Leaving the Classroom: A Transitioning Teacher Podcast

Leaving the Classroom Podcast: Setting Career Goals and Looking Ahead to 2025 | 60

In this episode of the Leaving the Classroom podcast, host Kristi Oliva discusses setting realistic career goals for transitioning out of teaching and provides strategies for staying motivated during the process. Tune in to hear:

1. How to create SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) goals for your career transition.
2. Tips for visualizing your dream career through creating a vision board or journaling.
3. Kristi's plans for new podcast content, resources, and events to support teachers leaving the classroom in 2025.

Join Kristi’s Facebook Group to stay connected with an entire community of transitioning teachers: https://www.facebook.com/share/g/aE4ir7LQU3YytEpP/

 Listen to the episode here:

Connect with Kristi on LinkedIn

This podcast is sponsored by IDOL courses and is the only authorized vocational school and implementation program of its kind that not only shows you exactly how to create your job application assets and build a portfolio from scratch but also includes credentials, mentorship, expert coaching, and paid experience opportunities in corporate instructional design and online learning for life! Learn more about the program here. 

Enjoy the podcast transcription:

Kristi Oliva  

Welcome to Leaving the Classroom. This is a podcast for teachers who are ready to transition out of the classroom and into a new career. Each week, I'll share stories about what I've learned moving from education to the corporate world. I'll answer the most common questions and share my best tips to help you get started. If you are considering leaving the classroom, this show is for you. 

Hello everyone, and welcome to Leaving the Classroom. The podcast for teachers ready to take the leap into a new career. I'm Kristi Oliva, your guide and biggest cheerleader on this journey. It's almost time for a brand new year, and it's one of my favorite times, because I just love goal setting, and I love fresh starts, and so there's always that chance for new opportunities, new challenges, but most importantly, that fresh start. Now, if you've been dreaming about leaving the classroom but haven't taken the plunge yet, or just have not been successful yet, this episode is for you. We're going to set realistic, actionable goals, talk about staying motivated even when progress feels slow, and explore how to visualize success. And then after that, I'm going to share some exciting plans for me this year, as well as the podcast and some new resources you can look forward to in 2025 so let's dive in. 

The first step to achieving any big change is setting clear, actionable goals. When it comes to transitioning out of teaching, it can feel really overwhelming, so let's break it down into smaller, manageable steps. So I want you to start with these three questions. Number one, what kind of career do I want? So think about your teaching career and what you like to do the most day to day. And let's try to find a role that fits that. What skills do you want to use every day? So make a list of actual skills that you use, that you would want to be using on a daily basis. And number three, what work life balance do I want to achieve. Everybody's different. I enjoy flexibility in my day. So even though I am going into the office three days a week, I still have flexibility in those three days and in the other two days that I'm not in the office, and so that's really important to me. What are yours though? You might not have the same ones as me, so it's important to write those down. 

Now, once you've reflected on these, it's time to create your goals. Obviously, I think we all know that a good goal is smart. It's specific, it's measurable, it's achievable, relevant and time bound. So instead of saying, I want to leave teaching this year, this has got to be my last year, please make it smarter by saying, by June, I will have applied to 10 jobs in instructional design and completed two interviews or whatever, right? But it needs to have all of those parts of it to make it a SMART goal. 

So I want you to either pause the episode, or after this episode, I want you to write down your three career goals for 2025. Now remember, they don't have to be perfect. They just need to get you moving in the right direction. Make sure you're facing the right way, and progress can feel pretty slow, especially when you're juggling teaching or another full time job with job hunting. So here's a couple of strategies to keep you going. Number one, celebrate the small wins. Every time you update your resume, every networking conversation or job application that you start or finish is a win and celebrate it. Number two, build a support system. Connect with other teachers making the same transition. You can join my Facebook group. I have a Facebook group called Leaving the Classroom. You can come on down and support each other there. And number three, remind yourself why you are doing this, keep a journal or sticky notes with reminders of the life you're working toward. And that brings me to our next step, which is visualization. So visualization is such a powerful tool for achieving your goals. When you can see and feel your future clearly, it becomes easier to take steps towards it, and one of my favorite ways to visualize success is by creating a physical vision board. So here's some tips on how to make one. So first, you can just find a board or physical one, or you can go to a digital platform like Canva, and then you need to gather images, quotes or other words that represent your career and life goals. And this is why I recommend Canva, because not many of us have all the stacks and magazines anymore to go through and cut things out right? It's much easier to find all the images that you want online. So go to Canva and add all of those images and quotes that you can then I want you to arrange them on your board in a way that inspires you. Maybe. By category. Maybe it's by those three steps, or maybe it's just esthetically pleasing to you. Now I want you to put that vision board somewhere that you will see it daily, and preferably put it somewhere where somebody is going to be asking you about it, so that you are inspired to talk about it and your goals. And if you're more of a writer, try journaling about your ideal day in your new career and describe everything in detail, from your morning routine to the work you're doing and how it makes you feel. I want you to spend some time this week creating this vision board or journaling about your dream career. And if you do, please share it with me on social media. I'd love to see your vision for 2025 

Now let's talk about what's ahead for Leaving the Classroom and me, personally, this year, I'm so excited to continue supporting you with new resources, services and content. So here's a sneak peek. Number one, I'm definitely going to be having some new podcast content. I'm excited to have more former teachers in different career paths to help share success stories and dive deeper into mindset and motivation. I'm going to have more free resources, so I'll be releasing more downloadable tools, including a job search organizer and a salary negotiation checklist. So check those out, and then stay tuned. Next, I'm going to be putting on more webinars and live events. So keep an eye out for live webinars on topics like interview prep and networking strategies. But I'm also planning a virtual Teacher Ditch Day number two event in the summer. If you came to the first one, you're going to love the next one. Now, personally, I have a couple of things now. One of the things I'm going to be documenting this year on Leaving the Classroom is I'm embarking on a new journey with chi-pod catalyst, where I am going to be opening my own micro school this year. My goal is to have it open in Fall 2025 so I'll be documenting that here on the podcast, so that if that's something that perks your ears up, please follow along. I really honestly never thought that I would want to be teaching again. But more on that to come. I'll tell you the whole story. So that's pretty exciting. So I'm very excited to share all the details with you and my journey as we go. 

All right now, before we wrap up, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for listening, thank you for sharing this podcast with your teacher friends, and thank you for being brave enough to consider a new path. You are the reason I do this, and I'm so honored to be part of your journey. This year is going to be amazing, whether you're just starting to explore your options or you're ready to make the leap, know that I'm here to support you every step of the way. So here's to a new year, a new career and a new you. Let's make 2025 the year you step into the career and life you deserve See you next time. 

That's all for this episode, but you can find more at idol courses.com or subscribe to the podcast. And if you are ready to leave the classroom, use my code classroom 100 and get $100 off enrollment to IDOL courses Academy.

Send your stories or questions to [email protected] or share them with me on Instagram @leavingtheclassroom.