What Your Life Has Been Trying to Tell You: The Warning Signs Teachers Ignore

This week on Teachers in Transition, Vanessa Jackson explores the warning signs teachers learn to ignore — in our bodies, our stress levels, and our careers.

What started as a routine dental cleaning turned into an unexpected root canal… and a much bigger realization about burnout, chronic stress, and how educators become experts at functioning while damaged. Vanessa shares the surprising moment her Garmin stress watch revealed that her body had been “keeping score” long before she consciously realized something was wrong.

Then in the Career Transition & Job Search segment, Vanessa tackles a major modern job-search question:

Do resumes still matter in the age of AI?

Short answer: Yes.  But differently.

In this episode:

• Why resumes still matter in an AI-driven job market 
• How Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) filter resumes 
• Why tailoring your resume matters more than ever 
• How to use AI strategically without sounding fake 
• Why LinkedIn is better for networking than passive “Easy Apply” applications 
• The powerful framework:
   “The job description is the question. Your resume is the answer.” 

This episode is part burnout conversation, part career strategy session, and part reminder that functioning is not the same thing as fine.

Mentioned in This Episode

• Teachers in Transition 
• Schedule a Discovery Call 
• Find Your Bearings  
• Helpful Prompt: “Use this job description and tailor my master resume to meet this job description. Do not exaggerate my experience. Do not invent skills I don’t possess. Rewrite my experience using the language and priorities of the job description while maintaining honesty and accuracy.

Connect with Vanessa Jackson

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

Functioning isn’t the same thing as fine.
 
Don’t ignore the warning lights just because you’ve learned how to drive with them on.

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

Transcript

Hi! and welcome back to Teachers in Transition, the podcast and community for teachers who are feeling stressed out, burned out, or just ready to explore what other opportunities might exist for them both inside and outside of education.  I’m Vanessa – today we are going to talk a lot about signals.  Not the Rush album from the 80s (although I do highly recommend that album), but the signals your body sends you. The signals your stress sends you. The signals your career sends you.  And we’re also going to talk a little bit about resumes in the age of AI, because oddly enough… these things are more connected than you might think.

Because functioning is not the same thing as fine.

I’m going to assume that most of my listeners probably have some sort of smartwatch out there in the world. Apple Watch, Fitbit… I love my Garmin watch. I have a Fenix 7 Pro with this little flashlight on it.  (kissing sound).  Love it! one of the things my Garmin tracks is stress levels.

And, the way it does that is actually pretty interesting. It measures heart rate variability throughout the day and uses that information to estimate physical stress levels. But psychological stress affects you physiologically too, so it ends up tracking both.

And I’ve been a little concerned for the last several months because my stress scores have been really high.  Like… weirdly high.

And the strange thing was, I didn’t think my life was particularly stressful. I mean, sure, life is life, but nothing catastrophic was happening. And what really caught my attention was that my stress levels weren’t even going down much while I slept.

And every time I look back at this now, it, it’s as obvious as the nose on my face. Because last week, I went in for a dental cleaning and it was time for X-rays.  After the X-rays, the dentist came and sat down and said “I want to show you this year’s X-rays compared to last year’s.”   That’s never a good comment, is it?  It wasn’t then either. 

So they sat down with me  and compared them to the current ones. One year ago, everything looked perfectly fine.  Absolutely nothing wrong. 

But now?

One of the teeth underneath an older filling had basically just… given up.  The tooth had gone bad, and I was going to need a root canal.  Surprise!  So this past Monday, I went in to get that done.

Now, I’m not necessarily afraid of the dentist. I’ve had some wild dental experiences before, including with this exact tooth, but generally speaking, I’m pretty pragmatic about medical stuff. I go in, we handle business, we move on.

Except apparently my nervous system had other plans because I walked into that office and immediately started involuntarily crying and shaking.

And I mean… quietly. I wasn’t screaming or panicking. But it was like all the past trauma associated with that tooth just leaked out everywhere all at once.  Along with my eyes which were involuntarily leaking. 

