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Author Musician Coach
HOW A TENURED TEACHER BUILT
THREE NEW CAREERS
The story behind Annika Reuter
In 2011, I wrote: I want to quit my job for the first time in my journal. At that point, I'd only been a tenured English and French teacher at a high school in North Rhine-Westphalia for a few years – with permanent civil servant status, which in Germany essentially means a job for life, exceptional job security, and extensive state benefits. I loved teaching, but the school system was draining me. Even so, it took another nine years before I actually left. Nine years in which quite a lot happened: endless cycles of burnout, destructive relationship patterns, constantly picking myself up, carrying on, collapsing again, and questioning everything. Two years of intensive psychotherapy. Breakdowns. Constantly working on myself so I could continue being a teacher. Until I met Yala.
The beginning
At the end of December 2018, I encountered a small, abandoned street dog in Sri Lanka. Yala . I initially just wanted to rescue her quickly. But this completely crazy story would ultimately change my whole life, because just two months later I suddenly knew: I'M FINALLY GOING TO QUIT SCHOOL!
You can find the whole story of Yala and me at Soulkangaroo.
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What happened next...
I knew then that I had to leave. I just didn't know how. Unlike today, in 2019 , quitting teaching wasn't a trend; there were neither structures nor networks. Three months later, by a happy accident, I found Isabell Probst, who had just founded her exit coaching for teachers and would support me through may exit. I decided to give myself one more year to break away and leave schools with my A-level students. So my last year of school was going to be a conscious process of separation. Everything was planned and timed as well as possible. But my body and mind weren't cooperating. Every step forward took an incredible amount of energy, as if I were swimming against a raging current . Because I was going against my deepest inner programming: You have to function. You aren't allowed to set boundaries and think of yourself. You mustn't let down your students and colleagues.
Moreover, the intense reactions from everyone around me showed that I was clearly not taking an ordinary step. Not only within my family, but also among my colleagues, I encountered a mixed bag of responses: encouragement, irritation, withdrawal, unsolicited advice – and again and again, comments like: "I'd love to do that too. But I don't dare."
At some point it became perfectly clear: If this step is already causing such a stir, then I'm not going to go quietly.
The wave began with the farewell speech
I had written a farewell speech for my colleagues. I delivered it on the last day of school in the sunshine of the schoolyard according to COVID-19 safety measures. It lasted 13 minutes. There was dead silence. Afterwards, some gave me a standing ovation. Others didn't even say goodbye.
The evening before, I had spontaneously sent an urgent letter to Armin Laschet, then head of the North Rhine-Westphalian state government, Education Minister Yvonne Gebauer, and several newspapers.
Listen to my speech with English subtitles! >>>
Why my last day of school completely overwhelmed me, even though I went home full of presents:
LISTEN TO IT:
Unfortunatley only available in German!
QUIET TRANSFORMATION ON INSTAGRAM
I started to gradually share my transformation on Instagram. In my own way.
My followers are quiet, reserved, and shy. Still today, I don't get countless likes or comments on my posts. And yet, I keep receiving incredibly touching feedback via DM: Thank you for being so honest. Finally, someone sees me.
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I keep receiving touching messages that show, despite little interaction on my profile: I am making a difference!
From newspapers to radio, television and university seminars:
An editor at the radia station of the Deutschlandfunk saw the newspaper article, my Instagram posts attracted the interest of a casting agency that was looking for "strong women" for a new quiz show. A former colleague invited me to his teacher training center to speak to trainee teachers.
July 17, 2020: Local newspaper Generalanzeiger : Tension is running high.
August 15, 2020: National radio Deutschlandfunk : Campus and Career: Secure in your job, but unhappy? Dare to change careers.
Oct 2020: National TV SAT 1 Letter Battle (the whole episode is available here)
March 28, 2023: TV WDR Current Affairs Hour
March 31, 2023: National news: Tagesschau : Job dropouts at schools in North Rhine-Westphalia: Teachers resign due to overwork
May 6, 2023: TV WDR Local Time (nationwide): The career advisor for former teachers
February 25, 2024: National TV ZDF 37 Degrees: Leaving a dream job. Why Kaliopi quits.
February 12, 2024: Radio WDR 5 Morning Echo - Interview: Stresses in the teaching profession: A former teacher tells her story.
March 2, 2026: Local newspaper Generalanzeiger: Former teacher Annika Reuter on her departure
September 8, 2026: Video podcast EVA SCHREIBT MIT (Watch Podcast with English SUBTITLES)
A REPLY from the Minister of Education !
