, has this person got the skills to be able to work in this kind of capacity? You know, unless it's very knowledge specific, like you need, you know, a specialist. There was one I was interested in, but it was an airline, but they wanted some kind of airline safety qualification. 

I was like, okay, you know, that's something I don't have knowledge on. So that might not be the right thing to apply for. But a lot of them, if there's not a specific, you know, we need you specifically to have this qualification, you can, you know, I'll say it's fair game. 

And coming back again to job descriptions, I did a lot of reading about sort of job descriptions and, and female and female applicants tend to only apply for a job if they think they meet 100% of kind of the person's specification. Whereas, you know, I'm talking just very typically, you know, male sort of applicants tend to, I'm talking about people who identify as, I guess, tend to, you know, if they can do half of it, they'll, they'll have a much more sort of, yeah, okay, I'll just put in an application and see what happens again. And I started sort of adopting that approach. 

I didn't think I have to, I have to tick every single box. It has to be perfect. You know, otherwise they won't even, you know, even look at me. 

You know, for example, my first job I got out of teaching, you know, they did have, it was desirable. If you'd worked in financial services before, well, lo and behold, I hadn't. I was coming fresh out of school. 

So it isn't always, you know, a be-all, a be-all and end-all. And I really encourage people, whatever gender they are, if you're the type of person who would look at a job advert and see the person's specification or, you know, the things that they want to think, well, I've only, I don't have that model. I've only got a few of them, you know, put yourself out there still and go for it because lots of places are looking at growing people and potential rather than just having necessarily the complete finished article as well. 

Yeah. I think, I think that's really, I watched Sarah's face when you, when you articulated that last point and it's, it's really true. It's about that self-belief.

It's that can-do attitude. So I know that you stayed for eight months in your first position and then, and then you moved to management responsibility. Yeah. 

It's, so I, and again, I, when I was at the company, they, they'd started making some redundancies, not in my team, but about four months in. And again, it's not something that happens very often in teaching. So it was completely new ground, new territory for me to kind of be in a business where that, so I'd started thinking, okay, this, this probably won't be my, I knew it wouldn't be my forever job, a stepping stone job. 

So about the eight month in point, I decided to get really serious again about looking at the next thing. Two reasons that, one was being the kind of redundancies that are sort of happening in the company made me feel like, you know, I didn't want my position to become vulnerable. And the second was, I took on what I'd call more of a junior role. 

So learning and development business partner in learning and development is more of a junior role. Like I didn't have any management type responsibilities. So I kind of felt really like I was chomping at the bit and ready to give in more. 

So again, it sort of felt like it just came at the right time to start looking again. Yes. And I started looking again. 

And again, when I started looking for job number two, I absolutely knew that I'll be applying for lots and lots of jobs again. I think it was, I got to 120 of jobs, I think I had five interviews and I ended up with two offers again. I seem to have a habit of getting down to two offers, but that's nice because it means you have a choice about which job you want to go for and how you can negotiate sort of better terms for yourself, which again is completely alien for us as teachers. 

I did have to get, you know, friends and family to hold. I sound like I'm very confident. I'm not. 

I had to get people to help hold my hand, you know, through those conversations because they were so agonisingly awkward and alien to me as somebody that had spent my whole life as a teacher. So then started, or by January, so January of this year, I started applying around August. I applied for the particular job I'm in now at the start of September. 

I was interviewed towards the end of October. So that was October last year and had the job offer even Halloween last year. So literally right around, so, you know, so literally within the last couple of weeks, so still a good, you know, two months right from that initial engagement with the company to, to interviewing, to then actually getting a job offer. 

It wasn't a quick process at all. And I started the new role as learning and development manager this January, this year. So yeah, I'm 10 months into it. 

Yeah. Well, honey, I just, I just love this resilience that you have and 120 applicants in. Hello, loyal listeners. 

It's that time in the episode when me and Sarah put out our little begging bowl and ask you to help fund our podcast because it's coming out of our pockets and our kids have been living on beans on toast for months while we've been messing about pretending we're live on Loose Women. There's going to be a link in the episode notes and it's called Buy Us A Coffee. This is your chance to help fund the podcast. 

Give a little something back. Thank you. What I'd like to do now, Amy, is take you back to the Amy who was in teaching, who put her, her own medical needs second, who had that guilt, who would never take time off.

