You’re Not Crazy – You’re Just in the Wrong System

Big Rocks, Small Peeps, and What ATS Systems Really Do to Teacher Resumes

In this episode, Vanessa talks about the physics of “yes” and “no,” how scope creep quietly expands your workload, a Peeps-inspired morale hack, and a deep dive into how Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) actually interpret teacher resumes outside the classroom.

If you’ve ever felt like you’re doing everything right but nothing is landing… roll your chair up and have a listen!

The Power of Yes & No

When you say yes to something, you’re automatically saying no to something else — even if you don’t see it immediately.

In this segment we explore:

• Why teachers are conditioned to say yes
• How scope creep grows one tiny task at a time
• The Big Rocks analogy and protecting what matters most
• Recognizing gaslighting in professional environments
• Asking: Does this enhance your Big Three — or take away from them?

Sometimes the most powerful boundary is a quiet, thoughtful no.

 Peeps: The Hack 

A lighthearted reset designed to support emotional regulation and morale — for students and staff.

Ideas from today’s episode:

• Peeps coloring for low-pressure brain breaks
• Turning small moments of joy into connection
• Why “sharpening the saw” often gives you time back later

ATS Terrain: Naming Names!

Last week we talked about terrain — this week we name names.

You’ll learn a little about United Talent, Workday, Taleo, and USAJobs

Key takeaway:

 Your skills didn’t change. The terrain did.

It’s isn’t that you have to reinvent yourself. You just have to learn how the different systems listen.

🎯 Need a guide?

If this episode resonated with you, you don’t have to navigate it alone.

I offer free Discovery Sessions where we look at:

• where you are right now
• where you want to go
• and what terrain you’re actually walking into

🌐 Schedule directly at https://www.teachersintransition.com/calendar

🎬 Links! 

Fabergé Organics Shampoo — “Tell Two Friends” Commercial
 https://dallasregionalchamber.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/they-told-two-friends-and-they-told-two-friends-and-so-on/

And if today’s episode made you feel a little less crazy, go ahead and tell two friends about the podcast… and they’ll tell two friends… and so on, and so on.

CONNECT WITH VANESSA

• 💌 Email: Vanessa@teachersintransition.com
• 📱 Call or Text: 512-640-9099
• 📅 Book a Free Discovery Call: teachersintransition.com/calendar
• 🔗 Bluesky: @beyondteaching.bsky.social
• 📸 Instagram & Threads: @teachers.in.transition
• 👍 Facebook: Teachers in Transition
• 🐦 X (Twitter): @EduExitStrategy

 Catch you peeps later.

 The transcript to this podcast is found on the episode’s homepage at Buzzsprout

Transcript

Hi! Welcome back to Teachers in Transition!   I’m Vanessa.  I worked as a teacher in the performing arts for 25 years before leaving education for corporate America where I worked for a Fortune 500 company that specialized in helping people get jobs. So, I know what it’s like on BOTH sides of the hiring table!  Now, I take that knowledge and I help improve the lives of teachers. I am really happy you’re here today!  Today, we are going to talk about the physics behind ‘yes’ and ‘no’, I have a Peeps related hack to help with morale and emotional regulation, and we have some ATS decoding going on in our career transition and job search segments.  

One of the things I come back to over and over again is the power of the word no. We know it’s powerful — it’s one of the first words kids learn, and they absolutely love it because it gives them choice. That tiny human suddenly realizes, “Oh… I can decide something.” And for a while, they use that power constantly. No to vegetables. No to bedtime. No to literally everything. Even the things way want.  

And somewhere along the way, especially in education, we lose that muscle.

We start hearing messages like: you need to say yes. You just have to figure it out. If you say no, you must not care enough. And the irony is that the people who hear that the most are usually the ones who care the most. If you push back, maybe you’re being difficult (remember last weeks’ episode told us that being difficult isn’t necessarily a bad thing!).

So today I want to explore something that sounds simple but isn’t simple at all: when you say yes to one thing, you are automatically saying no to something else.