The response was almost comical. Minister Gebauer had read my letter – but naturally, she didn’t reply herself. Someone at the Ministry was tasked with doing that for her. The answer essentially boiled down to: Yes, teaching is demanding. Yes, teacher bashing exists. But teachers are well paid, the profession can be very rewarding, and the state already offers plenty of health-support measures. In other words: We’re sorry to see you go, but from our perspective, the system is working just fine.
FACETS OF FREEDOM
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Or: it's not all that easy.
On the first day of the new school year, I started writing. I'd set my alarm and began while my former colleagues were sitting in the first teachers' conference of the new school year. And I didn't stop for two months. Everything poured out of me. My studies. My teaching traineeship. The years in the school system, the stress, the anger, the experiences. It had no structure. Just a torrent of unearthed emotions. A true exorcism. Years of frustration, pushing boundaries, and self-flagellation. The story of a life I'd thought for so many years: I could never live that until my mid-60s. And the question kept coming back:
Why was I so alone in this?
It can't just be me!
I want to build a life
I don't need a vacation from
My body reacted massively: nights spent sweating, old stress symptoms resurfacing. Every line seemed to go right through me. Some experiences—including my two state exams —I could only now begin to process. Twice a week I was at my doctor's for outpatient rehabilitation with IV fluids and acupuncture. Having left the civil service, I now had to cover the full cost of my private health insurance myself – more than €500 a month. Without a salary. Once a week I had a massage. My right arm, worn down by more than a decade of marking papers, often needed treatment. At the same time, I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do with myself. I only knew exactly what I never wanted to do again: marking papers. Living a life that restricted me so much that my body would eventually pay the price. Quitting my safe job wasn't just the end of a career; I wanted to use this turning point to build a completely different life for myself.
So, what does life actually look like now?
Because freedom suddenly also meant: Nobody organizes my life for me anymore.
Working hours. Health insurance*. Statutory pension insurance*. Retroactive enrollment after leaving the civil service*. Taxes. Income, expenses, and savings. Self-employment. Government agencies. Contracts. And the rather fundamental question: How do you actually earn a living when your salary no longer automatically lands in your bank account at the end of the month? I learned this lesson when it came to health insurance. I assumed I would be fully fit for work again after a few months. Instead, the opposite happened: my body collapsed after years of strain. I was exhausted, physically weakened, and in need of recovery. Ironically, it was precisely in this situation that I had to learn to manage my entire financial and social security affairs myself.
*NOTE ON THE GERMAN CIVIL SERVANT SYSTEM:
As a civil servant in Germany, you have a private health insurance, while the state covers a substantial share of your healthcare costs through a special assistance scheme called Beihilfe. Once you leave the civil service, that system no longer applies. Also German civil servants do not pay into the statutory pension system. Instead, after a career in public service, they receive a state pension based on their years of service and salary. Depending on the federal state, civil servants who resign may lose their entitlement to this pension and instead be retroactively enrolled in the statutory pension system. North Rhine-Westphalia has since introduced a system called Altersgeld, which allows former civil servants to retain the pension benefits they have already earned and receive them later in retirement. And there is another catch: Civil servants do not normally pay unemployment insurance contributions. So if you voluntarily leave the civil service, you generally do not simply enter the regular unemployment insurance system with unemployment benefits and employment services to help you find your next job.
While I was simultaneously being evicted from my apartment , I unexpectedly found a job with social security benefits as a sales assistant in a zero-waste shop in my old neighborhood. This got me back into the public health insurance system. Thank God. My savings continued to dwindle, but I got lucky: a friend and former colleague offered me a room. From that moment on, I lived with a single mother with two daughters, a house and garden – and enjoyed having real free time after work.
Off to new territory
After fourteen years of teaching, I knew pretty much exactly how school worked. Timetables, holidays, public holidays, salary, pension – my life was superbly organized from the outside. And suddenly all of that was gone.
But I wanted to find out what life feels like when it is no longer dictated by predetermined structures . As long as my savings allowed, I traveled a lot, tried things out, traveled outside of holiday periods and stayed longer than the six weeks they once allowed, and gradually discovered how much bigger the world becomes when no one else is setting the schedule.
Then there's the matter of the BESTSELLER …
My initial idea was quite simple: I would write my book, find a publisher, and become a bestselling author.
Reality apparently had a more detailed curriculum in mind.
The disorganized manuscript first had to become a book. And I had to understand: What is my book about? Who is it for? What message should it convey? What is my position within the book? I booked a mentoring program for writing book proposals, restructured the outline again and again, and worked with an agent for a while. The manuscript had almost 700 standard pages—around 360 too many. An intense editing process ensued, which was once again deeply unsettling. Publishers couldn't make much sense of the subject matter: too personal, supposedly no target audience. It took time until I understood how the book market works, what opportunities exist, and how I could find my own path within it.