That's the downside of teaching. And there are some false, false gods that keep us in there. For example, teachers go, well, I get long holidays. 

I get sick pay for six months full and six months half. Can you tell us a little bit about your experience of the corporate world when it's come to dealing with issues or illness? How's the Amy operating in our corporate world? Completely differently. And again, you know, I'm a parent as well. 

And there was a real fear about how am I going to, you know, manage the holidays, for example. You know, oh my goodness, we get such, you know, good, good sick pay in teaching. You know, what if I was ever needed to be, you know, off sick and things like that for anything. 

And what I have found is that from my experiences in my first job out of teaching, I think I had maybe one day off. I get migraines, unfortunately. So, I think I had one day off for migraines. 

So, it really wasn't like a big deal. It was just, yeah, sure, you're not well. Don't come into work today. 

That's it. There's no having to sit at a laptop when you've got a migraine, trying to think things over. And in my second job out of teaching, so the job I'm in now, they offer all staff sort of the benefits. 

So, that's, you know, the sick pay, you know, either health care or dental care from day one of joining. And you never go into a job thinking, oh, you know, I'm, you know, I'm going to need to have some time off and things like that. But life happens. 

And earlier this year, I was diagnosed with PTSD. And it got to a point where actually I was really suffering with my symptoms. And my work were absolutely brilliant because we often think that in the corporate world that there might be no empathy. 

And from my personal experience, that could not be further from the truth. I was arranged, not private, so trauma counselling within two weeks. And I had that for about 20 sessions of sort of specialist counselling for PTSD. 

And then I had, and I'm still going for it now actually, a fortnightly CBT, which has all been kind of by and by. But I also got to a stage where I needed to down tools. And the conversation I had with my manager when I think that they, they recognise actually, you know, for me to, to really kind of start getting better, feeling better. 

And it was very much about we want you to be better. It wasn't that, you know, we need you back, because actually, they said, look, we've got we've got loads of people in the team, like it will keep going, it's fine, you just need to take some time off and get yourself sort of feeling much better. But the, you know, my personal company benefits is, is six months full sick pay, like it was in teaching. 

And I got that from the very first day of joining. And then it goes to 75% pay for six months as well. So, you know, really, really comprehensive pay. 

And again, I had such fear thinking, you know, Oh, no, that's going to be really, you know, really awful to, you know, take some time off so soon to the job. And actually, you know, their attitudes are very much life happens. You know, nobody ever wants to be, you know, unwell or sick or have, you know, things happen in their life, but life can certainly throw curveballs. 

So, you know, it's, um, nobody's immune, you know, from having adversity in their lives, unfortunately. And we never know when we might face a moment of adversity. But for me, the biggest thing that I've noticed is having a truly supportive employer. 

Because again, like in teaching what you know, when I've had to have time off before, and, you know, either through operations or illness, etc. And one time I was off for, I think it was about 10 days, I had a really awful sort of gastro condition, but I really wasn't right still for quite some time after and I needed to do a phased return. But in teaching the phased return was so rushed, in my experience, it was, as soon as they saw you visible, they were expecting for the hours that you were there for you to be operating in exactly the same capacity as you were before you had any type of illness. 

And I'm currently working through a phased return with my work now. For example, in my first week back, my occupational health therapist said, all you are going to do is check your emails, clear your inbox, you're not going to be disturbed by anyone, there's no meetings, etc. And so it was built up really slowly, it was 50% for three weeks, then it's 60% for two weeks, then it's 70% for two weeks. 

So it's a really gradual, sort of incremental. And again, the rationale reason behind it is they want it to be a success, you know, they don't want it to become difficult, challenging, overwhelming that, you know, you end up being off sick again, or kind of, you know, or deteriorating again, and regular, you know, touch points with the occupational health therapist, because again, I know people can be nervous about occupational health being involved. But I absolutely, you know, the people, the company that I've had doing occupational health, they were absolutely the advocates for getting you healthy, because you being healthy, and better, however long that takes, but it means that you'll make it back to work. 

