Episode 31: 5 Ways to Discover Your Next Career Move

Many people are thinking about working outside of the classroom, but aren’t quite ready to take the leap. Figuring out your next career move can bring out a lot of emotions and uncertainty of overwhelm and if it’s even the right move. To give you some direction, I’m sharing 5 ways to discover alternative jobs for teachers.

Unfortunately, figuring out your next career move doesn’t happen instantly and requires some reflection, research and thought. My 5 steps include tuning into what you enjoy, talking to others in the field, acknowledging your hesitations, thinking outside the box, and taking a chance. With each step you take, it leads you to alternative jobs for teachers, which results in your next best career move.

Topics Discussed:

  • Questions to ask yourself to figure out what you enjoy and gives you life to help with your next career move

  • How to gain insight into the job you might want by using LinkedIn

  • Ways to acknowledge your fears and get past them

  • Finding jobs that fit with your desires, skills, and passions

Resources mentioned:

Related episodes and blog posts:

 
 
 
 

Read the transcript for this episode:

When you're trying to figure out your next career move as an educator, it can be really overwhelming. How do you even know where to start? And how do you even know if it's the right move?

I remember when I was leaving the classroom, it felt so fraught, just being like, I don't know, I thought I would be a teacher forever. And I just didn't really know what else I could do.

But when my daughter was born in 2012, I decided to leave the classroom and take that leap, knowing that I had done some flexible work outside of the classroom, and that I knew there was work out there. And it was really about finding the best move for me.

And so I want to walk you through in this podcast, five steps you can take when trying to discover your next career move. The first step is tuning into what you enjoy. And if you're thinking of exploring a new career, it starts with reflecting on what you enjoy doing.

I know as a classroom teacher, it can feel hard to tune back into what you love. We're asked to do so many things that we might not love doing. So take some time and just try to reflect on what do you enjoy about education?

You can think about these questions. What is it about teaching that you really love? What would you miss if you weren't a teacher? What do you feel like you're really good at? And when do you feel most like yourself?

I love that last one. When do you feel most like yourself? When do you feel most alive? What do you love doing? That will fuel you if you tune into that.

For me, I really thought about this of creating learning experiences for kids and really planning these innovative ways for kids to see connections between subject areas and planning units, I got them so excited. And for me that led me to curriculum design something that to this day, I still love doing really that creativity, and that way of engaging students this way.

So really then thinking about with what you enjoy what that might fit into as your next career move. So maybe if you're like, I just really love interacting with new teachers, I love supporting student teachers I've had, I love just being able to help new teachers in a way that I wish I had had myself as a new teacher.

Then maybe you can think about how could you make money doing this. And that could be instructional coaching. It could be professional development for teachers. So really thinking about how you could make this a new career for you.

And then after getting a sense of just what you might want to do, and honestly thinking about what you might not want to do too is part of step one, also.

Step two is then talking to others in the field. So thinking about what lights us up gives us clues into how we should spend our time. But we need to see models of people actually doing these things. So think about finding people who can talk about their expertise and their experience leaving the classroom and doing something that you might be interested in doing.

So how do we find these people? You can search on LinkedIn using your ideal job title. So maybe you want to be a new teacher coach, search LinkedIn, for new teacher coach and try to find people. You don't even have to actually reach out and talk to them, though that of course, is a bonus. Like, yes, we want to be able to interact with these people.

But you can even just look really closely at their LinkedIn profiles. And think about how did people get this experience to be able to do the role I want to do. So really get insight on their career trajectory from looking at their LinkedIn profiles.

You can also reach out to these people directly and say, Hey, do you have time to discuss your career change to being a new teacher coach? They may say yes, they may say no. But I also think about reaching out to colleagues or former colleagues or friends or anybody who is a contact that does something similar to what you're interested in.

And just prepare a few questions, be really respectful of their time, they're likely super busy. But really try and return that favor too when people ask you to talk to them about your career trajectory, or your experience as a teacher, return that favor. We are all better where we can collaborate and discuss things with each other.

So step two, again, is talking to others in the field or at least researching what are other jobs like in the field who holds these jobs.

Then step three, is acknowledging your hesitations. Doing something new is scary it's supposed to be, it's not supposed to feel super comfortable to take a leap and try something new. That's part of the beauty and part of the annoyance of it too.

But really acknowledging that change is hard. And instead of talking yourself out of going after what you desire, really acknowledge your hesitations. Notice when your brain tries to convince you not to try something, then if it's really something you want to do, try it anyway.

And when you acknowledge your hesitations, that can mean talking about them, or writing them down, or finding an accountability partner that you can go to and just share, like, Hey, I'm feeling scared about this, or I feel like I'm talking myself out of doing this.

When considering a change, we sometimes start off forward thinking by imagining all the ways taking step forwards will change our lives. So we're like, oh, my gosh, I'm going to be a new teacher coach, what will I do about insurance? And what about retirement and how will I find my clients and all the things that we have a long time to figure out.

So instead of thinking too far, in the future, take things one step at a time, making the best decision at each stage of your journey, and really acknowledging those hesitations along the way, deciding if they're valid and finding a way through them.

Then step four, is thinking outside of the box. When it comes to exploring alternative jobs for teachers, give yourself permission to think big. If you've always dreamed about a certain role, but don't see it existing in the world, that doesn't mean it can't exist.

If you think about your skills and your passions, and you're like, I really want to do this thing, what's stopping you? You can think about things outside of the box and it's all about marketing it, finding the right words for it, finding the right people for it.

There is only one you and you have unique skills to bring to the table. And you can do so many things. So after you get clear on what you want, really search around and see if you can find something similar. And if you can't create what you wish existed, you can totally do this.

And then step five is taking a chance. Don't give up before you try. Often, we can really just be like, Oh, well, someday I'll do this. Someday I will become a curriculum developer. What have you really tried? What would that look like for you? What if you really tried to make your teaching salary or more? What if you really tried to double your teaching salary? I bet you can do it if you really, really try.

So allow yourself to take a chance and commit yourself and bet on you. It's so easy to talk ourselves out of trying new things, especially when these things feel big and scary. But making a big change is scary and amazing. So try replacing doubt with the question What if it was amazing? Even if things don't work out the way you planned with the right mindset you can learn and grow along the way.

So to recap, when you're considering a career move beyond the classroom, I suggest these five steps: tuning into what you enjoy, talking to others in the field, acknowledging your hesitations, thinking outside of the box, and taking a chance.

It is totally possible for you to get what you desire. It just requires time, effort, and really wading through all the uncomfortable feelings and doubts and hesitations that come up so that you can find the right way forward. That way forward that will give you what you need.

So really committing yourself to figuring out what your best next step is starts with just taking some action. So let's start with number one, tuning into what you enjoy and go forward from there. We can't wait to see what you do.

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