Before we get started, I want to take just a minute to ask you to help me with something that matters enormously to me.
I’m working to bring my book, Invisible Excellence: The Hidden Value of Teachers Beyond Teaching, into the world. The entire premise of this book is something you’ve heard me say again and again on this podcast: teachers are carrying around an extraordinary collection of professional skills, and far too often, nobody has taught them how to recognize the value of what they already know how to do.
I want to change that. I want this book in the hands of teachers who have spent years being told—directly or indirectly—that everything they know how to do only matters inside a classroom. And I want employers and people outside education to understand what teachers actually bring to the table.
Right now, I’m crowdfunding the publication of Invisible Excellence, and I would love for you to be part of this mission with me. There are several ways to support the campaign, including simply pre-ordering a signed copy of the book. And if contributing financially isn’t something you can do right now, sharing the campaign with another teacher or someone who believes in the value of teachers helps too.
You’ll find the link in the show notes. If this message is something you believe needs to be out in the world, I’d love to have you help me put it there.
Okay. And now for this weeks’ podcast!
Opening:
If you’re a teacher who’s thinking about leaving—but the unknown feels overwhelming—you’re not alone. Leaving the classroom can feel like walking into unfamiliar territory… and it’s hard to move forward when you can’t see the path—or worse, when you feel like you’re stuck in a hole.
I’ve been there.
That uncertainty? That hesitation? That’s normal. but you don’t have to navigate it alone. I’m Vanessa Jackson. I spent 25 years in the classroom, and I’ve also worked inside the hiring world—helping people get jobs and understanding how those systems really work. Now I help teachers just like you navigate that in-between space—so you can move out of burnout and into a career outside the classroom that actually fits.
This is Teachers in Transition.
Let’s get you out—and into what’s next.
Hi! I’m Vanessa Jackson, I taught in the classroom for 25 years before leaving to work at a Fortune 500 company where I helped people get jobs. Now I use that knowledge to help teachers figure out what’s next. I am also the author of the upcoming book Invisible Excellence: The Hidden Value of Teachers Beyond Teaching. Welcome back to another episode of Teachers in Transition!
In this episode, we wrap up our Four Horsemen of Education series with the fourth Horseman: Leadership. In our Teacher Hack, I’ll share a tip for safeguarding yourself through clear documentation. And in our Career Transition and Job Search segment, we’ll explore how to use a very specific aspect of LinkedIn so you can safely build your professional network.
Let’s get started.
Perspective Pivot: The Third Horseman — Leadership
And now we come to the fourth and final Horseman in our little miniseries about the Four Horsemen of Education. When all four of these Horsemen have completely left the building, we will have reached our educational apocalypse. And Horseman Number Four may be the most important of all: good leadership. More specifically, protective leadership.
Before we get too deep into this one, I need to put a qualifier here. I am not talking about every administrator or every educational leader on the planet. I was a military spouse, I moved around, I was itinerant at some schools, and over the course of my career, I worked with more than 45 different administrators. Some of them were extraordinary.
There were administrators I would have walked through fire for. There were others where I might have taken a moment to verify that the building was actually on fire before alerting anyone. But I’ve worked for good leaders, mediocre leaders, and people who shouldn’t have been leaders at all.
And I think it’s important to distinguish between bad leadership and a leader making a bad decision. A bad decision does not have to make someone a bad leader. What they do AFTER the bad decision might. Everybody pulls a stupid occasionally. A good leader can make a terrible decision, but when it goes wrong, they listen. They acknowledge it, apologize if that’s appropriate. They learn from the people around them, and make a better decision next time. Bad leadership looks different.
Bad leadership punches down. It regularly punches down, doubles down, and refuses to listen to the people who are actually doing the work. Sometimes it uses the power of the position to make the work underneath it harder. That’s very different from simply getting something wrong.
If you want to know what I think a leader’s most important job is, Robin Williams explained it in about seven words.
I think about leadership using something I like to call the Hook Principle ( and that’s princiPULL, not princi-PAL). At the end of the movie Hook, Peter Pan is leaving the Lost Boys and choosing someone else to take the sword of Pan. He hands it to Thud Butt, the largest of the Lost Boys, and then tells all of them, “Take care of everyone smaller than yourself.” Then the littlest Lost Boy asks, “Who do I take care of?” and Peter tells him, “Neverbugs.”
