Welcome to the Teacher Career Coach podcast. I’m your host, Daphne Gomez. When I stepped back into this role in August, I updated our mission statement just to make sure it was really strongly emphasized. What I have always personally been trying to achieve with this community. I updated it to say a community sharing honest advice for teachers considering new careers.
And the reason why I wanna really emphasize that word honest, is because the advice and information that I give sometimes might not be what you wanna hear. It might mean that you have to make a really difficult decision or you have to go through something that’s really challenging to get on the other end.
Listen to the episode in the podcast player below, or find it on Apple Podcast or Spotify.
But I’m never going to be the type of person that tells you that a career transition from teaching is easy, that the only thing that it takes is updating your resume because there are a lot of other components of it, and this is a really big, hard project. I know that you are here listening because you are not looking for easy answers, you’re looking for honest ones, and then you’re also looking for a clear roadmap of what you can do with the information that you just learned.
So the biggest question that I’ve been asked is, this the year to leave teaching in today’s market? Is it actually reasonable to assume that I can leave teaching? And I wanna start with a disclaimer. I have a lot of insight into behind the scenes closed door conversations with companies I’ve talked to just recently, an ed tech CEO, who told me what he thought was happening in today’s job market for specifically education companies.
I’ve also worked with transitioning teachers for years, and we are continuing to get success stories with former teachers leaving in 2025. I’ve done a lot of research on this subject, but I personally am not an economic analyst or a fortune teller, and right now is a really hard time to be able to predict the future.
There are a lot of different variables that are impacting how the job market is going to be even in the next two weeks or six months. I will say this, I started teacher career coach in 2019. And the perception of the job market has always leaned heavily negative from teachers who are looking for a way out.
But I am not trying to gaslight you here. This right now as I’m recording. This is an extremely challenging time to be a job hunter. It is not just you. This is an employer’s market and not a job Hunter’s market. The Labor Department’s August report showed that just 22,000 jobs were added, which was well below the 80,000 that they were expecting.
And there are a few different factors that are impacting this, whether it’s AI outsourcing roles, tariff uncertainty, or just economic uncertainty due to spending behaviors shifting with consumers. There’s just going to be a lot of uncertainty. Right now. And because of all that uncertainty, people are less likely to be job hunting when they have a stable position.
And that also impacts the amount of jobs that are open. So going back to why I told you that teachers have always had a negative perception of the job market is because. I’m really nervous about giving all this information and having you listen to it and it confirm, okay, well, there’s no reason to start moving forward with my goals.
It’s impossible. This is an impossible task, and I’m not gonna do it because this could change on a dime, and this is what I have learned personally through my own struggles with uncertainty. A roadblock isn’t a dead end. This economy, knock on wood, is not gonna last forever. I want you to really think about what your plans are and build a map that builds in flexibility for the outside factors that you can’t control and acknowledges the realities of what you’re up against today, but still making progress in the direction if it’s the direction that you have chosen.
My biggest project right now is the job market survey because truthfully, I am far more interested in data from like specific to transitioning teachers than I am broad, generic data. Right now we’ve had 555 former teachers answer, and this is gonna change. It won’t be the final numbers. If you are not on our email list, make sure that you’re signed up for the email list by going to teacher career coach.com so that you get the full survey report on October 9th when we send it to everyone.
But right now we’ve heard from former teachers that 33% of their companies are hiring at the same pace as usual. 22% are hiring at a slower pace. And 23% are on a hiring freeze. The rest of the answers said that they just weren’t really sure. So they didn’t wanna give us a specific answer. So there are still companies that are hiring.
There are definitely companies that are laying off. All of the people who are laid off are not necessarily gonna be fighting for the exact same positions that you’re trying to get into. But yes, right now as I’m recording this episode, things are a lot harder than they were two years ago, and so your feelings around this are valid, that it is a really big, hard project and you might not be 100% sure if you’re making, progress towards something that you’re gonna change your mind towards the very end.
That is also a valid concern. My answer to your question on whether or not this is gonna be the year that you leave teaching is that it depends. Some of you are gonna make the leap this year despite the challenges. Others will probably use this time to prepare and position yourselves for when opportunities expand.
And some of you will decide that staying in education, at least for now, is the smartest, most stable move for your family. And all of these choices are valid, and all of them require courage, and none of them are easy answers. And unfortunately, you’re not gonna know with 100% certainty that you’ve made the right choice.
Whether or not we’re talking about career moves or house purchases, or even life partners, you only know that you made the best decision with the information that you had at that time. And so that’s what today’s episode is all about. I’m going to share the five things that I would do to start making progress for a career transition.
Even if I was a little uncertain that I was going to leave.
