I need career change advice

[TamiTaylor]

I need some advice about how to do about a career change. I have been teaching for 10yrs now and I have just hit my wall. I love working with the kids but dealing with horrible admin this year has really diminished my desire to continue in this career. To be quite honest, I am very good teacher. And not that I put much stock into this but I am in a heavily test grade level and have consistently been the very top teacher in each subject area that I teach. I have written curriculum and assessments at the district level. I like the actual teaching but I just can’t deal with all of the crap that comes along with it anymore.

So anyone have ideas of what I can parlay my teaching skills into? Or how to go about making this career change?

[mags]

I'm sorry you are feeling like this. I just retired after 31 years and could not have gone on for 1 more year. The whole system is going to crash and burn very soon.

Sales for educational companies? Real estate? HR?

[just]

Look into Instructional Design. Tons of teachers are making the move into the field, many of them after unsuccessful teaching careers. I'd snap up a successful teacher in a minute for a curricula-focused instructional design position.

[Doggy Mommy]

I went from teaching to doing PD at the district level for 2 yrs. While there I got my principal certification and am now an AP. Being out of the classroom for 2 years was honestly a nice change, but after a while I wanted to be back in a school - though not as a teacher. Honestly my job is hard and a bit thankless. There are parts I love and parts I don’t love. At this point I am not interested in being a principal but I also feel like managing adults has given me more transferable job skills than I had as a teacher.

I recently talked to a publishing company about some possible PT work doing PD. It isn’t going to work out time-wise for me but may be something you might want to look into. Try starting with programs you teach and like. They like having teachers who have actually used their products.

[isabel]

Jan 30, 2020 20:18:12 GMT -5 just said:

Look into Instructional Design. Tons of teachers are making the move into the field, many of them after unsuccessful teaching careers. I'd snap up a successful teacher in a minute for a curricula-focused instructional design position.

This sounds like what one of my former teachers moved into. She was the absolute fucking best teacher ever (I had her for 9th grade English), but she was just done. We've kept in touch over the years and she moved into a role like that maybe 5 years ago. She seems much happier.

[jackie011]

I moved from El Ed to Early Childhood and then Early Childhood Administration and have never looked back. The early years were lean, pay wise, but I’m now bringing in about what I’d be making if I had stayed in the classroom. I have a lot of freedom and support from my board, and that’s very case by case, obviously. I work for a private, faith based entity, and I would pretty much only do this for that organization, to be honest.

[puppyluv]

I know a friend who transitioned from class room to a large insurance company. They hired her to teach some of their different training programs. She also would travel to various location to teach on site benefits managers.

Another friend was able to transition to a job running teaching training programs but it was a program they had in their district. They offer different seminars to their teachers and put on local conferences. Also other schools will hire her and her group to come do seminars at their location. She travels about twice a month doing that and sometimes even internationally.

[erbear]

When I got to this point in my teaching career, I switched schools and it has made all the difference. I'm going on 16 years here and while there is frustration at times, I genuinely love this gig and am happy to go to work.

that said, when I get sick of this, I'm going to move to writing textbooks and curriculum for dummies guides that go with them. Or I will look into training teachers at a college.

[bronxgirl]

Would you want to do the travel agent thing full time?

[joenali]

My friend teaches 5th grade and is an adjunct professor teaching classroom management. She loves it!

[mcmel]

5th year teacher here and I have an interview tomorrow for an environmental health specialist position 🤞🏼🤞🏼🤞🏼🤞🏼

I also applied for a field lab technician job too and would love doing that as well. I’m looking to ramp up applications around spring break.

[orval]

I am not a teacher but a parent of a kid with learning disabilities. Do you have any training in those? Maybe get Orton Gillingham trained and do private tutoring? That way you still get to teach. I believe there is a huge need for tutors. I think my city of over a million only has like one or two trained tutors for OG.
I need someone that can help with written expression and dyscalculia -- can't find any.

[georgeglass]

I work at a private school. Teachers that come work for us often says that it's the first time in years that they're excited to come to work. It can be hard to find a good one that combines good pay and benefits and also positive community impact, though.

[RoxMonster]

Following this and also commiserating because I, too, am trying to get out of teaching.

