Knowing Yourself with Sally Chamley- CR105
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Have you ever fallen out of love with your job, even one you initially enjoyed? All of our careers go through ups and downs, and sometimes, we go on much-needed detours to clarify who we are and what we want our professional experiences to be.
On Career Relaunch® podcast episode 105, Sally Chamley shares her journey of professional reinvention, going from a primary school teacher to a business school program coordinator. She shares the emotional challenges of leaving a beloved teaching career behind, the dynamics the transitioning into a new sector, and developing new skills along the way.
We discuss how our work environments can have a huge impact on career satisfaction and the importance of recognizing when your job no longer aligns with your true self. During the Mental Fuel® segment, I also share practical advice about how to figure out if your job still aligns with who you are and who you want to be.
💡 Key Career Insights
- When you start to dislike my weekdays or if you feel unfulfilled and disconnected from yourself, it may be a sign you’re misplaced in your career.
- If you’re not engaged in professional activities or behaviors you feel align with who you are, at some point, you have to ask yourself how long you can continue living that way.
- You may feel your skills are not transferrable when transitioning into a new sector, but you will only know if this is true by trying out new things. You may be surprised how much your past experiences help you in seemingly unrelated roles.
💪🏼 Listener Challenge
For this episode’s Mental Fuel® segment, I’d challenge you to take a moment to assess your current professional situation. Find a few minutes to consider how energized you feel by your work. Consider how happy you are with who you are. Decide whether you still feel like yourself.
Take stock of where things stand right now. Consider whether your responses are satisfactory to you. If they are, great, you’re in good shape. But if your responses leave you feeling like you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time in your professional journey right now, consider exploring what else is out there.
📖 Episode Chapters
00:00:00 Overview
00:01:07 Introduction
00:02:44 Chat with Sally
00:38:57 Mental Fuel
00:45:29 Listener Challenge
00:46:27 Wrap Up
👤 About Sally Chamley
Sally Chamley, originally from a Ohakune, New Zealand. After completing her Master’s degree at the Victoria University of Wellington, she spent six rewarding years as a primary school teacher. She eventually moved to London, inspired by the city’s opportunities and eager to expand her horizons. She initially continued teaching, but soon felt the pull to explore something else. Since 2024, she’s been working as a Programme Coordinator in the Finance suite at Imperial College Business School, where we first crossed paths.
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📄 Episode Transcript
03:05 Sally’s Current Role at Imperial Business School
05:05 Sally’s Background and Teaching Journey
08:01 Challenges and Rewards of Teaching
21:00 Transition to the UK
21:57 Starting a Teaching Career in the UK
22:40 Challenges of Being a Supply Teacher
26:17 Career Struggles and Realizations
28:45 Transitioning Out of Teaching
33:25 Landing a New Role at Imperial
34:41 Lessons Learned and Advice
38:53 Mental Fuel: Recognizing Who You Are
[00:02:53] Sally: Morning. Thank you so much for having me.
[00:02:56] Joseph: Well, let’s just start by talking about what’s happening in your world right now. What have you been focused on recently in your work and your life?
Sally’s Current Role at Imperial Business School
[00:03:05] Sally: So I’m currently working at Imperial Business School in the finance suite. I’m a program coordinator for the risk. management and financial engineering master’s program. So I have 170 students and I’m essentially the logistical expert for that master’s program. I look after those students and guide them through their degrees.
I liaise with the module leaders and the teaching assistants and just make sure that all the classes are running smoothly, that students have guidance on their careers and that they’re getting their grades and their assignments all running smoothly.
[00:03:40] Joseph: I guess we should say that we’re recording this toward the end of 2024 and so you’ve been in your role for a few months.
How have things been going for you in terms of just your day-to-day life? How are you enjoying the role?
[00:03:55] Sally: Yeah, really enjoying it. Imperial is such a great place to be working. I’m just constantly surrounded by real critical thinkers who are just developing their fields. It’s a really fast paced job with different times of the year creating different types of work and learning.
We welcomed our new cohort of students in September. So that was full of first week of uni and different welcome days and team-building activities. So it’s been really special to bring on a new group of students. They’re currently in the autumn term and starting to get ready for exams. So you’re really into the workload at the moment and really busy with that.
So it’s just constantly changing depending on the time of the year and what’s happening for those students.
Personal Life and Travel
[00:04:39] Joseph: What about you personally right now in your life that you’re devoting your energies to outside of work when you can find the time for it?
