Teachers: Should I stay or should I go now?

So you joined teaching (actually, whatever profession you’re in) for a reason. It might well have been a very conscious choice because you knew what you wanted to do and the difference you wanted to make. 

This scenario is more usual in vocational type professions such as teaching and nursing, but just so we’re covering all the bases here, it may also have been because it seemed like a decent option at the time, but you didn’t really know what you wanted to do.

But what do you do if you’ve fallen out of love with your career? It’s not as you’d imagined it, or as it was sold to you. You love certain aspects but the system and politics of it don’t let you do enough of those things. There are things, these or others, that are causing you to feel stressed, and you notice that you feel dread or foreboding on a Sunday night, or you get that sinking feeling as you go through the school gates. 

This is not a good place to be, and you’ll find some good tips to get you started in making some changes in my blog from 5th April. 

Here I want to give you some pointers to help you decide whether you might want to stay in teaching, in your current school or another, or to move on to a different career.

Its important for you and those you are teaching to know that most people will have several possibly very different careers during their working life. There may be times when you have what is called a portfolio career where you have two or more different streams of income and maybe even a mix of self-employed and employed. 

In making a decision about your current role and current career, the first step is to understand what an ideal role is for you right now. That means knowing two things in detail: 

1. the skills and strengths you have that you enjoy and want to use or develop (as well as those you don’t want to use any more), and understand how transferable they are. 
2. your work or career values. In other words, what’s important to you about your work or career and what it has to do for you

That’s a fairly detailed bit of work, too much for us to go into here. That's why I’ve created my 5 day Get Your Career Unstuck challenge. It starts every Monday and you’ll need to give a minimum of 20 minutes a day (at a time to suit you). 

If you’re fed up and really want to put yourself in charge and make a positive decision for your career, click the link below to get registered and on your way to a less stressful and more fulfilling career. 

www.davecordle.co.uk/challenge