I have had a couple interview offers when I've applied for positions at the local university for career counselor-type jobs. Unfortunately, both paid considerably less than I was making teaching and we couldn't swing it. Now that DH has a much better job, I plan to look again and am more willing to take a pay cut.

[dirtyred]

If there's a children's hospital near you, they often have teachers on staff to work with children during long admissions.

[kath16]

a family member is considering a move into a community rec role. there may be local parks and rec or communities who offer kids/family stuff in the community and do lots of community engagement things.

i know you also do travel agent work - there are a million things that would translate there. everything from recruiter to sales to full-time travel agent if you enjoy it and are willing to expand beyond Disney (this is you, right?). i have a friend who has built a very successful travel business that started from his home and grew.

[icedcoffee]

A friend of mine left teaching and now she observes student teachers at a local college and evaluates them (I think...lol). Anyway she likes it a lot.

[imojoebunny]

If I had a teaching degree, I would get Orton-Guillingham certified and work at a school or camp for children with dyslexia for a year or so, and then become a private O-G tutor. The pay is ~$85 an hour around here, Atlanta, and you can set your hours. Some private schools bring in O-G tutors during the school day, so you don't have to necessarily work nights and weekends, but you could fill your schedule from 3-6 each day, and 9-5 on weekends, very easily around here. The demand is high, and the availability low.

My neighbor was a teacher and now works for a national standardized testing company. She works in test development. She seems to do a lot of analysis, and travels at least once a month, but otherwise works from home.

I worked with HR trainers at big companies, who started as teachers, but not sure how common that is.

[carmenere]

Are there educational nonprofits in your area? I work for a nonprofit that provides OST programming, and we have several former classroom teachers who do things like curriculum development, managing partnerships with schools, and supervising our part-time teachers and volunteers. Nonprofit pay obviously isn't the best but there's much more flexibility and the work is rewarding.

If your heart is still in teaching and you want to keep doing it, look into independent schools. I know several who made the switch from public to independent schools and say it's a huge improvement.

[moreace01]

I think I would evaluate if you really hate your career or just where you work. That might be a good place to start - if you do still love your career, maybe just a change in venue? I'm going through something similar - albeit totally different industry. I am at the point where I hate coming to work every day. And I realized that it's not that I hate what I do, I just hate the people I do it with. Particularly apathetic management.

[wildrice]

I work in HR training. I think having a teaching background would be really helpful. Even if you don't want to do HR, I have seen a lot of training related jobs at universities that aren't actual professors - usually related to professional development of some kind. My last job was largely training simulated patients in a medical school to help medical students practice their clinical skills. Most of these sorts of jobs seem to have an administrative component (scheduling, tracking, planning) but teaching skills would be super beneficial.

I also used to work at an educational testing company. We had a ton of former teachers that helped develop assessments. Not all assessments were standardized tests, though some were. Some of them were around things like helping identify psychosocial areas that may need intervention.

[tamarindy]

Jan 31, 2020 6:48:09 GMT -5 georgeglass said:

I work at a private school. Teachers that come work for us often says that it's the first time in years that they're excited to come to work. It can be hard to find a good one that combines good pay and benefits and also positive community impact, though.

This is me, too. If you love teaching it would be worth networking a bit and checking out private schools. I went from public to private two years ago. I am now respected as a professional in my field (never happened in public) and had more gratitude and positive feedback in my first month than I did in 8 years in public school. If you can find the right place, you may love it like I now do. Of course, it all depends on the school.

[thebreakfastclub]

I would consider instructional design and/or learning and development in a corporate setting.

[jinkies]

I agree that OG tutoring would be a good option. My daughter was recently dx with dyslexia, and trained dyslexia tutors seem difficult to find and the private tutors that I'm finding charge a high hourly rate, so it can be well-paying once you build a practice.

My career has been in nonprofits, and educating constituents and the public about the nonprofit's area of focus has been a central part of many of the nonprofits that I've worked in. You may want to look at nonprofits in your area for job openings that relate to patient or constituent education. I think your experience would translate well.

ETA: nonprofits have their own set of issues though, but that's true of any industry.