A New Career After Teaching?

January 19, 2016 12:32 PM

Hi! I am in my 13th year of elementary school teaching, and have grown very tired of it. I work at a wonderful private school (which means that, in addition to it being wonderful, it is also quite demanding in terms of work load and parent expectations), but I still feel like I don't want to do this any more. But...what *should* I do instead?

I was looking into becoming a SLP, but that won't work unless I want to move far away from my city. I also have second thoughts about it anyway, because I am realizing I am a bit tired of working with children, period. Besides some retail jobs in high school/college (health food store and children's book store), teaching is the only job I have ever done! So it is really daunting to think about changing careers. I would like something that is way more introverted and has way less emotional involvement. I wouldn't mind working in an office; it would also be awesome to work from home.

I have a BA in psychology and a MA in education. I love editing friends' work for mechanics, and have always been naturally quite good at it. How easy is it to get a job as a copy editor in a large American city? Also, any suggestions about changing careers after doing the same thing for over a decade, or suggestions about a career that I may enjoy? Part of my struggle is that I feel like my passion for teaching is gone, and I do not feel passionate about any other career options. So I guess I am looking for a "job" moreso than a "career." Sorry if this is not as precise as it could be. I appreciate any advice/suggestions. Thank you.

posted by bookworm4125 to Work & Money (13 answers total)

They have a position in the UK called TLR (with Teaching and Learning Responsibilities) and it is great. Look at the job description.

A high powered job would be placing teachers in schools, which you could do in a pinch and probably retire as soon as you trained your second employee.

I would look at creating lesson plans. This is actually pretty lucrative and their are sites which sell them. You could also become a master teacher at a college and work your way into academia from there.
posted by parmanparman at 1:34 PM on January 19, 2016

Adult education?
posted by trillian at 1:37 PM on January 19, 2016

If you are still trying to figure things out at the end of the school year, maybe put in to teach a different age. Companies need staff to help write standardized tests and develop all the material that goes with it. Or maybe textbook development. There is always upper-management like principal or curriculum development.
posted by Foam Pants at 1:41 PM on January 19, 2016

Copy Editors are a dying breed, mostly because printed media is dying.

You may not be passionate about your next career, and here's something cool about that, you don't have to be.

Have you considered being an analyst? I majored in English in college with the intention of becoming a teacher. I got waylaid for a couple of decades in telecom, and then I taught for a couple of years. When I returned to the corporate world, I started doing analysis.

I started in Sales Operations, so I learned a the tool, Salesforce, I already had a good background in Excel, and I extracted data from the tool, and created reports based on the data.

Analysts can work in a number of capacities, in accounting, law enforcement. Do a search on Linked In with key word Analyst and see if what pops up sounds interesting.

If you're in the US, there are a BUNCH of Analyst jobs with the federal government, some even in Education if you want to . Many of these jobs are with DOD working abroad. If you want a government sponsored adventure, you might check out teaching abroad. DOD schools are pretty similar to private schools, and the government sponsors you housing and utilities in addition to the salary (make a note of that, it's pretty fantastic.)

My Dad is a therapist and he worked abroad for 10 years, my parents had a blast living in Germany and Japan, traveling all over and meeting friends.

Federal Government benefits are excellent, especially retirement.

Dip your toe in, read job descriptions and see what sounds interesting. Use your degrees in your key word searches, who knows what might come up.

Good luck!
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 1:53 PM on January 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

With that much experience, you should definitely consider getting into administration, curriculum development and some other area where your expertise would be welcome. It sounds like you are burned out and wanting to change things completely, but you have considerable skills and talent from your years in the classroom, and you will be well respected and appreciated if you go into a more administrative role.
posted by Toddles at 2:06 PM on January 19, 2016

Response by poster: Not to threadsit, but I am wholly uninterested in anything involving admin at schools. Part of what is making feel burnt out is the parents, and that is basically your whole job when you are in admin in private elementary schools! Really looking to get away from education here, if possible, and venture into brand new territory. Thank you for the suggestions so far!
posted by bookworm4125 at 2:09 PM on January 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

If you can handle kids and private school parents, you're probably really great with people. How do you feel about sales? I know a few teachers who left and went on to pretty amazing careers in real estate sales.
posted by yes I said yes I will Yes at 3:05 PM on January 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

So I realize that I usually tell people *not* to be become librarians, but - what about becoming a librarian? I went from public to school libraries, but I know loads of folks who have done the reverse and been very happy with the career change. You still get to be a bookworm, but your involvement with patrons is much more limited than it is in a school, even in high-need communities. The master's degree is an expensive annoyance, but at least in my big city, lots of libraries will overlook it, especially for former/current teachers (and especially for school liaison-type jobs).
posted by goodbyewaffles at 3:18 PM on January 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

My husband and I both have master's in teaching and neither one of us currently teaches. Husband--former high school English teacher-- is a copy editor (brief previous stint as a quality assurance guy at a cyberschool, which would have been an interesting job with a lot of potential had not the CEO of the company been an utter lunatic). I'm an instructional technologist at a large university. Before that, I was research support in a cognitive psych research lab where most of our research was conducted in schools in partnership with classroom teachers. Knowing how schools operate, what the culture is, how to talk to teachers and administrators, these are all skills needed for any outfit hoping to do any kind of work inside a school, be that university level research or selling curricula, technology or materials. In both positions, I use my knowledge of sound pedagogy daily.

I found the world of corporate training to be impossible to get into because the field seems convinced that adult learning in the private sector is the specialist of special snowflake bodies of knowledge and no mere teacher could ever fathom the mysterious depths of such cutting edge techniques as think-pair-share. In my experience, nonprofits and higher ed seem more open to recognizing the valuable skill set that former teachers being with them.
posted by soren_lorensen at 5:10 PM on January 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

Former teacher here-- I now work in marketing for an educational publishing company. The big plus in getting hired was my knowledge of educational trends and lingo as well as the ability to write copy for an audience of educators--that made up for my lack of formal marketing experience.
posted by bookmammal at 5:32 PM on January 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

What about applying for a museum job where you do educational programming? On one hand, you'd still be working with parents but it'd be a very different scenario. Pay would likely be less but decent, and your experience and educational background would absolutely help.
posted by smorgasbord at 6:07 PM on January 19, 2016

All the education companies hire teachers, Scholastic, etc. Some for professional development, some for other jobs.
posted by aetg at 7:49 PM on January 19, 2016

Copy editor here. Yes, there are probably fewer of us than there used to be, but online-only publications hire copy editors as well. It can be hard to get into copy editing, but it can be done. You might need to start with a job title like "publications assistant" and work your way up or you may luck out and get into copy editing on your first try. I'd strongly advise against saying you have experience because you've gone over friends' papers - that's resulted in massive eye rolling at every publication I've worked at (It's sort of like applying for a teaching job and saying you have experience because you taught your sister's toddler to sing "Three Blind Mice"). If you get an interview, you will probably have to take a copy editing test, and you will need to ace it . Do you know the difference between "that" and "which"? "Like" and "as"? Will you spot the double-space or the period that's in bold? Also, you haven't said anything about salary, but you may have to take a pay cut to work in publishing. I am pretty well paid for a copy editor because I have a technical specialty, but when our local newspaper released salaries for teachers in our school district, I wasn't anywhere close to what the average teacher makes - despite more than ten years of experience in the field. I do work for a nonprofit journal - perhaps you'd make more at a for-profit company.
posted by FencingGal at 8:39 AM on January 20, 2016 [1 favorite]