We like to pretend that we can say yes to everything — that we can somehow it’s like scoops of ice cream and we can somehow hold vanilla and chocolate at the same time — but time doesn’t work like that. Energy doesn’t work like that. Even attention doesn’t work like that. Every decision closes another door, even if we don’t notice it right away.

And sometimes those yeses are big. When my husband said yes to joining the Army, we said no to choosing where we lived. (we said no to a lot of our choices with that one!)  That yes meant structure, movement, unpredictability — and purpose. It wasn’t wrong. It wasn’t bad. But it came with invisible no’s attached to it such as zip code.

And I think that’s where teachers struggle a lot. Teachers are trained to see yes as virtue. Yes equals dedication. Yes equals professionalism. Yes equals love for kids. But no one sits down and says, “Okay… what are you quietly saying no to every time you accept one more thing?”

That’s where scope creep starts to sneak in.

Let me define scope creep a little bit.  It’s an HR term, and I know that’s an HR term that doesn’t show up much in education conversations — almost like we pretend it doesn’t exist — but it absolutely does. Let’s use the kitchen as an example, because it’s one of the clearest ways to see it.

Let’s just say your job is dishes. Just dishes. Cool. You show up, you wash the dishes.  Job done.  Then someone asks if you can wipe the counter. It’s fast – just takes a second!  So you do that.  You show up, do the dishes and wipe the counter.  Boom.  Done. 
 Then all of a sudden, you notice that you don’t have what you need to do the dishes or wipe counter.  So you bring it up. You’re told that no one got to it, but you can order those things.  Then you start ordering supplies. Then you’re coordinating cleanup. Before you know it, you’re running the whole kitchen — and nobody ever formally changed your role (or your pay!!).  It just… happened.  That’s scope creep.  
 
 In corporate world, extensive scope creep is either grounds for renegotiating salary or splitting the job in two and getting another person. Although to be fair, often in this economy, you lose a colleague and they dump the whole thing in your lap and tell you to be happy to be employed at all.  

Education is notorious for SCOPE Creep. One tiny addition at a time. It just takes five minutes. One little five-minute task that becomes permanent. And because teachers are fixers — yes, I’m going to use that word — we step in, we solve the problem, and suddenly the problem becomes our responsibility.  And then there’s another little task.  And another and another and so on and so on, and suddenly we’ve lost hours (and it feels like we’re stuck in an old shampoo commercial that I will link in the show notes)  and so on and so on and so on…

 I worked very hard last year with a mentor to create an algorithm to help me sort the yeses and noes in my life.  I’m very duty-bound. Very responsible. I carry it in my planner (yes, a physical panner) to help me decide what to say yes to.  It’s not perfect. “Do I want to do this?” isn’t even my first question - it’s down near the bottom.  Which is probably something I’m still working on. Because sometimes we do things we don’t want to do. Colonoscopies come to mind. That’s just reality. The things have to get done.

But eventually I ask: does this enhance my big three… or take away from them?  When I talk about my big three, I am thinking of the Big Rocks analogy.
 
 As a reminder of this little parable:
  A professor stands in front of a class with a large empty jar. First, he fills the jar with big rocks and asks if it’s full. The students say yes. Then he pours in pebbles, which settle into the spaces between the rocks. He asks again if it’s full. They say yes. Next comes sand, which fills even smaller gaps. Finally, he pours in water, proving that there was still room left.

The lesson isn’t supposed to be about cramming more into your life — it’s about order of priority.

If you put the sand in first — all the small, urgent, distracting tasks — there would be no room left for the big rocks. The big rocks represent the most important parts of your life: family, health, purpose, and meaningful work. The pebbles and sand are everything else that tries to fill your time.

The takeaway is simple:

So if you don’t intentionally place your big rocks into your schedule first, the small stuff will quietly crowd them out.  

When I started working on this week’s podcast, my immediate thoughts for a Big Three (because three is a magic number!).  My three biggest things are my family — husband, kids, dogs — my home, and my work. And as I was typing, there was the awkward realization that I didn’t include myself in that list. And that realization didn’t come with shame — it came with curiosity. Because we don’t do shame here. There’s that whole anti-shame crusade.  But maybe it needs to be a big 3-5.  Remember – whatever works for you is what works for you!  

