Life After Teaching – How to Start a New Career
Life after teaching
How to start a new career
When I got my Master’s in Teaching at 25, I thought I’d be in the classroom until retirement. But this year marks my 13th year of teaching and my last. I’ve spent the last five years building and growing this business to serve teachers and state workers here in the state of Washington, and at one point I thought I might continue to do both jobs for many years to come. But growing disenchantment with public schools and an increasing demand for my financial planning services have led me to the decision that it’s time to call it quits as a classroom teacher.
And I’m not the only one. More and more, I talk to teachers who may still be 15 or 20 years from retirement, but whose mounting frustration with teaching as a career choice is taking such a massive toll on their mental health and quality of life that they are ready to start thinking about life after teaching. Teacher burnout is real, as is the feeling that there’s no clear route to take to move out of the classroom and into something else.
And really, unless you’re heading into administration or some other very specific, education-related field, there actually aren’t any real clear pathways out of the classroom and into another career. For many teachers, having spent most of their lives bound to the daily and yearly schedule of public schools, it feels incredibly overwhelming to think about what might exist for them after teaching, often creating a state of paralysis that keeps some teachers in the classroom far longer than they want to be.
Having gone through the process myself and worked with clients who were burned out on teaching and ready to move on, there’s no doubt in my mind that it’s possible, but also not easy to make the jump from classroom teacher to just about anything else. I’ve also read what feels like a million blog posts about how your skills as a teacher are very useful outside of the classroom, and then list 10 jobs that you might be qualified for (and amazingly, at the end of my reading, I was no clearer on what I should do next, nor any closer to having any of those jobs).
So, what should you actually do if you’re thinking about a career change to something outside of public education?
Accept the Reality of What It’s Going to Take to Change
Every job and career decision comes with tradeoffs, and this one will be no different. If you decide to leave teaching and strike out on a new path, it’s possible you’ll take a pay cut while you develop your expertise in some other field. Any new job in a new field may require you to accept lower pay, longer hours, and/or more training or schooling. You may be an expert in the classroom, but you’re not yet an expert in your new career.
It’s likely that this sacrifice won’t last forever. It’s just important to realize that making a mid-career change may reacquaint you with some entry level conditions that you haven’t experienced for a while. And how you spend your time and money may have to flex accordingly. If it were easy to leave teaching, a lot more people would be doing it. Prepare yourself for the discomfort, crunch the numbers to see what you and your family can afford to live without for a while, and remember that this is a long-term investment in a more sustainable career path.
Reflect on What’s Working About Teaching (And What’s Not)
Start by thinking about what you like about teaching and what you don’t. To avoid jumping from the frying pan into the fire, you need to honestly assess what works for you and what does not when it comes to the job you have. No job will be perfect, and in order to find one that’s a better fit, you need to use your current experience constructively.
I remember when I first told my principal that I was going to start exploring other options – he encouraged me to think about school administration. I spent about 5 minutes (possibly just 5 seconds) thinking about it and immediately knew that job that would fill my days with everything I disliked about the classroom and nothing that I still liked about it. This led me to conclude that the next step for me, whatever it was, would be outside of the public education system.
Just because a next logical career step, like becoming a principal, teacher-coach, or even teaching abroad may be obvious or easy, doesn’t mean it’s the right one for you. It took me almost a year to decide what the next step would be for me. And even once I started down that new path, it took a few years to really dial in what I really wanted to do and how I really wanted to work.
Here are some guiding questions that helped me:
1) Where do you excel as a teacher and where do you struggle? During your best moments what type of work are you doing?
Try to think beyond just the teaching and the kids, what parts of preparing, planning, and implementing a year of teaching interest you, and which ones would you be happy to never do again? Understanding what type of work you want to do is as important as understanding what you want the focus of that work to be.
2) What tradeoffs are you willing to make?
There’s no magical unicorn job out there waiting for you. Every job comes with tradeoffs, and it’s important to think through which ones you’re okay with. Is income growth potential more important than job stability and income certainty? Is a flexible schedule more important than a consistent predictable schedule? How important is the percentage of your time spent doing meaningful work? What’s your tolerance for bureaucracy? It’s important to clearly understand what your preferences are, and what the tradeoffs are, because no job will be without them. It’s likely you’ll be as frustrated with your new job as you are with teaching if you don’t pay attention to choosing your tradeoffs consciously, or if you go into another job believing that there will be no tradeoffs.
How you answer these questions will tell you a lot about the type of work you may want to start thinking about – government work, private employer or non-profit, or even a small business owner. Once you get a broader sense of the type of work or employer you may be best suited for, it’s time to start to get serious about what’s available.
Start Looking at What’s Out There
The next step is to start looking at what types of jobs exist in those spaces that meet your criteria. One of the realizations I had when I started to look was just how many weird things people do for a living. I think so often those of us who head into professions with these clear paths and outcomes—teaching, nursing, firefighter, police officer—forget that most people are out there doing a job that we’ve probably never heard of. In order to get a sense of the possibilities, start looking at what people are hiring for. Start asking everyone you know what they do for a living, and don’t just accept “work for the state” as an answer. There’s an amazing array of weird work out there, and you’ll be better suited to navigate it once you’ve figured out what type of employment, employer, schedule, and work suits you. Just remember the lesson in tradeoffs – you probably can’t have everything you want, so figure out what’s essential and most important
As you start to spot things that might be of interest, consider what re-educating or re-tooling you may need to do to qualify for what you are interested in. Is this something you can start working on while you’re still teaching? What skills from teaching actually translate really well into this new position and how can you sell a potential employer on your skill set?
Remember that the next step doesn’t have to be the last step, nor does it have to be perfect. We learn a lot from each job that we take on, so make your best guess, then take the first steps to move in that direction. Sign up for a class you need, re-write your resume, what’s the next smallest thing you can do to make this a reality? Do that one, and then the one after that.
Don’t Ignore the Financials
In this post from last fall, I discuss what financial considerations need to be addressed before making a leap from the public to the private or non-profit sector. But ultimately – it’s important to be aware of the financial implications of your decision to leave teaching. If staying another year or two would vest you in your pension, it may make sense to stick it out a couple more years. If you’ll be looking at a smaller pension because you’re leaving teaching before retirement, pay attention to what level of retirement contributions you’ll need to compensate for that. And if you’re planning to take a pay cut for a couple of years, don’t forget to sit down and adjust your budget accordingly.
Don’t Expect It to Happen Overnight
I’ve seen a lot of people bail on their plans to transition out of teaching because they thought about it, and after a few months another job they were interested in and qualified for hadn’t materialized, so they decided that it wasn’t a possibility. Then every year, it’s the same thing. They hate teaching, they think about leaving, and the process of finding something else seems long and overwhelming, so they stay.
It took you 4-6 years of school to get here, and possibly a few years of subbing before you landed a full-time teaching job. And though I’ve known a few teachers who just found an amazing opportunity that they happened to be well qualified for almost immediately, for most, it takes some work, some retraining, and some time to figure out what comes next and to find that next opportunity. It’s easy to feel frustrated that you can’t get out now, or to wish you had started trying to make this change a few years ago, but if you start working on it now and commit to the process, one step at a time, it’s likely to pay off.
You just can’t give up because it’s hard.