And I just think it's, you know, I feel like I'm working through a success story. You know, I was off for about three months completely, working back to a phased return. And again, I think in teaching, had I had, you know, a mental health condition such as PTSD, I don't know if I would have made it back, if I'm being completely honest, because I think you don't get, I didn't ever feel you get the space to truly recover, and to get better from things. 

So for me, I have found being outside of teaching, I've got looked after better, and, you know, in my health, and I've got ended up, you know, I'm very fortunate. But I ended up, you know, have ended up with better pay and benefits than I've ever had in teaching before. And it's just, and my holidays, again, when you book holidays, they are actually that thing that you can book for whenever suits you, whenever you want, and you don't have to work in them. 

And it's not the same, you know, I'd still have to leave handover notes, etc. You know, it's not just you can't just go off and, you know, nothing happens. I do a lot of project based work at the moment. 

So if there are deadlines or things happening, I need to make sure they're delegated and taken care of. But there's no having to actually, you know, physically work or check emails or be on my laptop whilst I am, you know, on a holiday. So that to me has been amazing. 

And the other thing I know, lots of people get really concerned about thinking, if I've been used to having, I say, sort of, I'm doing, you can't see it, but I'm doing air apostrophes. If I'm used to having a, you know, equivalent of, you know, three months off a year through the different school holidays, inverted commas, you know, how on earth am I going to cope with maybe, you know, 25 to 30 days annual leave? And you can, you absolutely can cope because you are not exhausted like you are teaching. I mean, let's face it, as a teacher, you get to the half terms, and particularly the October one, and you're on your knees. 

And, you know, you might have one day that you go off and enjoy something. But, and again, I just, you know, as we all know, it's just, you know, half terms is either spent setting up for the next, you know, classroom for the next thing, or getting the things work. You may half terms always by report writing, you know, they're not truly.

No, they're not. And it's, it's really, it's really interesting. And I'm sure Sarah and I reflected and listening to what you're saying about the difference in the corporate world, where Sarah and I are based with, with, with our lives, with Connexus Tuition, we're based in the middle of a business part in Warrington.

So, there's, there's huge, multi-tenanted offices. There's a big central eatery called the Engine Rooms. There's a beautiful lake with herons and ducks. 

But we've often, and we've not done it for a while. But we used to reflect, didn't we, Sarah, about walking the corridors at Rutherford House compared to walking the corridors in a school. People's pace of life is different. 

They make their lunch. They go for a walk in the middle of the day. They chit chat about nonsense at the water cooler, the way it's supposed to be.

So, we're in shared office space with different businesses. And yes, you'll, you'll hear a few people are stressed about something. But there is, it's not a stressful, chaotic environment.

And you've just outlined the fact that you've been in a job probably about 10 months. Yeah. And in that 10 months, they have paid for your mental health support, your occupational health therapy. 

They have put into play a really superb package of support to get you back into work. And anybody listening to that would think, wow, we do it at our workplace, don't we, Sarah? We've, unfortunately, our team has suffered with bereavements and life crises that have happened to them. Our priority, when we are looking in the eyes of that person, is you're all that matters to us. 

We'll pick up the stuff afterwards. And it's so sad that that doesn't happen in teaching. It really is. 

Because I do think, Sarah, you were a deputy, you worked with some great head teachers. They could do that. There were schools that did that. 

Yeah. Yeah. And that's it. 

Because you know, you will have seen me wince when we said it doesn't happen in teaching. It does happen in some places. There are great leaders, great, great head teachers who know what's what and people genuinely are first and foremost.

But even then, there is a restriction on that because the very nature of the way a school works, that it's a fixed year, that certain things have to be done at certain times, that becomes a very difficult thing to manage in terms of doing the right thing by the person, but also making sure that everything that needs to be done is done. It is, my experience is the same as yours, Amy, that it's a very different world out in the private sector. And yes, there's varying degrees of sick pay and benefits and all the rest of it. 

But it's, for me, it's about the quality of life. It's the, if I'm not 100% on a particular day, I'll still go in because that's in my nature. But the people around me and my boss accept I'm functioning at 60% and there is no stick being wielded to beat me with. 

It's just, you get to do what gets done, that's fine. Yeah, that's it. It's ridiculous, but what's really interesting in saying that is in my current, well, both of my corporate worlds, but particularly my current place, we have sort of weekly kind of meetings with our line manager and the whole team, et cetera. 