[00:04:48] Sally: Well, I’m over in London and here for such a short amount of time, a couple of years.
So travel is so big on the list. It’s how many countries can I hit before I have to go home? I’m off to Ireland next weekend. So really looking forward to that and just keep adding holidays.
[00:05:05] Joseph: You haven’t always been a program coordinator at Imperial College Business School, Sally, and I should probably say upfront that you and I actually first crossed paths a few months ago.
Because your team invited me to speak at a welcome event for your incoming students and we were chatting before I went up on stage and that’s when I first learned that before you joined Imperial, you used to be a primary school teacher.
Sally’s Teaching Journey
[00:05:28] Joseph: I want to hear all about that and go back to that chapter in your career.
But before we talk about your time as a teacher, can you tell me a little bit about where you’re from? You mentioned home there. And also where you grew up.
[00:05:40] Sally: I’m from New Zealand. I’m from a little town called Ohakune, which is in the middle of the North Island. Small town, 900 people of permanent residents there.
And I wanted to be a teacher. I went to university to be a teacher. I did my undergrad and my Master’s degree to become a teacher. And then I was a teacher in Wellington for 6 years. For generally 5 and 6 year olds.
[00:06:06] Joseph: It sounds like you very quickly decided you wanted to become a teacher.
Childhood and Inspiration to Teach
[00:06:10] Joseph: What do you remember about your childhood? And I’d be specifically interested to hear about what you used to enjoy doing as a child. Was teaching something that you I guess liked from a very early age?
[00:06:22] Sally: Yeah, absolutely. I had some fantastic teachers growing up and being in such a small community. They were teachers that I knew outside of school as well. You know, they were my parents’ friends. And so they just provided such great relationships and really were able to build you up, not only through your English and your maths, but also through who you were as a person and how it provides so many life skills for you.
And that was so inspiring as a child, knowing that. You can help me with my spelling, but also help me learn kindness and patience. And that’s something that I wanted to be able to do when I was growing up.
[00:06:58] Joseph: At what point did you feel like you officially began your journey toward becoming a teacher? Was it actually when you began your studies, or did it occur to you earlier on when you were a child that, hey, this is what I want to do professionally? I know I like what teachers do, but this is what I actually want to become.
[00:07:17] Sally: Probably in high school when you taking different subjects. I always took dance and being able to start leading different groups and being the person, I guess, in charge and empowering others became something really special.
And so I knew at that point I wanted to go into some sort of teaching and it wasn’t until. My last year of high school that it was okay. Actually, I want to do primary school teaching and focus on those early milestones for Children.
[00:07:48] Joseph: So you mentioned you studied to become a teacher. I, if I have this right, you studied education and psychology at Victoria University of Wellington.
[00:07:57] Sally: Correct.
[00:07:57] Joseph: Eventually did your Master’s in teaching and learning.
Juliet1>Challenges and Rewards of Teaching
[00:08:01] Joseph: Let’s talk a little bit about your time as a teacher. What year did you teach or was there a particular age group that you taught and how would you describe the makeup or the profile of the children in your class?
[00:08:12] Sally: I generally taught the younger years. So I had five and six year olds. They were in their first and second year of school in New Zealand. We have such a rich culture of Māori and Pasifika. Our culture and our indigenous history is so wound up into our education. So that for me is such a huge part of teaching, teaching the Māori language and culture and the Kaupapa within the classroom.
So I had amazing students. I had students from small communities that had rich family histories and just loved. Being at school, children who are five and six love everything. They love being at school. They love learning. And something that I loved about teaching was seeing those light bulb moments for students when they understand something, when they can do something by themselves.
And that was what helped make you want to go to school every day.
[00:09:03] Joseph: They got that age. Five to six is, is really special. As you may recall, Sally, I have a daughter named Juliet. And when you and I met, she was actually six at the time. She just recently turned seven. She’s now in year two of primary school.
And I’ve volunteered at some of her school events just to help out. Like I’ve spoken in one of her classrooms before I’ve joined her field trips. And boy, do I have a huge respect for what teachers do for our kids every single day. My sister was a teacher in the Bronx for several years. As I was dropping her off this morning at school, I was thinking about what sort of questions to ask you about your life as a teacher, but before I get to mine over breakfast this morning, I asked Juliet if she had a question that she would want to ask you, and if you could indulge me for a moment.
