Carol Cobb is a former kindergarten and first grade teacher who now works as a project manager. In this episode, we talk about how she used her experience in curriculum implementation to pursue a project management professional certification. If project management is a role that you are interested in learning about, this is one of the best episodes to help you understand it.
Listen to the episode in the podcast player below, or find it on Apple Podcast or Spotify.
Teacher To Project Manager
Daphne:
I’d love to start a little bit with your experience as a classroom teacher and then we’ll get more into your career transition. How long were you actually in the classroom and tell me a little bit about your history in education.
Carol:
Yeah, I went straight to the classroom right out of college, picked my university strictly for their education program and everything. And I taught kindergarten for six years and then I kind of joked, I finally made it to first grade and I taught first grade for six years before deciding to transition out.
Daphne:
So you were in the classroom for a while. How long during that time in your career were you really thinking about leaving and pursuing other options?
Carol:
I’d say basically since my kids were born, my daughter’s seven, so I started thinking about it a little bit after her. But then when I had my son a couple years later and that postpartum with him was rough going back into the classroom. I’d started thinking maybe I need a career that’s a little less stressful because two kids plus teaching was not working for me. So it was just an idea in my head though, and I felt like financially I needed to wait and get a better game plan together.
Daphne:
Yeah. So what were your first steps with finding a career back then?
Carol:
Honestly, I wasn’t really taking too many steps at all. It seemed like too big of a jump and I had no idea what else I’d want to do. I would joke with my husband some with his company because they’re wonderful to their employees and be like, hey, well why don’t you just find me a job there? But he knew I wasn’t too serious about that and working at the same place as my spouse seemed like a bad plan. So I didn’t really do anything for quite a while other than just dream in my head about it. But something about going back fully in person to the classroom after the pandemic because I chose to be the virtual teacher, I love techie stuff and I was like, this is a great challenge. So I enjoyed that year, which probably to a lot of your listeners will be like, what? I hated that. But I liked it. Just getting to manage things and focus on the curriculum with my students was great. But going back fully in person to the classroom, I was like, yeah, I need to start figuring out something else to do.
Daphne:
So the last year was the year that you really started to pursue other options?
Carol:
Yeah. So, over Christmas break I think it was, I was just thinking I’ve got to get serious about finding another option. And I had a couple of friends over the few years before that had transitioned out into other roles and one that just last fall did. So kind of following her journey and interacting with her about it, I came across your podcast and your website because she had used that as a resource. So I was like, okay. And honestly can’t thank you enough because that really got me started down the path of what to do, where to look, what to work on. Started setting up my LinkedIn profile and did your quiz to see which career path would make sense based on my experience and interest. So thanks for that.
Daphne:
Yeah, I’d love to hear these stories of the beginning and it’s always such a trip for me personally to meet and hear people who two years ago had just getting started and then now to hear that they’re on the other end and happy in their new roles because I know that so many people who are listening right now are now in that phase where you were. They just are taking the quiz or they’re just learning about different jobs outside the classroom and it’s so surreal for me to continue to have the cycle of helping other people decide their next path. So thank you for saying that. When you started pursuing, I know you landed on project management and we’re going to get into that a little bit further in detail in a couple of questions in the future. But when you did land on project management, was that the first choice that you really started to pursue?
Carol:
Honestly, no. The first thing that came up was instructional design. So beyond just being a teacher, I always opted for any opportunity I could get my hands on to work at the school system level with developing curriculum. So I would for additional stipends work on creating the curriculum for a system. We didn’t purchase big box curriculums or anything, it was they’d bring in teams of teachers and either make curriculum maps, that was where we started. And then we made full on units, almost everything you need to teach for the year. And I loved doing that work. So in my head that sounded like instructional design, but of course as anybody that’s listening that actually went into that field would know instructional design is a whole lot more than just that.
