Teacher looking to change careers

Notteaching wrote:

Teacher here looking for a career change.

Every day is more boring and just need something engaging that I can attain mastery over. No offence to teachers as I'm sure tons of you love your jobs but it just doesn't match with my personality type.

My only problem is I don't have a distinct skillset. I'm pretty logical/analytical and often feel I have to explain things to colleagues. I'm decently computer savvy and have built my own sites etc.

Any ideas? Any similar experience? I'm 37 and single BTW. Have about 45k in savings.

Funny, as I left police work to go into teaching. Shows you how much being a cop sucks.

how about focussing on app development - try one of the udemy online courses while you are still teaching

https://www.udemy.com/android-app-development-build-your-first-app/

also the guy who said teachers go home at 3 has it all wrong. go home later then work at home more likely

"I think people underestimate a teachers salary. Yes, it seems like you are under paid, and to an extent you are, but there are certain financial benefits to being a teacher. A great pension being the most overlooked.

Most teacher pensions allow you to get close to your ending salary at full retirement."

"On top of that, you are only working 3/4 time. You get about 4 months off per year, and your days end at around 3. Yes, some teacher work after that, but a lot don't (just like I worked more like 45-55 hours a week most of my life as a software engineer, but some do not)."

This ^^

Interesting...

tuff career wrote:

how about focussing on app development - try one of the udemy online courses while you are still teaching

https://www.udemy.com/android-app-development-build-your-first-app/

also the guy who said teachers go home at 3 has it all wrong. go home later then work at home more likely

"also the guy who said teachers go home at 3 has it all wrong. go home later then work at home more likely"

A teachers day in the classroom ends at 3 (some places earlier, some maybe a bit later). Some teachers work after that. Some do not. Many have teacher assistants grading papers, and have their lesson plans set for years. I know a fair amount of teachers. Not one of them works an 8 hour day when you add it all up. However, I'm also certain there are many great teachers working more than 8 hour days as well.

I'm not counting that time as 3/4 time. The 3/4 time is from the 3-4 months off a year - June to September in many places, with 4-5 weeks off for holidays. 2 weeks Xmas, 1 week easter, and assorted other holidays.

I'm certainly not saying that teachers have it easy. It can be monotonous, demanding work.

My main point, though, is a teacher's total compensation is not as bad as many make it out to be. Pension + vacation + holiday + almost impossible to lose you job after a certain point. If you head up into administration - principle or higher, then it's even better. You may lose a few some of your free time, but your pension goes way up. Allowing you to retire earlier if you want the hours back.

Can't you get a job in econmics or finance? Sounds good to me

ttthhhh wrote:

You can get a tech job without a tech related degree. I am a web developer with a 3 year general science. One great thing about computer science is it is an easily demonstrable skill so credentials don't matter as much as what you can actually do. If you're interested in web design I suggest spending the summer just studying all you can and building practice projects for a portfolio. If you can show employers a decent site, you can get a job and from there you can keep advancing so long as you don't stop learning which no developer should.

Do you do web design or web development? It wasn't clear from your post. Do you recommend one over the other?

Also, is it possible to teach yourself this using resources like an online bootcamp and then do freelance work? I'm considering this but want to do freelance. Thanks.

I taught high school for 9 years, and found a new career 5 years ago. It was an excellent decision. Teaching was an awful profession. From the disrespectful, lazy students, to the parents who spoiled them, I could not envision myself doing it my whole life. I came in at 7 am and worked through lunch tutoring or grading, and all the way until 3:30. I had students in my room all day who needed help, etc. and barely had a free minute to take a piss. Teaching was, for me at least, not like a lot of jobs where you can slack off at times. It was a constant battle trying to manage 30 teenage attitudes, convince them to learn something, prep them for college and standardized testing, a make sure they were decent human beings. I usually brought home some papers to grade most evenings as well. The time off was great, but I was making $41,000 a year with my Master's degree. I now make $75,000 a year, and really only work a few more months, plus when I taught, I would work some crappy job in the summer to make a bit extra anyway. I am much happier and less stressed out now. Props to those who stick with it, but if you want to get out, you won't regret it.

So what's the new job?

Agree with a lot of this! As a survivor of over 32 years in classrooms: free at last! Freedom freedom, as retirement looms!

Best things about teaching are; being with kids( yes many with attitudes but keeps you young), having a pension, and time to run! Worst things: more and more bureaucratic paperwork, watching your back , and as a high school teacher- always papers to grade!