And maybe that’s the real question behind every yes: what part of yourself are you protecting, and what part are you sacrificing?

I was sharing this adage with a teacher friend quite awhile ago “if you say yes to one thing, it is a no to another.”   She was aghast.  Her flabbers were gasted! She told me that you don’t have to say no to things – you can yes to all the things. I might point out that I think my friend is chronically overscheduled, but we also have different energy reserves and health issues.  But the physics is unmistakeable – If I say yes to going to the movies at 7:00 on a Friday – wait – who am I kidding… If I say Yes to going to the movies at the first matinee on a Saturday morning,  I cannot be using that same time to grade papers in my classroom.  Maybe we should be trying to hit  that show at  5:00 on a weekday? Anyway…  Eventually, you run out of hours or energy or the urge to try and make it work for everyone. Eventually, maybe you remember to count yourself in your big rocks without having to go back and edit. 
 
 Regardless of what age you are – you have to live with you for the rest of your life.  Say yes to you.  Say yes to things that keep you healthy.  Say yes to a better life. 

Okay… we need a quick Peeps intermission.

Pivoting away from talk about heavy decisions and scope creep and all of that, let’s talk about today’s Hack.  The hacks I share are designed to create time or space in your life  your brain to help you to have more time to spend on you for the things you need.  And sometimes you just need a breather. 

So this weekend, I ran into an office supply store to grab a new cover for my planner (a zipper is too confining, and elastic has a shelf life), and on my way to the checkout I saw this adorable little Peeps coloring book. You know — the marshmallow fluff creatures that show up every spring.

And for the record, the only correct way to eat a Peep… is to not eat a Peep. I said what I said. Although watching them joust with toothpicks in the microwave is admittedly entertaining — but don’t try that at home, kids.

But something about it felt innocent. Friendly. Easy. And I thought, who doesn’t want emotional regulation for $1.49?

So I grab it, head to the register, and it rings up $2.24. I mention that to the cashier who tells me “it says it’s $2.24.” Now I have to know how I screwed up because it clearly said $1.49, and I walk over to check the tag. Sure enough, the price label SAID $1.49, but what it said it was FOR wasn’t a coloring book about Peeps. The clerk followed because he wanted to know too.  He thought it was weird because there was no label for a coloring book. I laughed and said “I see that, but my eyes are really bad, and I just saw the big numbers.  Old people, you know?”  And we both laughed. And as we walked back, I told him, “You know what the important thing here is? Neither of us is crazy.”  

Because sometimes I’m not trying to be right — I just want to understand what happened.  I have to understand how it went wrong – the WHY, you know?  I want to know how I arrived at the thought I arrived at so it makes sense. And if you’ve spent any time in education, you realize part of that is a trauma response. We get gaslit so often that we constantly want the receipts. Sometimes understanding the mechanism is simply about reclaiming your sanity.

But back to the our hack! And yes, I know time is tight in our classrooms. I’m not suggesting another big initiative or something that adds five more minutes to your plate. It’s in the realm of “sharpening the saw’ if you are familiar with the idea that if you don’t stop and sharpen your saw from time to time, it takes MUCH longer to do the sawing in the first place.  Taking the time to sharpen the saw saves time in the long run.  So consider a coloring a Peep. If you teach littles, it’s just an easy thing to color while you grab a moment of sanity.  It also helps regulate them. If you teach older kids, consider letting them color for emotional regulation and just plain silliness. 

Sometimes a small, low-stakes reset gives you more focus back later.  And them. 

Here’s a playful twist: make the Peeps smaller – like 4-6 to a page for the copy machine.  Have them write “Return to Room 314” (or whatever your room is) on the back.  If you have the kind of school where you can hide them everywhere, that’s one idea.  Another idea (because I’m ALL about teacher morale here) Hide them in staff only spaces. It’s essentially a little Easter egg hunt that builds connection and morale. Trade a pen, a pencil, or a Hershey kiss when someone brings one back. Nothing elaborate. Just something that reminds everyone that joy is permitted. 
 