And the dentist and staff were genuinely concerned. I expected that my blood pressure to be awful, but it was normal. 

 But it was the concern from the staff, which honestly surprised me more than the procedure itself.

There is nothing in my chart from the last five or six years from going to this facility that would indicate I’m nervous at the dentist. And here I was absolutely falling apart in exam room three like I was made out of jigsaw puzzle pieces.

They were so kind to me, and I realize now how sad it is that kindness surprised me.

Because somewhere along the line (and I suspect a lot of teachers will understand this) I learned that my job was to quietly endure all the things.

To put my head down.
 To be “easy.”
 To not inconvenience anybody.
 To get an A-plus at being a patient, an employee, or helper, or teacher, with the least amount of recognition or support possible.

So when people sat there and treated me gently…
 when they checked on me…
 when they cared whether I hurt…

My brain almost didn’t know what to do with it That’s probably not entirely about dentistry.  That’s probably about teaching past. That’s probably about years of functioning while damaged.  It is REALLY hard to get out of that pattern.
 
 When they started, they would work for 3-5 to seconds, stop, take the little thing out of my mouth and then check on me.  Just 3-5 seconds.  After the third one, I said I was good to go and they could get in and get done, so they spaced that out some. There were one time where I had to raise my hand because it was really tender, and they put more numbing meds, but I have a fear of too much of that (from that aforementioned prior dental experience on that tooth.), so I was prepared to just gut it out and not complain after that first raising my hand. 

And afterward, the dentist sat down and said, “That tooth was extremely angry. We’re honestly surprised you weren’t in agonizing pain because when patients come in with a tooth that bad, they’re usually in a lot more pain.”

And I just sat there blinking at him because… I wasn’t in agonizing pain.

It was a little cold sensitive.
 It was annoying.
 But I didn’t think it was that bad.

And that’s when things clicked into place for me.

My body was keeping score before I was. That tooth was stressing my entire system out, and I didn’t even fully realize it.

And after the root canal?  For the first time in months, my watch started showing little blue bars indicating rest  DURING THE DAY.

Low stress.

My body had been carrying something I wasn’t consciously paying attention to.

And I KNOW teachers do this all the time.

We normalize functioning while damaged.

We normalize exhaustion.
 We normalize stress.
 We normalize pain.
 We normalize surviving.

And sometimes we become so accustomed to enduring things quietly that we don’t even notice how bad things have gotten until our system finally forces us to stop.

And sometimes (this is important too!) you can do everything right and something still goes wrong.

I get more than two cleanings a year. I fact, I get 3-4. 
 I take care of my teeth.
 I did what I was supposed to do.

And the tooth still failed anyway.  That happens too.  Not every bad outcome is a moral failing. Sometimes things just happen. And I think a lot of teachers need to hear that.

Because we carry so much guilt.

About our students
 About our homes.
 About our health.
 About our stress.
 About burnout.
 About needing rest.
 About not being able to carry everything anymore.

And not everything is your fault, and I know you sometimes you think like it is.

And as we move through the last frantic stretch of the school year, I really want to encourage you to remember:

That your health has to come before your job because you have to live with you for the rest of your life. And even when you’re functioning…that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re fine.

Also… go get your dental cleanings, y’all.  A good dentist makes it a whole lot less terrible.

And that moves us into today’s teacher hack.  Our teacher hacks are things that are designed you somewhere in those three coins of time, money, or stress.  So that you can get brain space back and maybe actual time back so that you can do the things you want to do. 

Today’s teacher hack is actually very simple:

Stop waiting until the pain becomes unbearable before you ask for help. That applies medically.
 
 Emotionally.
 Professionally.

Teachers are extraordinarily good at white-knuckling their way through impossible situations.

We wait too long to rest.
 Too long to ask questions.
 Too long to leave toxic environments.
 Too long to update resumes.
 Too long to go to the doctor.
 Too long to admit we’re overwhelmed.

And sometimes the warning signs show up long before the crisis does.  So if your body, your mind, or your career has been trying to get your attention lately… maybe listen a little earlier than we usually do.
 