But I really explored that option for a couple months there. January and February actually got involved with a project that I’m stuck with all the way through the summer. Just started to angle it more towards how can I help them with managing the project more so than the instructional design pieces. But yeah, I was really on the fence about that for a while, but when I started to understand more of what went into that beyond just the planning and mapping out what to put into the courses and more of the visual design elements of it, I was like, I don’t know. I don’t know if that’s totally for me.
How Carol found project management
Daphne:
And then how did you start learning about project management?
Carol:
Well for starters, my husband worked as a project manager, so he’s been telling me for years, Carol, you’d be a natural at this, you should go into project management. But I didn’t really know what that was or what exactly that would entail because that terminology just isn’t used in education. When I started thinking back to those curriculum projects I did, I was like, well really, I was using a ton of project management skills within that. So I started a course on Coursera, the Google project management certification.
At the same time as I was exploring the instructional design round, I was like, okay, let me look at both. I’m going to get into some free courses for instructional design at the same time, do this Google course. And as my dislike of instructional design grew, the more I learned about it, the opposite was happening with project management doing that course. I was like, oh my gosh, I love these tools I’m learning about and so much of this is already so familiar to me process wise. I love it. So by last March I was like, yes, definitely. I already have most of the skills in place for this and it just matches what I enjoy doing. So I’m fully committed to going for that.
Daphne:
I love that. And it’s one of the parts of the process that I think is so challenging for people is figuring out, should I even invest my time or energy looking at this course? Okay, here’s some courses and should I invest any time or energy? What if I don’t end up doing that thing? And with you, it sounded like you did an instructional design course and guess that stinks. If you spent five hours doing something or 10 hours doing something and it’s not the role that you went towards, that can sting. The positive that you can take away from that is you had the clarity that you didn’t try and blindly go into a role and spend two years in that role. You were able and you’re not going to know until you dive yourself into the actual role, dip your toes in the water and feel what the role’s like. Did you really struggle with walking away from it? I think that there’s that sunk cost policy of, ugh, I spent time doing this thing now or were you like, good, I’m happy to walk away from it?
Carol:
I was good and happy walking away with it. I did continue the one project I got involved with that was supposed to be transitioning teachers, helping to help other people down the path of getting into instructional design. I’m stuck with that just out of a sense of like, well, I signed up for it, I’ll finish it. But other than that I was like, yeah, let it go. And if anything it was a great networking opportunity because there were some really great LinkedIn groups for that and just met some really cool people that are in that field. So that never hurts.
Why Carol chose to get project management certified
Daphne:
Once you started to go all in for project management, I know that you went through the PMP certification or the PMP exam and that is something that also takes a lot of time. Can you tell me a little bit about the PMP exam?
Carol:
Yeah, so if you are going to go for project management, definitely encourage getting some kind of certification to prove that you know all of that corporate vernacular and everything of how everything’s expressed. And there’s other options that aren’t quite as rigorous as the PMP, like the CAPM or if he wanted to go more with agile methodologies there’s CSM, which I actually ended up doing that one too, a little later down the road. But PMP, you have to have three years of project experience that you actually submit an application in order to take the exam. And it’s not like an open book thing, you’ve got to have all this stuff in your head.
So I spent a couple months last spring pretty hardcore studying for it. Actually invested in a course and a coach to help me with preparing for it. But I was like, this is going to be a relatively small investment that when I land a project management role, I’m going to be able to pay it right back. But it was definitely a big commitment and a lot of work, and I was glad I started with that Google course that’s such a low cost to test the waters and make sure it was something I was interested in. But the more I studied, the more I enjoyed it for sure. And it’s been super helpful being in my new role that I understand a lot of just acronyms and things that go with the field that otherwise I hadn’t heard of before.
Daphne:
And what you actually did because that’s one of the roadblocks that people face. I hear this all the time is, well I can’t even take this exam if I don’t have three years of project management experience. But you were able to actually leverage your teaching experience as transferrable years of experience in project management in order to take and pass the PMP exam. Am I understanding that correctly?