And we start off the meeting by talking about our capacity. And people are not afraid to say, I am over my capacity. I have too much work.

I can't get it all done. So there's that real psychological safety that's actually, it's completely normal to say there's too much work. And then the managers then say, okay, who else in the team's got a bit more capacity this week? Are you able to help take anything off them? And there is absolutely no stigma saying that I'm over my limit here with what I can juggle, like I have too much work or to do with the time given. 

Or again, if you're feeling a bit under the weather, for example, you have the flexibility very often to be able to choose to work from home today instead of going into the office. And those types of flexibilities are huge because you end up having this newfound control over your life, which you don't then have in teaching, which is all kind of geared up. So given the nature of teaching, you have to be physically present there to do the teaching more often than not. 

And that to me is completely different. And I would say no job is without stress. I have found it immensely challenging learning new skills, learning a new industry. 

And, you know, and I've gone from being, you know, near the top, you know, being an expert in the field to somebody, you know, in a new career with limited years of experience behind me, limited knowledge. And that can really completely throw you out of your comfort zone. And one of the other things I've noticed is now because everyone seems to have a bit more capacity and flexibility outside, when you are struggling with something, I've just said to a colleague, you know, can you coach me how to do that? I don't know how to do that. 

Or I know you've shown me once already, but I'm really not sure in this process, show me again. And in teaching, you know, and particularly, you know, ECTs that are joining or the mentors, you know, who are trying to fight to find this time to be able to, you know, to mentor them, to coach them, to train them. And then there's such a fear about saying, I don't know this, I don't understand this. 

You know, not in all school cultures, I know, because I don't think the school, my last school that I was in, I left up, you know, certainly weren't that culture, you know, we had a very different language. And I'll talk about, I've just had an absolute car crash of a lesson, you know, that it reflects. Why? Because I wanted it to be normal for people to be able to say like, oh, that didn't go well. 

But let's, think about why or what could be different. And my experience in corporate is, you know, talks about boundaries are encouraged. You know, it's, you know, and talking about your capacity is encouraged. 

And what that means is that you can then, you know, if I'm blocking out time on my diary to have my lunch hour, I do that. I force myself to step away from the screen. I go out for a walk, I put something in the slow cooker, I get a load of Zinzos, I'm working from home, I need to load a washing one. 

The days I'm in the office, it's time to, you know, just talk and connect with people, you know, you know, a teaching, we all say, I chuckle if I say teaching lunch hour, because it's not a tool, it's how quickly can you inhale your lunch and, you know, do everything else in between. But you don't get that time just to, just to talk and connect. So, there are moments of stress, and there are challenges. 

And I have deadlines, etc, like anybody else in the work world has. But what I don't have is a pace of 100 miles an hour, I have some autonomy over how I can choose to work my hours and where I can choose to work my hours. And it means that, you know, for example, a few of our colleagues, you know, start work earlier before they go and drop their children off to school, etc. 

Then they come back and do a bit of work, they dip out for a bit in the afternoon, and then, you know, they finish again. So, people have that, it's called that empowered flexibility. It doesn't really matter, you know, how you get it done. 

You know, as long as you're able to make it work for you, then that's all that matters, isn't it? So, it's been again, a real change for me to learn, you know, how to embrace all this empowered flexibility. And, again, I was the parent who was, you know, up out of the house, you know, at 7am, with the kids, shipping one off to wraparound care, one off to nursery. And my life was just 100 miles an hour, all day long, you know, then I would get home and pick one up from wraparound care, one up from nursery, you know, as quick as I could, I'm ashamed to say, you know, I was always working full time, but do the, you know, dinner bed routine, you know, it didn't really feel very pleasant, if I'm honest, much of my, kind of, my children's younger years. 

And it was when I'd started my new first job out of teaching, and my son had just started secondary school, and my daughter is the oldest and is working, we sat down and had breakfast together. And I thought, I mean, I'd never done it with my son, because he was only 11 at the time, but it'd been 14 years, because my daughter's a bit older, that I'd had, like, breakfast in a working week, with my children, and that hit me. And to be honest, it kind of wouldn't have mattered what job I was doing, really, I was just like, I'm actually having breakfast with my children. 