 I just KNOW you’re waiting until summer to schedule those appointments if you are still in the classroom.  Schedule what you need BEFORE the year is over.  If you’re out of the classroom, make sure you aren’t behind on the things you’re supposed to take care of.  It’s SO much easier and less expensive to catch things early. 

So moving on to the career transition and job search section, I also want to talk a little bit about resumes in the modern era.

Specifically:  Do resumes even matter anymore in a world where AI exists?

Because there’s definitely some people in the job coaching world out there saying resumes don’t matter anymore.

And I’m going to disagree with that. Again. Resumes absolutely still matter. They just matter Just differently than they used to.

Here’s why:

There are simply too many systems out there now that require resumes for them not to matter. Most applications still want you to upload one. The ATS (the Applicant Tracking System) is still acting like a little Gandalf standing at the gate deciding which resumes shall pass and which shall be cast into the digital void never to be seen again. And unfortunately, you cannot simply skip the ATS version bridge of Khazad-dûm and hope for the best.

You need something solid to hand them. Now, does that mean your resume needs to become a giant AI-generated word salad stuffed with every keyword known to humankind?

Absolutely not.

In fact, please don’t do that.

Your resume cannot contain fake skills or exaggerated experience because eventually someone may pull that document back out and compare it to what you can actually do.

And that can end up very badly.

But what resumes ARE now is different.

Back in the day when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I had to walk up hill to school (both ways) in the snow, a resume was a compendium of your accomplishments.  An employer would use it to get a sense of the whole You on paper. 
 
  A resume is no longer your autobiography. It is a targeted communication tool to (1) convince the computer to let you pass, and (2) convey in 6-8 seconds what a human is looking for,

The job description is a question the company is asking the world:
 “Who can do this job?”

And your resume is the answer.
 “Me. Me! ME! Here is the evidence on how I can do THIS job.”

That’s it.  That framing alone changes everything.  Because suddenly your job is not to tell them every impressive thing you have ever done in your entire life.  And you’re a teacher.  I know that you have done a LOT of impressive things. 

Your job is to answer the specific question being asked.  And THIS is where people get distracted.
 
 Let me give you an analogy of what I mean: 

Many of us play those little match-three games on our phones. You know the ones. I think Candy Crush was the first one.  Tiny digital black holes where suddenly forty-five minutes (likely more!)  disappear from your life.

And at the beginning of every level, the game tells you exactly what the objective is.

Collect fifty red things.
 Break twelve ice blocks.
 Whatever.

But then the game starts throwing distractions at you.

Maybe there’s some weird little creature multiplying blocks all over the board, and your instinct is to attack that immediately because it’s annoying.  Except sometimes the actual objective is collecting the red pieces.  And suddenly the distracting thing is not actually the mission.

Job searching works the same way.

The job description tells you what problem the company is trying to solve.

And your resume’s job is to answer THAT question.

Not every question.

Not your life story.
 Not every accomplishment.
 Not every random certification.

Just the thing being asked.

And honestly, this is where AI becomes incredibly useful.

One of the things I strongly encourage people to do is create a master resume — almost like a CV — where you dump everything into one place.  Everything.  

Every accomplishment.
 Every project.
 Every skill.
 Every role.

Don’t worry about length. 

Then, when you apply for a specific job, you can use the AI of your  choice strategically.

You feed it your master resume and you feed it the job description.  In fact, I’d suggest creating one long chat where you attach your master resume up at the top, then you can use is it for a lot of tailoring. 

And then you say something like:

“Use this job description and tailor my master resume to meet this job description. Do not exaggerate my experience. Do not invent skills I don’t possess. Rewrite my experience using the language and priorities of the job description while maintaining honesty and accuracy.”

Boom.  I’ll put that paragraph in case you want to borrow it, use, whatever. 

Now, AI will absolutely lie to you and tell you it formatted everything beautifully, and then ask you if you want a download.  

It did not and you do not want the download.