Now, before we get into the five steps, I just wanna tell you a little bit about myself. That might help explain why I app approach things the way that I do. I am maybe what you might call a chronic overplan. It’s been that way since I’ve been a little kid.
There was a lot of chaos and uncertainty in my life, and planning has really become a way for me to take some control when everything else feels unpredictable. And this tendencies actually really intensified over the past two years as I’ve been dealing with PTSD, which is something that I opened up about in episode 1 95.
But planning helps me actually manage the anxiety and the what ifs, and the feeling like I’m just not prepared for what life might throw at me next. And it can be as simple as like over planning a weekend vacation with. A strict itinerary of here’s what time we’re gonna wake up, this is what time the kids are gonna take a nap.
These are the different places that have things that fit our food allergies. Or it might be something like three to five year career plans. I’ve looked at jobs that were a little bit outside of my comfort area and I wrote down all the bullet points that I would need to work towards really like building experience in order to start applying for dream jobs three to five years out.
These are like the types of things that bring me joy in this approach. Might not be for everyone. You might be able to steal some of these ideas. You might wanna walk away from this episode. I’m not one of those people who says, oh, we all have the same 24 hours in a day because it’s frankly ridiculous.
As a working mom of twin toddlers, one who has significant care needs, I know firsthand our bandwidth varies dramatically based on our circumstances. So that being said. I’m gonna start going through what I’ve created as a plan of what I would hypothetically do if I was still in the classroom today. So step one is always going to be get really honest about your financial needs with your next role.
Know your baseline, so starting with your current take home pay and your household expenses, and try and figure out what a true minimum salary would be. Just in case you ever got to the point where you were desperate to get your foot in the door somewhere, or needed to take a stepping stone position, that’s gonna be its own pros and cons list and big decision later on down the line.
But you want this done ahead of time so that you have that number ready. Set a non-negotiable number, like what is the lowest salary that you could realistically accept without creating a financial strain? And then also set what is your ideal number, what salary would let you breathe? Breathe easier, save and feel like a career change was worth it.
And be realistic about what some of the trade-offs might be. Sometimes the lower salary might have benefits like flexibility or lower stress or career growth potential, or your timeline might be a little bit sooner, but I don’t want you under any circumstances to take something that is so low that you can’t live off of it.
That’s why it’s so important for you to write down what your needs are right now, and also start to think about when you’re doing your market research, if you have a much higher salary that you plan on needing to replace in order for this to make sense. Are there any ways that you can buffer the difference?
And if this is an area where you’re really struggling. There’s two podcast episodes that we have specifically on subjects that can really help you with financial planning. It’s episode 24. It’s Financial Planning for Teachers Changing Careers, and Episode 49 should You Stay for Your Teaching Pension.
Both of those will go through some really great activities and give you some more insight, but in order to get through five steps, I gotta move on to step two, which is. Create some coping strategies and some specific actionable plans for when the job search starts to get overwhelming, or even just teaching gets overwhelming because it, probably will.
So I’m gonna give you some examples of what psychologists call implementation intentions. They follow this like if then format and they can help you with responses to predictable challenges. Some of these can actually help you with finding clarity and thinking more clear, and just in general, the overwhelm of information overload.
So if I feel overwhelmed after work, then I’ll go for a 10 minute walk instead of scrolling on my phone. If I get rejection anxiety during my job search, then I’ll reach out to my most supportive friend and just ask for a pep talk. If I start catastrophizing about my financial future, then I’ll review my actual budget numbers and remind myself of my concrete plan.
And then there’s ways that you can create little habits that continue to stack up throughout the school year of kind of bite-size ways to still make progress on these goals without it feeling overwhelming, but just setting an intention upfront that stacks on something that you’re already doing.
For an example, like after I pour my Saturday morning coffee, I’ll read the teacher Career coach newsletter. After dinner, I’ll watch one course module or one YouTube video before turning on Netflix. On my commute to work, I’ll listen to the podcasts related to questions I have or the fields I’m curious about.
The key is to really start tiny here, but five to 10 minutes stacked onto something that you’re already doing daily, over a year’s worth of time. That ends up being 60 hours of extra learning without it feeling like a huge burden on an already really packed schedule. So step three is even if you’re not 100% sure that you’re planning on leaving, I would absolutely get on LinkedIn right now today and just start to build an authentic network there.
I would not feel pressure to post whatsoever. I actually have entire podcast episodes about what not to do on LinkedIn because I don’t recommend branding yourself as a transitioning teacher or using it in a way that you would use Facebook to talk about your job search or your questions about your job search.
I just mean get a profile and start to add people that you know. People that you used to work with, people that go to your church, people that are on your child’s soccer team, anyone that you might just be interested in, where do they work? Because that’s not something that you get to see on regular social media.