And, you know, and I see my, kind of, my family more than ever now, you know, particularly the days I'm working from home, I'm there when they set off to school and work, and I'm there when they get in. And yes, you know, if I'm not in a meeting, I can stop work for 15 minutes to say, I know how their day is, nobody's like, nobody's watching, it's, you know, or it's not a problem to do that. It just. 

So it sounds like when you're, when you're comparing life before and after, it's leading us beautifully into, into the question we love asking our guests. We love asking them, because you've given us a few tasters. So yeah, I'm assuming you've got something nice saved up. 

Amy, what's your sliding doors moment in your life? The most significant sliding doors moment for me is, I had grandparents that passed away during COVID, and their wish was that they, they wanted to be returned to the water, to have the ashes scattered in the bay that they grew up in. And I, I knew, because this was all kind of, the trip had been delayed going out there, because, you know, because there was COVID, etc, etc. And it just wasn't the right time. 

And I was still teaching when my family were talking about, you know, wanting to plan the trip for the next year. So I left December 2022. But you know, they'd started talking about it in, in 2022, about going out there next, about next spring, and being, you know, going, going to the bay where they grew up to scatter their ashes, and sort of doing some family ceremony out there. 

And because I was still teaching, I knew that I would have to go through the agony of having to, you know, write to the governors, write to the hedge, you know, plea for this time off. And I know I wouldn't be able to stay out there the whole time with the family, I just have to probably, you know, I might be lucky if I can go for the weekend, and maybe fly back on the Monday or something like that. Like I knew I wouldn't get the whole time out there with the family. 

So there was already a compromise. And, and obviously, how I ended up, you know, didn't plan on leaving teaching is all quite sudden in some respects. But it meant that once I had left that I knew I was going to be able to go out on that trip with the family for the whole time, and not have to ask anyone's permission. 

All I had to do was, you know, just book time off work in an online form. And that was it. And it was the most special thing, like, I can't explain like, being in an airport when it's not the school holidays, like that felt amazing. 

You know, and then actually to be able to be out there with the family to watch the sunrise over the bay and scattered their ashes and said goodbye to them. And I thought I wouldn't have might not been able to have done that if I was teaching, because I couldn't guarantee that I'd be allowed the time off to do that. And I'm trying not to well up because it's a podcast, but it's, you know, to me, it meant it meant everything. 

And it was the most special trip I've ever had in my life. Well, you've talked about not welling up. Wow. 

And not only to be there, but to be present. Yeah. Yeah. 

And that has it to be relaxed and relaxed and not panicking about what might be happening at school, or did I leave the right work? Oh, no, I forgot to tell this person that I was going to have this meeting with this parent, you know, I was fully present with the family and able to, to enjoy it. And yeah, it was just that to me was just, I couldn't put a price on that. Because it was absolutely, absolutely priceless to be able to, to do something so special with the family. 

So it's... Well, thank you. Thank you for sharing that. And I think, I think the thank you extends beyond sharing that last Gliding Doors moment. 

Thank you for your time today, Amy, because you have given such a wealth of advice and inspiration in many ways at Stickability. Sarah's written note after note after note. Your journey is, is one that I know will help and inspire and motivate many, many people. 

And on behalf of Sarah and I, thank you for all the work you do in life after teaching, moderating, that group would not be the place it is without you. So, Amy, until next time, take lots of care. Thank you very much. 

Thank you, Amy. Wow. What a brilliant guest on every single level. 

Amy Mead, well, she's just the gift that kept on giving. What are your thoughts, my friend? Notes, notes everywhere. You made all the notes. 

I made all the notes. I think something that came through right the way through for me, and she said it at the end about the concept of where she's working, this empowered flexibility. But actually, if you go right the way back through everything that she talked about, it was about empowerment. 

She empowered herself. She empowered herself in terms of the job hunting and everything that she's done. And I think for me, what I, what I wrote down was that she saw job hunting as a job in itself. 

Yes. I wrote that down. It became her job before she got a job, which I think is an amazing way to look at it, that she structured her time, that she built in breaks, that she, I just, that really resonated with me. 

And what also I was thinking about was how different recruitment is in the real world, not in the teaching world, because the teaching recruitment process fundamentally is almost like a closed loop, isn't it? It's people from in one pool of, of employees across the country. Those jobs come up, people bounce around between them, but it's, it's a very tight process with, with teacher recruitment. And for people who are listening who perhaps aren't even teachers, it's so structured and such a short timeframe as well. 