 How to produce an audio book |  BRAINSTORMING |  Structuring the book |
|---|---|---|
 Ideas for my cover |  Original coverwork |  More ideas |
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And while I was waiting for something to finally happen with my bestseller, I simply wrote more books and invested time in other possible avenues. After all, I had plenty of interests and hobbies...
PLAN B:
SINGER!
What to do if your writing career isn't taking off? That's right: write and record songs!
My father, also a former teacher, helped me with that, albeit with a more traditional way out: retirement. Afterwards, he emigrated to Ann Arbor, Michigan . Since then, I've also spent a lot of time there and feel like I've become half-American – even though I always wanted to emigrate to France!
My father is also a musician and gifted me some sessions at David Roof's recording studio. I've since recorded seven LA ANNI songs with ROOFTOP RECORDINGS, because since leaving school, there's a lot to channel artistically – and some of it apparently didn't want to go into a book, but into songs.
More about LA ANNI, my songs and my musical life can be found under MUSIKERIN.
Click here to continue to
LA ANNI
PLAN C:
COACHING!
My friends and family considered coaching a suitable career alternative. Initially, however, I was busy enough trying to reorganize my own life. On my way out of my teaching profession, I repeatedly encountered points where I felt stuck. At the end of February of my last school year, physical blockages left me barely able to walk. Through CONNECTING LINK* coaching, I worked on the internal patterns I had violated by leaving the profession, and this allowed me to make progress, albeit in small steps. And because the book wasn't successful, I eventually thought: I'll just learn this in the meantime. So I cashed in my life insurance policy, invested in the training, and became a certified Connecting Link® Coach. From this method and everything else I learned and experienced during my own years of transformation, my SoulCoaching eventually evolved.
*CONNECTING LINK is a coaching method developed in Germany. While it is established and practiced here, it is not yet known internationally.
>>>Find out more about my work and my coaching approach at SoulCoaching .
Anything but
neurotypical...
It wasn't until I left the school system that I began to understand how my mind actually works – and that I experience and process the world differently. Today, I know that I'm highly empathic, that my body responds strongly to emotional and psychological stress, that my mind runs on several tracks at once, and that I'm not actually an extrovert, but rather an extroverted introvert who needs plenty of time and space to recharge.
On my journey to self-discovery, I explored a wide range of approaches: from psychotherapy, family constellations, shamanic journeys, past life regressions, soul fragments, inner child work, Reiki, and ancestral healing, to breathwork, somatic work, spirit animals, tantra, tapping, and cold plunges, as well as Ayurveda, osteopathy, acupuncture, homeopathy, Bach flower remedies, detox programs, horseback riding, yoga, Pilates, tarot, and oracle cards. All these experiences became part of a grand self-experiment: What truly helps me—and how do I even function?
And today?
Six years later, my "I don't yet know what I want – but I know exactly what I don't want anymore" has blossomed into a new life. Not as straightforward as I had imagined. The bestseller is still pending. But I have a respectable repertoire of media appearances, healing methods, and publications to my name.
Since leaving teaching, I’ve taken quite a few hits – financially and otherwise. My savings are invested in new trainings, experiences, voice lessons, travel outside of school holidays – and recharging my physical and mental batteries. I've repeatedly encountered limits I didn't even know existed, and in doing so, I've discovered how much bigger my world is outside of the old structures. For the past six years, I've traded money for experience and energy. For the next six years, I hope it will be the other way around.
I traded the financial security of a civil servant's salary for a steep learning curve that has led me to become an author , musician , and soul coach . I write and publish my own books, record my music as LA ANNI, and support others through their transformation processes with my SoulCoaching. Three areas that seem quite different at first glance—yet all stemming from the same initial spark.
Because a new path doesn't suddenly appear before you. You build it as you walk it. Sometimes with great strides, sometimes with rather absurd detours – and sometimes you only realize years later what something was good for.
My life is still a work in progress. But now it's finally my own.
LEAVING TEACHING: MY STORY IN THE MEDIA
Publications
School's out forever. Für immer schulfrei. Warum ich aus dem Schuldienst ausgestiegen bin, und das gar nicht so einfach war.
BAND 1: Wie du deine Wut in Lebenskraft verwandelst.
BAND 2: Was du von Hexen lernen kannst.
BAND 3: Wie du dein Jahr bewusst abschliesst und kraftvoll neu beginnst.
BAND 4: Warum wir Katzen so sehr lieben.
BAND 6: Raus aus dem Hamsterrad.
Bald bestellbar:
BAND 6: Wie du nicht wirst wie deine Eltern.
BAND 7: Magische Alltagsrituale für deine Seele.
English titles (exclusively on Amazon):
Spiritual rituals you will love.
Why we love cats so much.
How to end your year consciously and start the new one strong.
Coming soon:
What we can learn from witches.