People don’t usually post on their Facebooks or their Instagrams about their company name or what their job titles are, so that’s really important information for you to start realizing where you might have. An actual foot in the door when you’re starting to apply to new jobs outside of the classroom.
Getting on LinkedIn should not be something that’s super scary or super hard, but it is absolutely something that you should do.
Now, step four is one that’s really important and especially in a competitive market, and that is upskilling. I would be really strategic with the upskilling. Because if you are not 100% sure that you’re planning on leaving teaching, you might not want to dive into tech tools like Salesforce or things that you’re not gonna use inside of the classroom.
So I want you to start with something that makes sense while you’re still teaching. Think about if you’re interested in learning design. So right now you can create a new classroom resource in Canva or create a one slide advertisement in Canva to practice marketing and visual communication. Think about jobs or look up a different job that has bullet points and think about how you can build a skill.
While you’re still in the classroom specific to a job that you’re interested in, and the reason why this is so important is you’re not gonna know what you like or don’t like until you start getting your hands dirty. Even if you think that you really love writing curriculum, you won’t know until you sit down and write curriculum for about eight hours, if that’s a good long-term decision for you.
And this also helps you with specific ways to talk about what you did when it comes to interviews. It helps you with building resume bullet points for specific jobs that you are applying to in the future. So right now, think about if you’re interested in learning design or project management and start to put together projects.
And some of these are going to be challenging. You’re adding more to your plate. If you ask your principal to create training resources for one of the upcoming PDs, you might have some negative feedback from some of your peers. And those are gonna be learning experiences that you can absolutely use when it comes to applying to some of the positions that need you to train adults.
Those are really common problems to have, and until you’ve actually faced the problems. You’re not gonna know exactly how to answer them or have specific stories to answer them. So the more experience you get in the types of roles that you are really interested in, the better you’re gonna do, the more confident you’re gonna be.
And you’re also gonna really understand what roles you want or don’t want in the future. And lastly, research really consistently shows that greater autonomy leads to higher levels of general wellbeing and job satisfaction. And right now. I know that there are a lot of things that you don’t get to control in your current position, so this is just one way that you can add some things back, some creativity or some tasks that you’re completely in control of the process, while also adding some really strong bullet points to your resume and some really great stories that you can tell during interviews if it comes to that time.
And the last step, step five is figure out A, plan B or C if needed. The timeline is always gonna be outside of your control, and there are so many factors unique to your specific circumstance, whether or not you’re married and depending on a significant other’s finances can really impact which of these are options for you and also just where your mindset is.
Some of you are so burned out that you know you absolutely need out, where others have. More optimistic that this is a year that you’re starting to find your stride in your classroom. Your admin’s actually supportive at your school district, and there are things that make you more leaning towards staying in the classroom, but needing probably some sort of changes.
So here are just a couple of different ways that you can build flexibility into your plans. Just in case it doesn’t happen within that traditional window of your expectation. So the first, if you were leaving for a new job and you know you absolutely need out, would you be interested in a stepping stone role or a pro applying more broadly, opening up your applications outside of different industries that you were maybe potentially targeting?
Would you leave and substitute, teach while you work part-time or contract roles and build more experience during the summer? Would you just freelance and do contract work, but plan on returning the next school year or would next school year be the year that you really did a harder focus on upskilling, enrolling in certificates or boot camps or courses during the evenings and weekends to prepare for your next step if you’re planning on staying in the classroom?
Would you be open to switching schools or districts or grade levels in order to try and find a new environment that might make you a little bit happier next year? Would you be applying for admin or support roles like instructional coach or specialists in order to get outside of the traditional classroom a little bit and potentially a pay bump?
So to go through the five steps, for those of you who are uncertain, if you’re planning on leaving teaching, it’s one, get brutally honest about your finances. Step two, get some coping strategies and habit stacking. Step three, building an authentic network on LinkedIn. Step four, upskilling and step five, figure out what a plan B or a plan C looks like.
If you’ve been finding the teacher Career Coach podcast supportive for you in your career transition, can you do me a big favor? Can you head over to Apple Podcast or Spotify or wherever you’re listening and just leave us a quick review? We read all of our reviews, but they actually are, they only take a couple seconds to do, but they really help us on the business end of things.
The more reviews we get, the more teachers who are thinking about this type of support are able to find this resource. Thank you so much for being a listener of the Teacher Career Coach podcast, and I’ll see you next week.
RESOURCES
- If you are struggling right now, please seek help. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 802-273-8255
- Get the template! Writing a Teacher Resignation Letter to a Principal
- Take the FREE QUIZ: What career outside of the classroom are you qualified for?
- If you know it’s time to start your transition and are looking for resources and guidance, check out the Teacher Career Coach course today!
- Join our growing community (and connect with Daphne) on Instagram @teachercareercoach.