A job comes up, there's two weeks to apply, the deadline happens, the interviews are a week later, you find out on the day, it's very tight. So, well, we know why, because of the lunacy, the thing I go on about all the time, because there's only three bloody times a year you can genuinely put a resignation in. No, I know, and that's, that's an episode, that's an episode all by itself, isn't it? But I think for me, that's one of the, one of the questions that we get a lot of in the group about, well, what happens if I get this job? Will they wait for me? And actually, I don't think people realise how long recruitment actually takes outside in the private sector, and that, that realistically, you know, it won't be a wait for them because it takes that long that it will, it will fall into place. 

The other things for me, we're not ticking all of the boxes, and I've talked to you about this before, there's been a really robust piece of research done on this about the, the attitudes of people when, when they're approaching job applications and the characteristics of people who will not go for it unless they've ticked 100% of the boxes. Okay, should we talk about, should we talk about the classic example of that? Boris bloody Johnson. I mean, if there was a candidate who was underqualified for a job, but had the confidence, he's always been the inverted imposter, hasn't he? I mean, let's face it. 

Talk about, yeah, I can do that. No problem at all. I can run the country.

I mean, imagine just having an ounce of that confidence slash delusion. That's great. And then, and then there, there were a couple of other things, and I thought of the transition from year six to year seven. 

You go from being the big fish in the little pond in year six to being the little fish in the big pond in year seven. And Amy talked about that, that movement of being in a role where she, where she knew everything. She was confident as a teacher, as a senior leader, having to learn new skills and in a different environment and feeling very uncertain about it. 

Consciously incompetent. And, and, and that is exactly what I'd written that, that four stage, not knowing what you don't know to where she is now that, that she, she just gets on with it and does. Was able to ask for help. 

I remember being given the job of head of year on the Friday, started on the Monday. Absolutely no induction. Okie dokie, right, you're head of year.

Um, and for me, what it became about the moment I, the penny dropped with me was when she talked about not having to be the expert in the subject because she was the expert in how to teach and brain. And I, I, that, that resonates so much with how you and I work in, in what we do that, that you quite often will have a concept of what you want doing or what you want something to look like. And then I will translate that into the, the training or the module or the process or whatever.

And I think that, that for me, again, is, is the difference of, and I am generalising, but it's becoming stark in terms of conversations that we're having that, that outside of teaching that understanding that not everybody can do everything and you fit together as a jigsaw puzzle and that's absolutely okay. And it's probably better than expecting people to be experts in something that they can't be experts at. It's like when we've talked to previous guests and they've, they've come back off a maternity leave and they started the job because they were English lead. 

They've been running the literacy project. They've been a phase lead. Uh, is it a phase lead? I don't know the terminology for primary. 

And then all of a sudden, right, you're now doing ICT. We don't know anything about that. So because there's that urban myth that actually you're employed as a teacher in your subject, you should be able to teach anything because your contract is as a teacher and to have that time and space. 

Now, when I was listening to it, I thought, this is great because we're in that corporate world. We, we have a ball. We know, you know, we do. 

We're up to all sorts of nonsense. If I was sat there in my pit, my stomach would be churning because my chimp brain would have kicked in at that point, listening to Amy, listening to us going, yeah, it's all right for you. It's all right for you lot because you've got that self-belief. 

I am worthless. I could never do what she does. I, and it was about how she evolved into that. 

She went and met with people. She leaned to family and friends who were in the corporate world. She didn't sit there and empower herself from within.

Initially, she went and sought connection in the world and surrounded herself with the right people to find that empowerment. So if you are sat there listening, thinking that could never be me, go and look in your phone to who is living that life and go and spend time with them. Even if you go to a network meeting or you get on LinkedIn and you start to make connections within the corporate world, because corporate to me 10 years ago meant stuffy, suited and booted.

What was his name? Michael Douglas, Gordon Gekko, greedy. That's not the corporate world. The corporate world is probably more understanding and ahead of the game where mental health is concerned, where neurodiversity is concerned, compassion. 

Forget that. The private sector genuinely can. Don't get me wrong. 