I’m just going to play this because I asked her, hey, if you could ask a teacher a question, what would it be? Because I’m about to speak to one. So I thought it might be fitting for a child who’s the same age as those kids you used to teach to ask the first question today. And then I’ll get to mine.
Managing a Classroom
[00:10:06] Juliet: My question is how do you stay on top of the class? And how do you get all the children to listen?
[00:10:12] Joseph: And maybe we could take those one at a time. How do you stay on top of all the work that you need to do for the class? Because obviously you’re teaching and you’re managing the classroom all day. So how do you keep up with, I guess, like coursework planning and lesson planning?
[00:10:29] Sally: Teaching is not for the fainthearted. It’s a big job with lots of different areas to it. You’ve got your time when you’re in with the children, between nine and three, where you’re doing teaching. You’re running assessments. You’re working one on one and building relationships. And then outside of those nine to three hours, you are doing everything else.
You are planning all your lessons. You’re making resources. You’re attending staff meetings, team meetings. professional development, you’re meeting with parents, you’re creating the production, you’re working with the netball team, you have a hundred jobs as a teacher. And I guess you just have to manage your time really efficiently, understand that the different aspects of the day, you know, you fully commit to your in-classroom teaching during nine to three, and what can I get done before nine o’clock, what can I get done?
After three o’clock, I would often be at school 7:30 to 5:30 to get work done. Coming in the weekends, I would bring work home with me. You’re busy, really busy, and you don’t have the break until the end of the academic year, where school finishes. You have about a week, you clear out your classroom, tie up all those loose things, and then you’ve got a couple of weeks off before you are there, two weeks before school starts getting ready to go again.
[00:11:51] Joseph: Yeah, it’s a lot. Because I know you manage the students there now at Imperial who eventually want to work in primarily the banking or the finance sector. And so we always talk about the long hours that professionals like bankers work, but actually teachers are working very long hours because you’re working at school.
And then after you come home from school, you got to plan for the next day at school. What about just keeping the class under control? I don’t think we talked about this, but like how many kids did you have? And how did you go about just maintaining order in the classroom day in and day out?
[00:12:24] Sally: It really depends on the age group that you teach, but I would have anywhere between 23 to 30 children in a class at a time.
And it would grow as the year went on, as students arrived to the school. But you put on your teaching persona, you have a very special teacher’s voice that only comes out when you’re in the classroom, you’ve got your teacher look that we all know. And I think something that comes down to it is building that relationship with the students and gaining their respect.
And that’s so key to being able to get anything to happen in the classroom. You know, those students have to trust you and have to respect you to be able to want to listen. So I think that’s really important, but you do need your teacher voice and your teacher eyes as well.
[00:13:10] Joseph: When I think about Juliet’s educational journey so far, as her parent observing her, I’ve seen how every single year of an educational journey is very formative, if you think about going all the way from preschool to year two, which is where she now is, and when I think about her time as a year one student, I feel like that year had an enormously awe inspiring.
positive impact on her development academically, socially, physically. And I don’t know if this is just what happens at that age or her own natural development, but I suspect it was due in no small part. to the fact she had an absolutely phenomenal teacher who was actually in her first year of teaching when Juliet had her.
So big shout out to Miss Hudson, whom we felt like really took the time to understand her, like her strengths, her struggles, and help her grow in a way. that aligned with who Juliet was and is. We felt like Miss Hudson really saw Juliet and made an effort to understand her and really every child in that class.
And even now, Juliet still talks about Miss Hudson as being one of her favorite teachers. And you mentioned respect there, Sally. It’s not just because Juliet liked her. She did like her, but it’s also because Juliet really respected her and thought that she was effective at teaching and managing the class.
And I saw this, I witnessed this firsthand when I saw her in action at the field trip, in front of class assemblies, and it just got me thinking, one of the things that really struck me about her year one teacher was that she managed to strike that balance between being liked and being respected by the children. How do you strike that balance? To what extent are those mutually exclusive? Or do they go hand-in-hand?
[00:14:58] Sally: It’s so lovely to hear that your daughter’s teacher takes such the time to build that relationship because I think, you know, that’s so core to teaching philosophies is building that relationship. And you’re only going to get the best out of the student if you know them well. And they feel like you know them and they feel like you care about them.
That’s the only way to get any teaching and learning done is actually by building that trust with them first. And a child knows. If you don’t like them, I think we see that in teaching when we can all think back to a teacher that we’ve had that hasn’t been particularly nice to you as a teacher that calls you out when actually it was your friend that was talking, you know, we can all think back to those kind of situations.