I’ve always loved that. Because no matter where you are in an organization, there’s probably somebody “smaller” than you - not necessarily physically, obviously, but somebody with less power, less authority, or less ability to control what happens next. Leadership means taking care of the people who have less power than you do. And in a school, principals have an extraordinary amount of power over the working lives of teachers.
Every teacher has seen that power get used in ways that make teachers’ jobs unnecessarily difficult. Maybe it’s a schedule that makes it almost impossible for an elective program to survive. Maybe it’s making a teacher move rooms on an almost annual basis, or somehow giving certain teachers the good duties while somebody else gets the miserable ones. Maybe it’s micromanagement, or maybe you ask for help repeatedly and the help simply never arrives.
Want to know one of the fastest ways to tell whether a leader actually thinks about the people underneath them? Look at what they ask you to do on a Friday afternoon. I once had an administrator give teachers something late on a Friday afternoon that had to be completed by eight o’clock Monday morning, and I happened to catch that administrator in the hallway outside my door shortly after the school day ended. I asked point blank, “Is it your expectation that teachers work on weekends?”
Of course she said no. So I asked, “Then how are they supposed to get this done by eight o’clock Monday morning?” And you could see the moment when she realized that the math did not math. I don’t care that she probably wasn’t intentionally trying to ruin everyone’s weekend; she simply hadn’t thought about the people underneath the decision.
She didn’t THINK about how her actions affected anyone at all. Ya know, that’s part of leadership too. Before you make the decision, somebody has to ask, “What will this require from the people who actually have to carry it out?” If nobody ever asks that question, eventually the people doing the carrying get crushed.
Here’s something school discipline data may never tell you: a low referral rate can actually be a sign that your discipline system is broken.
Here’s another place where protective leadership matters enormously, and it connects directly to our Third Horseman from last week: accountability. Remember, if we don’t have a consequence, we don’t have a rule. Teachers need to know that when they have exhausted the things they can reasonably do inside the classroom and send a serious discipline problem to an administrator, that administrator is going to have their back. At the very least, the teacher gets a break from that student.
That student should not be sent to the office, given a snack and a hug, and returned five minutes later with a smug expression because everybody involved just learned that the teacher had no actual authority. But principals need exactly the same thing. If a principal enforces a consequence and eventually sends the problem up to the district, they need to know the district will back them. Sometimes the district needs another authority like a judge to back them too.
Because if I don’t believe the level above me will support me when I enforce the rules, eventually I’m going to stop sending problems to that level. Why would I? If the kid comes right back, I’ve actually lost more authority than I had before I sent them. Which is why something like a very low referral rate doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve got a beautifully behaved campus; it might mean your teachers have learned that referrals don’t work. And many of those campuses are completely out of control.
Teachers spend a lot of time asking, “Why isn’t my principal protecting me?” But I think we need to ask another question too: Who’s protecting the principal?
Because good principals are often standing between their teachers and an enormous amount of nonsense coming from above. They’re filtering it, pushing back against it, and solving problems before those problems ever reach your classroom. They’re absorbing pressure so that you don’t have to. A bad leader can let everything coming from above wash straight through them like an open sunroof in a sports car and drown the people underneath.
A protective leader acts like a shield. And shields take the hit. I’ve talked to educational leaders who have experienced extraordinary levels of stress trying to do this work, and I’ve watched good administrators burn out and leave. That creates a really ugly organizational problem.
Because if the people who are most committed to protecting the people underneath them are also absorbing the most pressure, what happens when the system burns through them? Who’s left? Education also has a strange habit of dealing with ineffective leaders by moving them somewhere else. Sometimes sideways, sometimes up.
There’s an organizational concept called the Peter Principle: people can continue being promoted because they were successful in one position until they are eventually promoted and reach a position where they’re no longer competent. Education has occasionally developed its own fascinating variation: “This person is doing a lot of damage at the campus level. Perhaps we should give them more money and put them in central administration.” I’m only mostly kidding.
Then again, I bet everyone listening has seen it at least once. We need competent people in leadership positions, and we need systems that allow competent, protective leaders to remain there without destroying themselves in the process. Otherwise, we keep losing exactly the people we most need to keep.
I’ve listened to hundreds of teachers in almost every state and a couple of countries talk about burnout, overwhelm, and why they finally decided they couldn’t do this anymore. An astonishing number (over 90%) of those stories contain some version of, “We got a new principal,” or, “We got a new superintendent.” The teacher didn’t suddenly become a different teacher, and the students didn’t suddenly become completely different students. The leadership changed.