I'm sure there are companies that are awful to work for. That's life. But if in our office, if we had one of those, do you remember the blue triangles that said investors in people? Oh yeah. 

They used to put them up in schools and you'd be sat there thinking what? How have you blanked that coat of arms on outside the most toxic head teacher in the world's office? We do invest in people because Amy's been invested in because she has a value. Because if you take it to its most basic sense, if she's training people in her organisation to be better, to perform better, to be more compliant, guess what the company will ultimately make? Money. Money. 

Absolutely. I think for me it's you're absolutely on the money that you don't come out the finished article ready for the next bit. And anybody who's listened to our podcast with my story, it is a journey. 

And I hate that word journey because it's been so overused. But it is. And you will meander through different phases of complete bewilderment, not having a clue what's happening. 

But it's that trust that you keep on going, you'll get to where you need to be. And I think Amy just absolutely captured that for me. She did what I did. 

Some people talk about it as a journey. I like the expression a quest. I went on a quest to create a better life for myself and the kids. 

And I felt that when Amy was talking, she was on a quest. I've done 200 more than that job applications. I was learning everything I could about learning and development. 

I was going, she was on a quest. I'm surprised you've not invoked the hero's journey. What's that? In terms of the narrative of a story as an English teacher, Sharon.

What's that? Is this some podcast she's been listening to? Because I know that your references are my references. You normally go to science fiction. I'm thinking, is this like the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy she's going on about or something? But yeah, I loved all that. 

I loved her advice. And then this is what got it for me. She's been in a job 10 months. 

She's on a phased return. Within weeks of starting that job, she had a mental health episode that had been a hangover from nothing to do with that company. They've swept her up. 

They've supported her. When she talked about that phased return, and I think about how that plays out in the world of teaching. Yes, you'll just be coming in for three days a week, but there's no protection around those three days. 

We're getting so, so wrong. And there's no guilt attached to what she was talking about. There was a couple of moments, and we'll come on to the sliding doors in a minute because I just went when she was talking about that. 

Breakfast with your kids. I loved that because I was able to see them off at the door. I was able to be there for the first offload when they get through the door and they talk dribble about Rama. 

And she said this, and you've lost track of what the story is, but you're there for the offload. Those moments are magical, and we still look at them as gifts. They should be our givens.

It's crackers, isn't it? So let's go on to a sliding doors moment where she's at the bay in Malta. Ruined me. I saw that. 

Ruined me, but internally. Yeah, and acute for me. There's so many parallels with Amy's experience for me in terms of the surgeries and all the rest of it, but that in terms of being with family, to honour the last wishes of grandparents. 

I remember my dad died in August, August 2010, and I was so relieved he passed in August. And my sister was a teacher at the time as well, and we joked about it and said, well, I'll give him something. He died on the 1st of August, so we didn't have to. 

And then when I went in school in the September, which was probably about three weeks afterwards, but you do three weeks after your dad's died, a long, agonising death. I remember the headteacher reading out and said, oh, and we sent condolences to Sharon Carlin, who lost a mother over summer. They'd actually got the wrong parent. 

I'm like, oh my God almighty, what am I? But you just let it roll off, you don't you? Well, you see, I wouldn't have done with my neurodiverse brain. I'd have wanted to have corrected that and then would have publicly shamed them inadvertently by my need to correct. Then would have been sat in a pile of guilt going, I should have kept my mouth shut.

But that being able to be there and return the grandparents to the bay that they played in as kids and I don't know, it just makes you think, but to the members out there and to the listeners out there who can relate to what she's saying, because you've made it through to the other side, good on you. I should imagine you going, yep, yep, yep. And to those who haven't keep the faith because we know Amy and she wouldn't mind us saying that if Amy can do it, anyone can do it.

So thank you, Sarah Dunwood. Thank you, Amy Mead. And thank you listeners for sticking through another wonderful, wonderful episode of the Pit Pony Podcast.

Thanks for staying with us during another great episode of the Pit Pony Podcast. And on behalf of myself, Sarah Dunwood, Mike Roberts at Making Digital Real, we wish you all the very best and we'll see you soon. If you wish to contact me directly for a support session or a clarity call for your next steps, please find my link in the comments below. 

See you soon.