So for the most part, I would say teachers probably love all their students, but I think you’ve got to understand that you’re also the adult in the classroom and you really need to make sure that. As the adult, you are being kind to everyone and giving everyone a chance.
Misconceptions About Teaching
[00:16:03] Joseph: Did you feel like there were any misconceptions out there about teaching that you either feel exist or maybe you even had yourself about what life is like as a teacher?
[00:16:17] Sally: Absolutely. I think the first thing that people say to you when you say, Oh, I’m a teacher, they go, Oh, great. Easy. You babysit nine to three, and then you have so many holidays. That’s how teachers are seen. You’ve just got lots and lots of holidays. So that’s always a bit of a hard pill to swallow because you know how hard you work, and you know how hard the teaching community works, and you’re not often seen.
As a professional, the skills that it takes to be a teacher is absolutely incredible. You’re building the milestones for future generations. And so that’s always quite hard to not be looked upon in that light from peers, from the government, from anyone around you. So that’s something that I think all teachers probably face.
[00:17:04] Joseph: Why do you think that is, Sally? Why do you think that the professionals out there who were kind of entrusting our children with day in and day out are not perceived in the same way as the types of people that you cross paths with these days, who are more like people who go work in corporate offices, people who work on Canary Wharf. What do you attribute that discrepancy in perception to?
[00:17:28] Sally: Sometimes I wonder that because everybody’s been to school. Everyone knows how school works. Everyone has been a student in school for so many years and seen how. school looked for them and just assume that it’s easy. You know, they were at school, so why can’t they be the teacher?
It must be really easy to do. Sometimes I wonder that, especially when you hear from parents and they give you advice about, oh, well, we used to do it like this at school. Maybe you should do this. Have you tried this? And you’re sitting there going, actually, I’ve been to university for four years to learn how to do this.
I’m constantly in professional development, learning new skills and how to teach this. Just because you did this one subject at school doesn’t mean that you have all the knowledge, you know, I’m working my best here
[00:18:17] Joseph: before we talk about your transition to the UK. I did have one more question about your teaching, at least as a full time teacher, before we talk about your time as a supply teacher in the UK, you mentioned parents there.
Is there anything in particular that you wished parents would understand about teachers? When they’re dropping off their kid in the morning, when they’re picking them up after school, when they’re coming to speak with you at parent teacher conferences, just anything out there that you kind of wished parents would understand a little bit better about teaching and what you’re doing with their children.
[00:18:48] Sally: It’s hard because I understand where parents come from, you know, it’s their child, it’s their pride and joy. So they want absolutely the best for them. And I guess I would love for parents to know that I want that as well, that I am looking out for their child. I want the absolute best for them as well.
And anything I’m doing, I’m trying to support that child. Anything that they’re struggling with, I’m doing my absolute best to support them through it. Yes, I might have 30 children in the class, but I care about every single one of them as much as the other.
[00:19:20] Joseph: Just before we get to the transition, how would you describe this period of your teaching experience?
So you spent about six years working full time as a teacher at Newlands Primary School. How did you find it? To what extent did you enjoy it or not? enjoy it. How would you describe your overall experience up until this point?
[00:19:37] Sally: I loved it. I had a great time teaching at Newlands. I feel like I went through a couple of different stages while I was there.
My first couple of years as a beginner teacher were full of learning and trial and error and spending all these years at university and finally being able to be the teacher. So it’s so exciting to have your own classroom and your own children. And then we went through the COVID years, and as with everyone in the world, the impact was absolutely huge.
And the, the fallout from COVID, we were seeing such different children, you know, really different cohort with, you know, higher emotional needs, higher behavioral needs, struggling with anxiety and having to share the attention of teachers. missing out on some of those crucial years where early interventions can happen.
So that felt like a very different type of teaching and period of schooling as well. And then after the fallout of COVID, it was just so different. So it feels like there were really great bits and there were harder bits, but overall, I did enjoy my teaching journey in New Zealand.
[00:20:50] Joseph: So it sounds like things were going.
Fine for you there. I know there were a lot of challenges with COVID and what that brought, but overall you enjoyed the nature of teaching. What triggered you to move to the UK all the way from New Zealand?
[00:21:05] Sally: Moving to the UK or anywhere in the world is almost a rite of passage in New Zealand. We call it our OEL overseas experience.
