Who's looking after the teachers' careers?

National Careers Week comes round every March. For many people the focus is on young people, the students at various stages of our education system. Not many people realise it's for adults too, and one of the main groups of people I love helping is teachers. 

Teachers spend their lives helping young people to develop their skills and passions and prepare for later life. Many I speak to report two key things: either they are frustrated that the system doesn’t fully allow them to help those young people develop as individuals, or that they are so stressed out and frustrated by the system that they are thinking of leaving. 

But W-H-O is looking after the teachers’ careers?

The answer is probably, nobody. Like most people I work with, when it gets to the point of either knowing that something needs to change so they can enjoy teaching again, or deciding that they really need to get out for their own sanity, they don’t know where to start. 

That’s not just a teacher problem by-the-way. It applies across all industries and professions because we aren’t taught how to deal with this while we are a student, and organisations don’t support their staff to know how, either. 

So, what do you need to know? 

You need to be able to understand what an ideal role is for you, not in terms of what you teach or your job title, but in terms of what you give to work and what work gives back to you. 

Once you’ve done that you can compare your current job against that profile and see very clearly where the mis-matches are. Those things will give you the confidence and start point for making positive changes. 

Here are my 5 top tips to get started: 

1. Know your personal skills and qualities, the things you use to do all the different things you do at work (and outside). Which do you enjoy? Which are you good at?
2. Know what work has to do for you. What is most important to you about work? Is it how you’re managed? Flexibility? The ethos of your employer? What else?
3. Which are the most important things from numbers 1 and 2? 
4. You’ve just profiled an ideal role in terms of what you bring to it (skills/qualities) and what it gives to you. How closely is each of your top criteria being matched? 
5. Now you’ll start to see where the gaps are and can start to identify practical steps to start bringing the different elements of your ideal role closer to that ideal.

If you’re serious about doing something more about your situation, you can book a free discovery session by clicking here, or sign up to my free weekly 5-day challenge to get into the detail and come away with your first steps defined. It starts every Monday and you can sign up at https://www.davecordle.co.uk/challenge. You'll just need 20 minutes a day minimum - surely you and your career are worth that?