As people whose main source of joy is running down the road, good profession for runners! But in the big picture, salary is absolute chump change for what teachers do! Good luck to all you taking on this noble career, and keep running for mental health!

Agree with a lot of this! As a survivor of over 32 years in classrooms: free at last! Freedom freedom, as retirement looms!

Best things about teaching are; being with kids( yes many with attitudes but keeps you young), having a pension, and time to run! Worst things: more and more bureaucratic paperwork, watching your back , and as a high school teacher- always papers to grade!

As people whose main source of joy is running down the road, good profession for runners! But in the big picture, salary is absolute chump change for what teachers do! Good luck to all you taking on this noble career, and keep running for mental health!

I spent 6 years in the classroom before I decided 3 years ago that I had enough. You are 37 and you are PLENTY young to make a career change. I am envious of your financial situation also and made my move at 28 years old with 60K in debt. In any event, I went back to school for physical therapy and I am in love with the profession. Do what you love and what makes you happy! Best of luck

"The time off was great, but I was making $41,000 a year with my Master's degree. I now make $75,000 a year, and really only work a few more months, plus when I taught"

Do you know how much of the 75k you need to set aside to equal the pension you would have had as a teacher? You may actually be making less. Unless you don't want to retire.

I'll also throw in my experience: I spent 5 years in the classroom before switching to a career in sales. Best move I ever made. When I was a teacher I, like many of my students, lived for weekends, holiday breaks and summers off. I dreaded Mondays and celebrated Fridays. I made $35k/year as a teacher...it was fine because I was single and didn't have any school debt. But, raises were given based on years of service. If I worked out the full 30 years as a teacher with a masters degree, I could have made it to $65k/year. Not exactly high motivation to make a career out of doing something I didn't love (this was in South Carolina, among the lowest paying states for education.

I have a boring career now. I sell personal lines of insurance. Not terribly exciting stuff, but I don't mind it at all. I really enjoy the company I work for and feel like my life is much less defined by what I do for work and more so what I do after work and on the weekends. To many this is a fault; to me, it makes my life great. I make around $80k/year.

One word of caution to the OP: Don't search for a new career only if it has a "must require constant self-improvement" headliner...all careers require self improvement; how vigorous you want to be about it should be up to you. If its up to your company, you may not like the pace, or the path, that it takes you.

sameageasyou wrote:

coding: there are so many free and/cheap sources from codeacademy to treehouse to Lynda or enroll in Turing.io

I agree about this: I had great success with codecademy => learned a lot that led to a job I really enjoy.

OP, worth checking out this thread from a few months ago:

Sounds like you're in a similar situation to the guy in that thread. He decided to try the Web Dev route. I think it's a great route: opportunity, flexibility, creativity, independence.

Notteaching wrote:

I'm pretty logical/analytical and often feel I have to explain things to colleagues. I'm decently computer savvy and have built my own sites etc.

Any ideas? Any similar experience?

My story is fairly similar. I've done a few different things, including teaching.

I got a job in web development after a few years of inconsistent dabbling + a few months of codecademy.

How did you get the job? What type of job?

Los Soles wrote:

Notteaching wrote:

I'm pretty logical/analytical and often feel I have to explain things to colleagues. I'm decently computer savvy and have built my own sites etc.

Any ideas? Any similar experience?

My story is fairly similar. I've done a few different things, including teaching.

I got a job in web development after a few years of inconsistent dabbling + a few months of codecademy.

notteaching wrote:

How did you get the job?

Applied to a Craigslist ad, casual interview, and they had a coding test. I didn't exactly ace it, but I did well enough for them to give me a shot.

When I decided I was serious about getting a job in the field, I spent a lot of time on Codecademy. I worked on Python, HTML/CSS, and JavaScript at first. I applied for a Python job first and didn't get it. Then I applied for a PHP job, crammed PHP on Codecademy, and got the job.

notteaching wrote:

What type of job?

Smallish ecommerce company. (I guess it's not that small for ecommerce — dozens of employees in all.) Small development team in the U.S., and small development team in South America. Big enough team that I have people to learn from and bounce things off of, but small enough that I'm regularly directly involved in all kinds of significant, interesting projects.

I use PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, HTML/CSS.

I've done enough in the last 2+ years working here that I'm confident I could soon move on to give "software engineering" a shot, but I like where I'm at.