 And if you’re doing the teacher morale version, consider what it looks like when the first teacher says “I found this Peep, and it said to bring it here?” and they teacher gets a little cheer or “huzzah” (plan that out before hand!  Maybe clapping in sign language…).  I like Huzzah, though…. That’s hilarious.  “I have this Peep”  
 
 Huzzah!
 
 Everyone will have all the laughs. 

Alright…moving over into our career transition and job search segment where I have practical advice for you about leaving the classroom and looking for jobs. Last week we talked about how different Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) are like the different topological terrains on a map. This week I’m naming a few names.

We’re going to start somewhere familiar: PowerSchool — or United Talent — because many of you already live there. That environment speaks education language. Certifications matter. Grade levels matter. And right here is where we need to talk about something I call the kill switch questions.

These are the screening questions at the beginning of an application — things like, “Do you hold a valid certification?” or “Do you meet the minimum requirement for this role?” And if you don’t meet that requirement… YOU SHALL NOT PASS. A full Gandalf moment there. The system isn’t judging your worth as a human; it’s simply enforcing a gate. PowerSchool and other education portals tend to be very binary about this because districts have compliance rules they must follow. You will find these kill switch questions in other job applications where compliance is a big part of it. 

So the practical takeaway here is simple: read those questions carefully before you invest emotional energy into the rest of the application. If the requirement is truly non-negotiable, the system may automatically screen you out long before a human ever sees your name. That’s not failure. That’s navigation. Understanding where the gate is saves you time and protects your energy.

Now, let’s take a basic teacher bullet point — something like:
  “Designed and implemented differentiated lesson plans for diverse learners.” 
 
 Inside PowerSchool, that language works. It fits the ecosystem because you’re still speaking education.  Everyone reads and hears and understands all the Eduspeak

But eventually many of you step outside and your journey will take you into Workday, and this is where the terrain starts to feel different. Workday isn’t one system — it’s thousands of customized versions of the same structure. One company might want long descriptions, another strips formatting entirely. Some versions struggle with acronyms unless you spell them out at least once. 
 
So let’s go back to our basic bullet: 
“Designed and implemented differentiated lesson plans for diverse learners.”
 
That same bullet needs to evolve to match the terrain.  
Think: “Developed customized training materials aligned to varied learning styles, improving engagement and performance outcomes.” 

Notice that nothing about your skill changed — only the language shifted. Workday tends to respond well to strong action verbs like developed, led, implemented, analyzed. And here’s a survival tip: avoid stacking education acronyms unless you’ve introduced them clearly. PLC, IEP, RTI -  those mean everything in a school, but in a corporate Workday environment they can and will disappear into the void if the system doesn’t parse them correctly. As a line from song from my favorite band says “lost without a trace no hope at all.” 

Taleo is another big ATS.  It’s bigger than people realize. You’ll see it in ed-adjacent organizations, large nonprofits, hospital systems, and a huge portion of healthcare hiring. And considering healthcare makes up roughly one-sixth of the U.S. GDP, understanding how to navigate Taleo is an important skill.  It is not optional, it’s a major gateway.

Taleo behaves differently from newer systems. It’s older, more rigid, and heavily keyword-driven. Think of it less like a conversation and more like a checklist.
 
 The basic resume bullet says:
 “Designed and implemented differentiated lesson plans for diverse learners.”

 In Taleo, that same teaching bullet might evolve into:
 “Delivered instructional design solutions supporting differentiated learning strategies; utilized data analysis to adapt curriculum delivery.” 

You’ll notice the verbs become more formal, and the keywords repeat more intentionally. That’s not accidental — Taleo often rewards repetition because its parsing logic looks for patterns rather than nuance. Another survival tip here: fancy formatting, tables, or creative layouts will often confuse older systems like Taleo. Simpler structure often performs better. Think about the KISS method:  Keep It Super Simple

And then we have USAJobs (as a bonus name here), which honestly deserves its own category because it plays by completely different rules. No irony there, she said with extreme sarcasm…

Federal resumes are long - intentionally long - and detail is your friend. The same core experience expands outward. 