And because New Zealand is just so far away from everything, it’s something that so many people do.
Moving to London
[00:21:18] Sally: All my friends have done it, both my parents have done it. So you get your two, three year visa, you pack your bags and you move to London. It’s just something that everyone does. You, you know, live the London life and you travel That’s what we’re here for.
You know, New Zealand, it’s, if I got on a plane now, it would take me 30 plus hours to get home. So, you know, our closest other country is maybe three hours to Melbourne. So being able to pop to Spain for the weekend is absolutely incredible. So, you know, the travel, learning about different cultures and history is really amazing while being over here.
Starting a Teaching Career in the UK
[00:21:57] Joseph: And how did things transpire for you professionally once you got to the UK?
[00:22:01] Sally: So, arrived in the UK, and after a couple of months of travel, I settled in London, and there’s always teaching work. You know, we are always having teaching shortages. So, I quite quickly became a supply teacher from September last year, so the start of the academic year, and quite quickly I was getting work.
I think with the first couple of weeks of school, I was working three days a week, but by week three of the academic year, I was getting five days a week and I would get a call in the morning. This is the school. This is the age group. Can you go? And you would get on the train and head anywhere.
[00:22:38] Joseph: Wow. Okay.
Challenges of Being a Supply Teacher
[00:22:40] Joseph: And so also known as substitute teachers in some countries, what are the main differences? Would you say between being a supply teacher compared to being a full-time teacher with a dedicated classroom of kids?
[00:22:52] Sally: They are huge. The difference is absolutely huge. Being a supply teacher, you get the worst out of the children. You don’t have that relationship with them. So you don’t know. what works for them, what doesn’t work for them, how far you can and can’t push. They don’t trust you. You’re a stranger that’s turned up. So you’ve got to be really on. Your behavior management has to be top tier. You’re working through a plan that possibly a teacher has left you. Sometimes there’s no plan. So. You’re on all day long. You’re making decisions all day long.
[00:23:27] Joseph: Wow. That sounds so stressful. So you’re telling me sometimes you’ll just show up in the classroom and you just go for those, whatever, six, seven hours and just try to keep the place from falling apart. Okay. Wow.
[00:23:39] Sally: And there would have been days that I would turn up two minutes before class started and you’re thrown into a year six classroom and they’re going here, you need to teach this. And I’ve taught five year olds for a really long time. So all of a sudden I’ve gotta relearn how to do long division before I teach it to the students . So you’re often found in those kind of situations as well, having to relearn something before you teach it.
Diverse Teaching Experiences
[00:24:01] Joseph: You mentioned the type of school that you worked at in New Zealand, which was. I guess a smaller, more tighter knit community where you’re seeing the same people and kids every day. What were the types of schools you were working at while you were a supply teacher? Like could you give a sampling of the range of schools in the UK or London that you were assigned to?
[00:24:20] Sally: I probably taught at about 30 different schools during my time as a supply teacher. I taught at schools right down by Heathrow airport where I walked through a paddock to get to the school. I taught in schools in the middle of Soho where walking past. You wouldn’t even know that it was a school because it’s in amongst all the other businesses.
I taught reception, you know, three and four, five year olds. And I taught up to year eight in schools that had, you know, the high school students attached to the schools as well. So I taught in a huge range of schools, really different demographics and backgrounds. Some schools were You had nicer, lighter, easier days and some days were hard and there were times that I would go, okay, for my own well-being, I will not go back to that school again.
[00:25:12] Joseph: Wow.
[00:25:13] Sally: Yeah. I think if I teach is really hard, it’s very humbling. You know, I thought I was a great teacher with great behavior management, but. You’re really challenged by being a supply teacher.
[00:25:26] Joseph: You mentioned that in New Zealand, you really loved the teaching. You mentioned here, you’re facing quite a different circumstance where you’re dealing with kids you don’t know necessarily, as you mentioned, you’re getting the worst out of children. How would you describe your experience as a teacher at this stage in your career?
[00:25:43] Sally: First of all, it was probably the best thing I could have ever done for my Professional development, being at so many different schools, teaching so many different types of children in so many different subjects that I’d never taught before, was fantastic for my own development in my career, but it was hard, you know, something that’s so core to my teaching philosophies is that building of relationships.
And so being in a different school every single day, I wasn’t able. To build those relationships and build that trust with students and work to get the best out of them. So I found that really hard.
