Once a teacher, always a teacher?

September 13, 2009 9:50 AM

How do I make a "second career" transition from a field where I have built 7+ years of expertise without being pigeonholed?

(Asking for a friend):

I have been working in some aspect of education since graduating college, with jobs varying from working at museums to being a classroom teacher. Currently, I teach high school humanities at a public charter school. When I first started teaching, I really felt passionate about the subject matter. Now, I feel like I enjoy the "human element" of the job still (working with kids, collaborating), but could care less about teaching lessons on the civil war year after year. I teach at a pretty innovative school, so having control over the curriculum is not a major problem.

I'd like to know what fields or types of jobs are out there that would inherently value and capitalize upon the skills of a teacher. I would also like to make more money (imagine that). I've considered moving more into the educational policy/educational consulting field, so if anyone has direct feedback on how to get started with this that would also be appreciated.

My limitations are:
Lots of student loan debt from a previous master's degree, so an additional master's degree, while possible, is not my preferred first option. I would need to go back to school to get certification to teach at a public school since I've mostly worked in charter and private institutions. My master's degree was theory-based.

posted by seppyk to Work & Money (2 answers total)

Big corporations often have internal training departments, and the "teachers" (often called trainers, or facilitators) generally don't have teaching backgrounds... You'd have an advantage there, and probably get paid well... You'd be teaching adults, though, not kids.

Generally speaking, there are training/development departments in a lot of big companies, and they vary from miserably boring to amazingly interesting depending upon the company. I think I would've enjoyed being in the "learning and development" department of the multinational corporation I once worked for... They got to teach some interesting classes on a wide, wide variety of things ranging from straight business-y stuff to more esoteric subject matter like personality types and how to deal with them, etc...

Finally, I hope your teacher friend corrects you and knows that it's "I couldn't care less"... *sigh* Sorry. I couldn't help myself. ;-)
posted by twiggy at 2:03 PM on September 13, 2009

Do you have any contacts in the Learning Sciences area? My friends in LS seem to cover a pretty broad range of career trajectories, many of them coming from teaching backgrounds. People I know do technology design, teacher coaching/PD, consulting, corporate training, curriculum design/consulting, and after-school programs, and there are some who stay on in academia.

If you're interested in educational policy and/or educational consulting, I'd try to network with some LS folks. They seem to be plugged in to progressive and experimental education trends and innovations in a way that more traditional education folks aren't.
posted by Meg_Murry at 6:07 PM on September 13, 2009