That’s how much power this Horseman has. Good leadership can’t fix every problem in education. A principal can’t magically create resources that don’t exist, single-handedly repair every broken accountability system, or eliminate every ridiculous mandate coming from somewhere above them. But a good leader can make the people underneath them feel like they aren’t standing out there alone.
They can listen. They can think about the consequences of their decisions, back their people when their people have done the right thing, and admit when they got something wrong. And they can remember the Hook Principle: take care of everyone smaller than yourself. Because ultimately, that’s what protective leadership is.
And when we stop protecting the people underneath us — and when the system stops protecting the good leaders who are trying to do it — the Fourth Horseman has left the building. And I think we’re all going to have to go find him, because apparently he’s in hiding like Carter Slade — the Ghost Rider on the horse at the end of that movie.
Teacher Hack: Document Document Document
And that brings us to this week’s Teacher Hack. Our teacher hacks are designed ot save you time, money, and stress (or stress). This week’s hack definitely addresses STRESS.
If you work for a difficult administrator, there are five words I want you to remember: If it wasn’t documented, it didn’t happen.
Okay, that was more than 5 words. And obviously it happened. But if you’re dealing with difficult leadership and six months from now somebody says, “That’s not what I said,” or “You never asked me for help,” you need something besides your memory of a conversation in the hallway.
So get important things in writing.
If your administrator gives you an important direction verbally, follow up with an email. It doesn’t need to be confrontational. In fact, it shouldn’t be. There’s no room for feelings in these sorts of things.
“Thanks for talking with me today. I just want to make sure I understood correctly. You’d like me to do X by Y day or time. Please let me know if I’ve misunderstood anything.”
That’s it.
If you ask for help, put the request in writing. If expectations change, confirm the change in writing. If you have a conversation that you think may become important later, send the follow-up email.
And yes, some administrators are notoriously slippery about avoiding putting anything in writing. For the record, a collection of unanswered emails looks bad for them later. Your unanswered email still documents that you asked. Because when it isn’t documented, it didn’t happen.
And keep those emails boring. Facts. Dates. What was said. What you were asked to do. Document what happened and let those facts speak for themselves.
But there’s another piece of this: documentation doesn’t do you much good if one day you no longer have access to it. If you leave, your access to stuff disappears. I’m still a little sad about losing videos I made of every student uploading their individual performance and then edited together into a collective orchestra piece from the pandemic. That took HOURS. Poof. Gone.
Over the years, I used a couple of different ways to preserve appropriate documentation about my own employment when needed. I have BCC’d my personal email on things I thought I might need later. I’ve saved appropriate files or screenshots—because those have TIMESTAMPS right in the title to a thumb drive. If you’re in a Google district, there may be things you can share with your personal Google account and then make your own copy to download at home.
But technology has changed, and security protocols have changed with it. Things have probably changed from the time I started recording to now. The only constant is change and these days change comes alarmingly fast.
School districts have federal and state obligations to protect student information (FERPA), so Google and Microsoft both give districts security tools that can monitor or restrict how information moves outside their systems. That doesn’t necessarily mean somebody in district IT is sitting around wondering why you’re emailing yourself. It does mean you shouldn’t assume that something like a BCC, a thumb drive, or sharing a file to another account is invisible - or that it will even necessarily work in your district.
And, of course, FERPA still applies. I am talking about appropriate documentation concerning you and your employment. Student records in your personal possession are almost always indefensible.
The goal isn’t to be sneaky here.
The goal is to make sure that if you ever need to establish what happened, when it happened, what you were told, or what you did in response, you aren’t standing there saying, “I know there’s an email somewhere, but I don’t have access to that account anymore.”
Get it in writing.
Keep appropriate documentation.
Because if it wasn’t documented, it didn’t happen.
And while we’re talking about protecting yourself professionally when you’re dealing with leadership you may not completely trust, let’s talk about another place where you need to think strategically about what people can—and can’t—see.
LinkedIn.
Career Transition And Job Search – Be Available. (18:12)
And now let’s move into our Career Transition and Job Hunting segment with some practice advice about social media.
If you’re a teacher trying to leave education, locking down your LinkedIn profile like you lock down Facebook may actually be hurting your job search.
But LinkedIn is different. LinkedIn is a professional networking platform...
I understand why teachers lock down their social media accounts. Students, parents, and administrators may be looking for you, and many schools emphasize being extremely careful about what anyone can see online. And let’s face it - people can be much meaner online than they’d ever be face to face. And it hurts ot have your personal life and opinions weaponized against you.