[00:26:17] Joseph: One of the things that we sometimes talk about on this show is the impact that your job can have on you, both in terms of your physical and emotional well being.
Did you find that your experience at work was affecting you outside of work in any way?
[00:26:33] Sally: I began to not enjoy my Monday to Friday, I wasn’t enjoying my teaching. I felt like I was turning into a teacher that I didn’t recognize. And, you know, I wasn’t building those relationships. I wasn’t doing the things that I loved when I was teaching back home.
And so the weekends became too short. Sunday nights. You know, I started to feel a bit of anxiety. Oh, I’ve got to go to school on Monday. What kind of day am, am I in for? I struggled with the behaviour management. I found it to be quite arbitrary and quite punitive and I struggled with that at my core that I, You know, I saw lots of teachers yelling at students and that didn’t sit right with me.
And so I struggled with that as well. And that affected my love and my want to be in the classroom.
[00:27:31] Joseph: Yeah, it’s very interesting, Sally, because sometimes I’ll hear from people in their professional lives that they’re doing work that they no longer buy into. They’re being asked to do things or carry out or execute certain actions or plans that they either don’t believe in, or they don’t agree with. And I know that that’s a part of, I guess, every job to some extent, you got to do a little bit of that.
But at what point did you feel like this was getting to a place where it wasn’t just something you didn’t like, but actually something that you felt you wanted to walk away from?
[00:28:05] Sally: The start of the new year? When I got to January 2024 and, you know, I’d moved over here, I’d done a couple of months of travel. I’d found a flat and life was still exciting. Whereas I got to January and it was like, oh, this is going to be me for the entire duration of while I’m living in London. I’m not enjoying it. How am I going to see out the next two years of being here when I’m not enjoying my Monday to Friday? I kept teaching for another two months, but I think that was when it really set in that I don’t know if I can keep doing this because I’m just not enjoying my life over here.
Transitioning Out of Teaching
[00:28:45] Joseph: Let’s talk a little bit about your transition out of teaching then. What did you do when you realized that? What steps did you then realize you needed to take?
[00:28:53] Sally: I made contact with a recruitment agency and, you know, I started to think, oh, what other things could I do? Maybe I need to update my CV and look into a different world.
And so I went to this recruitment agency Australasian and just began to have a bit of a conversation with some of the coordinators there about other things could be out there for me, what skills could be transferable. And at that point, I had to put together a CV and change it from a teaching CV to a professional CV where no one cares how I teach my literacy program and, you know, starting to think, can I actually do anything else?
And that’s when the confidence definitely took a dip that I only know how to do one thing. Can I actually do anything else? So that came up when I was starting to have to change over my CV. And then I was put forward for a temp role at Imperial and again, the confidence took a dip when I was practicing for my interview.
Do I know how to do anything else that isn’t teaching? Why am I leaving teaching when I’ve, I’ve got work? I know what I’m doing and I can do it. And so it was quite a scary time.
[00:30:09] Joseph: That confidence piece, Sally, I hear this a lot when people are making transitions because you’re going from what you Not only know, but you know, you can do reasonably well and to walk away from that and to kind of throw yourself into totally different industry.
Were there any particular things you did to bolster your confidence?
[00:30:29] Sally: It was changing the language that I used, you know, instead of saying that I had parent teacher interviews and I worked with parents and child psychologists and things like that. It was that I was working with stakeholders and I guess just learning what.
Did transfer over and that some of those things that I am confident with within teaching happen in a professional world as well and I guess learning for myself that because I can do it here I can also replicate it in another place and be confident about that.
[00:31:06] Joseph: As you began to go through this process of reworking your cv and the motions of explaining.
It sounds like you actually did enjoy your time at one point teaching back in New Zealand and being a teacher was something you’d wanted to do even as a child. Putting aside the practicalities of making this pivot, was there anything else that was particularly hard about the idea of moving away from school?
[00:31:36] Sally: I think transitioning from teaching brought on a process of grief that I guess I still face every now and then here, you know, teaching was something that I wanted to do, that my heart was set on, that I studied to do and I loved it. And it was almost a grieving process of falling out of love with teaching.
You know, it was something that I always wanted to do and I wasn’t feeling fulfilled and passionate by it anymore. And that was quite hard to have to face and. Sometimes, even though I’m loving working where I am now, I still think back to teaching and I still miss certain parts of it and still grieve certain parts of it.
So that’s been an ongoing process that I guess I wasn’t expecting.