The basic resume bullet said:
 “Designed and implemented differentiated lesson plans for diverse learners.”

USAJobs is more comfortable with: “Developed and delivered differentiated instructional programs for 120+ students annually, aligning curriculum with state standards; analyzed performance data to modify instructional strategies and improve measurable outcomes.” Numbers matter. Scope matters. And repetition is not a flaw in USAJobs — it’s clarity.

What I want you to notice is that the skill never changed across any of these environments. The terrain didn’t change who you are — it changed how you describe what you do. And that’s where many teachers get stuck. They think they need to reinvent themselves, when really they’re learning how each system listens. It’s not actually all that different from learning how different students need to learn. 
 
 

So pay attention to verbs. Education language often leans toward supported, guided, nurtured — which are wonderful words — but many ATS systems respond better to built, led, designed, analyzed, improved. And pay attention to acronyms. Spell them out once so the system understands your world before you switch back to shorthand. This is also somethingwe know in teaching:
 
 “Tell  ‘em what you’re gonna tell ‘em.  Tell ‘em. And then, tell ’em what you told ‘em”

And there’s other little survival tips too that are important to remember.  In many corporate instances, when you use the word ‘student’, some looking at it is going to be shifted back to their own student days and their own prejudices about teachers.  And while we’ve all had great teachers, the odds are strong we’ve had at least one who wasn’t great.  Look for ways to imply student without saying student.  “Learner” is a popular choice. There are other ways around it.   But when you are creating the resume that is longer than Gandalf’s beard for USAJobs, student isn’t a disqualifier.

If you remember nothing else from this segment, remember this: you are not rewriting your story from scratch every time. You’re translating your experience so each system can understand it. That’s navigation, not reinvention.

And listen… if you’re sitting there thinking, “Okay, this makes sense, but I don’t know how to do this,” I want you to hear me clearly: you are not meant to figure this out alone.  

Career transition is a journey, and every journey is easier when you have someone who understands the terrain, knows where the gates are, and can help you translate what you’ve already done into the language of what comes next.

If you’re ready to start mapping out your own path, I invite you to schedule a free discovery session with me. You can do that right from my homepage at Teachers in Transition dot com, and there’s no charge to have that chat. There’s no pressure. It’s just a chance for us to talk about where you are, where you want to go, and what the next step might look like for you.

And if today’s episode helped you even a little bit, make sure you’re following the podcast and share it with a teacher who needs to hear they’re not crazy and they’re not alone. Even better? Write a review on Apple, Spotify, or over on the podcast’s homepage at Buzzsprout.  Reviews help Apple and Spotify push the podcast so that other teachers can find it if they’re also searching for what comes after leaving the classroom or if they are struggling with burnout.  You can help teachers you’ve never met with a simple review. 

Travels are better with others — you just might need someone who knows how to read the map.

Catch you Peeps later!

👋 CONNECT WITH VANESSA

• 💌 Email: Vanessa@teachersintransition.com
• 📱 Call or Text: 512-640-9099
• 📅 Book a Free Discovery Call: teachersintransition.com/calendar
• 🔗 Bluesky: @beyondteaching.bsky.social
• 📸 Instagram & Threads: @teachers.in.transition
• 👍 Facebook: Teachers in Transition
• 🐦 X (Twitter): @EduExitStrategy

That’s the podcast for today! If you liked this podcast, tell a friend, and don’t forget to rate and review wherever you listen to your podcasts. Tune in weekly to Teachers in Transition where we discuss Job Search strategies as well as stress management techniques.  And I want to hear from you!  Please reach out and leave me a message at Vanessa@Teachersintransition.com  You can also leave a voicemail or text at 512-640-9099. 

I’ll see you here again next week and remember – YOU are amazing!