You still need human eyes on it.  At this point, we make a copy of the master resume, delete the things that don’t apply and just copy the AI bullet points into place.  Read them to make sure they accurately reflect what you say you can do. 

What AI can ABSOLUTELY do is help you identify patterns, language, transferable skills, and priorities much faster than starting from scratch every single time.

And yes,  you really do need to tailor your resume for each application.  Remember the whole question/answer thing?   Think of it like this.  You don’t want to be answering  “How many miles is it to the nearest hospital?” by saying “Rutabaga”  It just doesn’t make sense. 

Because again:
 the job description is the question, and your resume is the answer.

Now, while we’re talking about modern job hunting, let me say something mildly controversial: LinkedIn is not especially useful as a passive “click apply” mechanism.

Its real value is networking. LinkedIn is basically the world’s largest professional Rolodex. That’s where its power is because if you’ve ever looked at a LinkedIn posting and seen “437 applicants in the last two days have clicked apply,” you already know what happens next.

You would disappear into that noise.  And that’s just the people who only clicked apply.  That doesn’t track who applied from other sites (if they posted on other sites) or if they went with a more direct method like posting directing from the company. 

Most of the time, if you’re serious about a job, I strongly encourage people to go directly to the company website and apply there instead.

In fact, I’m currently helping a family member with a job search right now, and one of the things we did was literally driving around town to look at places where he might like to work and then go back to the company website to see if they were hiring.  

Every building you pass represents jobs.

So we would go directly to the companies’ websites, look at the careers page, and see what’s actually available.

And honestly? That process has been far more effective than doom-scrolling LinkedIn.

At the end of the day, most people are just throwing resumes into the void and hoping something sticks.  The people who cut through the noise are the ones who become more intentional.

More strategic.

More targeted.

And that’s a huge part of what I help my clients do (and occasionally my family).  I help them create strategy, cut through the noise, and get noticed.  If you might need that sort of help, I can help you too. 

You are not stuck.
 You are not broken.
 And functioning is not the same thing as fine.

“And if you’re listening to this thinking, ‘Okay… I’m functioning, but I’m not fine—and I can’t keep pretending I am,’ let’s not wait until your body or your life has to start screaming to get your attention. If your watch is showing stress bars (or your Sunday scaries are) please don’t wait for a root canal moment to take yourself seriously.

If you’re considering leaving the classroom but you’re stuck in that brutal in-between - too tired to job search, too stressed to stay, and not even sure what you’d do next… I made something for exactly this moment.

It’s called Find Your Bearings. It’s a short, three-session clarity intensive where we pull real stories from your teaching life and translate them into marketable strengths, actual language for your resume/LinkedIn, and a few clear career directions that fit you. Not hype. Not “you can do anything.” Just clarity you can move forward with.  If you aren’t even sure if you’re ready for that, you can still head over to TeachersinTransition.com and use the calendar to set up a time and just chat. I promise to give you some options in a low stress sort of way. 

If you’re ready to stop white-knuckling and start building an exit strategy that doesn’t require you to collapse first, check the link in the show notes for Find Your Bearings.”

And here’s where you can help me, dear listeners, and I’m counting on your help because:

Teachers in Transition is an independently produced podcast, which is a fancy way of saying there is not some giant media company hiding behind the curtain here.

It’s mostly just me, a microphone, several tabs open at all times (SO many tabs), and what can only be described as aggressively persistent hope for burned-out educators.

If this podcast has helped you feel less alone, helped you think differently about your future, or simply kept you company while rage-cleaning your kitchen after a difficult school day, you can now support the show directly.

Support is completely optional, but it helps offset the production costs that keep the show running and allows me to continue creating resources for teachers who are trying to navigate burnout, transition, and reinvention.

And whether you support financially for as little as $3/week, share an episode with a friend, or simply keep showing up every week to keep listening while folding laundry, sitting in car rider line, or staring into the existential void while processing what nonsense is next in educational policy…

Thank you.  I appreciate you. 

And until next week, friends… listen carefully to what your life has been trying to tell you, and don’t ignore the warning lights just because you’ve learned how to drive with them 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