[00:32:27] Joseph: I guess grief is something that’s an important part of walking away from anything. We can find ways to power through it and carry on with our day-to-day lives, but that grief doesn’t just go away. And it sounds like you came out of a really tough period of teaching and at the same time you once did and maybe even still do have a part of you that really loved it.
Especially when you think back to those earlier years. So feeling grief is understandable because it’s almost like you’re letting go of something that was once important to you and a part of not only your life, but who you were and still are today. And I think our past is something that. remains on all of our minds, even as we grow into another chapter in our careers and lives.
Speaking of which, how did you eventually land your full time role there at Imperial?
Landing a New Role at Imperial
[00:33:25] Sally: So I was hired as a six week temp to be a program coordinator while someone else was Of doing a secondment and so I started working at Imperial and it was a big role to learn. It was using things like Excel, which I wasn’t having to use teaching.
It was all of those kind of things. I was having to learn office life, the way that offices run, the way that you email, things like that were all very new to me. And so I worked there for about six weeks before. The job was possible to go permanent. And so at that point I had to reapply and re interview, and I felt better and worse about going for it then because I, you know, I’d built the confidence.
I’d done this job for six weeks. Surely I can do it permanently. I’ve learned all these skills, but it was also harder in the sense that now I, if I didn’t get the job, I knew what I was missing out on. And I. Knew what I had to go back to. I had to go back to that teaching life and my wellbeing of what it was while I was teaching.
So I wanted the permanent job. I was loving working at Imperial and I wanted to stay there.
Lessons Learned and Advice
[00:34:41] Joseph: The last thing I want to talk about before we wrap up here, Sally, or just a few of the lessons you’ve learned along the way of your career change journey. And I know that you were. Mentioning before some aspects around being concerned about your confidence, making the transition and knowing what you know now, what’s something that you’ve learned about yourself and the idea of being able to make a transition?
[00:35:06] Sally: I’ve definitely learned that. First of all, I can do it and that I need to be open to those things. I think as teachers, we put ourself in a little bubble that teaching is all we can do. But when I reflect on my teaching time now, and I think about all the skills that I learned as a teacher and how I use them every single day at my time at Imperial, you know, I learned that actually.
There were so many amazing things that I was able to do and that I’m only able to do in my job now because of my teaching background and actually those are the best things that I’ve been able to bring across that although I might have lacked the confidence initially by just opening my mind and saying, let’s dive in, let’s give it a try, life is so much better.
I’m enjoying my life in London now, I look forward to going to work, so you don’t know unless you try and I’m so glad that I did.
[00:36:01] Joseph: If you could share some advice with your younger self about your transition from New Zealand to the UK, or going from teaching to program management, what advice might you share with younger Sally?
[00:36:15] Sally: Take on any opportunity that comes your way. Say yes, because you never know what could come of it. There’s So many amazing things out there that you could be doing and you’ve got to jump in with two feet.
[00:36:27] Joseph: And the last question for you here. If somebody else out there is thinking about making a career transition or even making a major career change and they’re on the cusp of it, but kind of struggling to make that next move.
Is there something that you wished they would know about the process of transitions that you now know?
[00:36:45] Sally: Your skills that you have, you know, stepping back and looking at them and how actually they transfer into the world and to know that those skills are transferable, that you might feel like you’re pinholed into one position, but actually they can be just as useful in another role and you won’t know unless you try and if it doesn’t work, that’s fine.
You gave it a go and you can go back to what you were doing. But you know, it could absolutely change your life. So why not give it a try?
[00:37:14] Joseph: Thank you so much. Sally, for taking us through your time as a teacher and explaining your transition, not only geographically, but also professionally. I said this before, I’ll say it again. I think what teachers do out there is immeasurably invaluable to our children and the world. So as a parent myself, really appreciate the work that you have done for kids and also all the teachers out there, what they do for our children. So best of luck with your program management role there at Imperial.
I’m sure we’ll cross paths again in the near future, and I hope you have a good year ahead. Thanks for coming onto the show.
[00:37:51] Sally: Lovely. Thank you so much for having me.
🎶 Interview Segment Music Credits
- Podington Bear – Trinity Alps
- Podington Bear – Puppy
- Music_for_video – Sedative
- Podington Bear – Loam
- Podington Bear – Floating
- Podington Bear – Curious Process
- Podington Bear – Blue
- Folk_Acoustic – May
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