So button up Facebook and Instagram if you want. I encourage that. Be anonymous on Threads. And if you’re brave enough to wade into the quagmire that is X, Godspeed.
But LinkedIn is different.
LinkedIn is a professional networking platform, and your professional reputation is part of your currency. People need to be able to find you and connect with you. Over time, the size and quality of your network (and how you interact with it) help establish that you are a professional who exists beyond the walls of your school.
The general setting allows people to find you and request to connect with you. (And you can also find people and request to connect with them). There is a setting that requires someone to input your email address to prove they know you.
That’s a great setting for celebrities and people hiding from students. That is a horrible setting for people growing their network.
You always control your network. If I send you a connection request, and you’re interested - YOU have to accept the request. If you don’t want to, then you don’t accept. No conflict, no tears, and no drama.
I’ve encountered teachers whose accounts are locked down so tightly that you practically need their blood type and their grandmother’s maiden name to send a connection request. That does make sense on more personal social media platforms, but remember: people can find and see you on LinkedIn whether they’re connected to you or not.
It reminds me of that scene in Finding Nemo where Marlin tells Dory that he promised Nemo that he'd never let anything happen to him. And Dory found that odd, because she correctly extrapolated that allowing nothing to ever happen to Nemo included all the good things too.
And you DO want to build connections with people on LinkedIn - especially in the field you want to work in, especially at companies you find interesting and especially if they can help you leave the classroom
This is your friendly reminder that networking matters. LinkedIn’s own 2026 labor-market data found that job seekers are 3.6 times more likely to be hired by a company if they were already connected to an employee there before applying. Those connections aren’t vanity numbers. They’re part of your job-search strategy.
At the same time, think strategically about how visible you want your job search to be - especially if you haven’t told your school you’re considering leaving.
For example, LinkedIn lets you put a green “Open to Work” banner around your picture. I generally don’t recommend that to my clients.
Part of that is perception. Job hunting can sometimes work like the old joke about getting a loan: you can’t get one when you really need it. You have to look like you don’t need the money before someone will give it to you.
Does that make sense?
No.
Welcome to job hunting.
But there’s another reason teachers should think carefully about that green banner. If you haven’t told your principal you’re leaving, do you really want them to find out because LinkedIn put a bright green “OPEN TO WORK” sign around your face? This is probably doubly true if you have a contentious relationship with an administrator.
You can look for your next opportunity without announcing that search to everyone who knows you. There is a setting where you can be open to work for recruiters and hiring folk without making it obvious to regular folk.
So think about LinkedIn differently from your other social media. You don’t want to lock it down so tightly that recruiters, hiring managers, and professional connections can’t find you or connect with you. But you also don’t have to broadcast every part of your job search to your current boss.
I’m not trying to make you invisible. I’m trying to make you visible to the right people.
When you’re transitioning out of teaching - especially from a school where you don’t completely trust the leadership - there’s a difference between building your professional network and putting up a billboard that says:
“AYO, PRINCIPAL! I’M TRYING TO LEAVE!”
You get to control that information. Open the doors you need open, and be thoughtful about the ones you don’t.
And that brings us to the end of not only this episode, but our Four Horsemen of Education series. We’ve talked about expectations, resources, accountability, and now leadership.
And none of these things exists in isolation.
When expectations keep growing while resources disappear, when accountability gets shifted away from the people making the choices, and when the people who are supposed to protect the people underneath them either can’t (or won’) the system becomes harder and harder for good teachers to survive.
And I want to emphasize that word: survive.
Because if you’re struggling in a system that keeps making it harder for you to do good work, that doesn’t mean you stopped being good at what you do.
It may mean you need to make a decision about what you want to do next.
And if your answer is, “Vanessa, I think I need to get out, but I have absolutely no idea what I would do instead,” I’ve got your back.
I help teachers figure out what they want next, translate the enormous collection of skills they already have into language employers understand, and build a strategy for actually getting there.
If you’d like to talk with me about what that could look like for you, there’s a link in the show notes where you can schedule a conversation.
And I promise you this: you will leave that conversation with something useful, whether you decide to work with me or not. I’ll share resources and options based on what you tell me, but I’m not going to pressure you into anything.
You have enough pressure in your life already.
Until next time, remember:
You are more than your classroom. Your skills are more valuable than you’ve been led to believe, and there is life beyond teaching.
CONNECT WITH VANESSA
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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!