Carol:
Yeah. Well in a way. So I had my 12 years of teaching experience and, while I feel like every kid is a project that I manage, basically, I decided with my PMP application to focus on the curriculum projects I did where the county was making this curriculum from scratch and I had to work with other teachers on the team, but also working with my grade level team throughout the implementation year to collect data on how well did it work. Really it mirrored waterfall project management pretty well.
So I did first, let me think which subject I started with, science one year, then went through the implementation phase for it and then we did math the following year. That was a really fun one. And then ELA, so I had three of these under my belt that basically covered those three years. But the challenge was taking the waterfall methodology and all of the project management vocabulary that I didn’t necessarily use those exact words when I was doing these curriculum projects, but the definitions match, you know what I mean? And just writing it up in that PMR’s terminology for everything so that when they read it they would be like, okay, yes this works.
Daphne:
And this entire process you said took you a couple of months?
Carol:
Yeah. I tend to, once I decide to do something, fully dive into it. So I was working on the courses hour or so a day, spring break, really packed a lot into it. But this is on top of soccer season with two little kids. I was busy but I’m at the soccer field doing flash cards or something. I had to be committed. But I guess being in project management, I had my schedule and I knew when I was going to put in the time and I had my tracker of how far I’d made it through the course and everything. So it worked out.
Daphne:
For project management, I’ve heard you say it a couple times that there’s all those terminology, there’s all these acronyms. If you could pick your top three acronyms that a teacher should definitely know if they are looking to get into project management, what would those three terms be?
Carol:
Well, the first big thing is just recognizing what a project is versus a process, something that’s constantly ongoing for you. And that’s where the challenge can be in translating your teaching experience in a way because teaching is an ongoing thing, but a project has a defined beginning and an end, which is why I chose to use the curriculum projects for my PMP experience. So understanding that, being able to articulate that, but also just knowing the difference between waterfall project management and Agile or even how those can work together for hybrid projects. But then there’s so much steps that go under each of those, but just at a high level, understanding the difference between the two is a great place to start.
Carol explains how to build your project management skills
Daphne:
Do you recommend anyone who is interested in project management as a career start to dip their toes into using project management software? I use Trello personally, but I think I’ve used Asana at another company. And even with Trello, I think that there’s ways that you could create a project for work that you’re doing within a school system just to see how you chunk it out, how you actually create a timeline and organize everything. Is that something that you even did yourself?
Carol:
Yeah, I’ve used Trello for years and really enjoyed it. Doing the Google project management course, you get to try out Asana pretty in-depth really. So that’s a good option for getting into that. I dabbled in Smartsheet a little bit just with some home improvement projects around the house, so it’s definitely good to get your feet right with each of those. But actually at my current company, we use Microsoft Project a little bit, but for the most part we just lean on using the standard Microsoft Office, things like Excel. My current project plans, I just have them in Excel because it’s easier to give them to my customers and keep them up to date because they might not have access to any of those nicer softwares. But everybody has Excel. And I think that helped me in my interviews too, because I used spreadsheets a ton when I was teaching beyond what probably a normal teacher might like to use spreadsheets. I just make life easier for me.
So I was able to talk about making essentially a dashboard in, well, we were a Google school system, but Sheets to keep up with all of the interventions for students across my grade level because I was the intervention chair. And when I told a director I was interviewing with about that, she was just both super excited to hear it because she had a special needs child and was like, I wish the teachers had been organized enough to use a spreadsheet. Simple stuff like that really made an impact when I was interviewing that I knew how to use that and had real examples of how that helped people.
Daphne:
I’d love to even dive in a little bit more into the interview process. So did you interview for any roles before you had this last interview that ultimately got you this position?
Carol:
Yeah, I had a handful of other interviews with a few other companies. Most of those were right at the same time as I was going for the PMP. I felt like I didn’t have that nice little acronym on my resume yet, but mentally I liked going ahead and applying for jobs just to see how I was doing with translating my skills on my resume and all that. And it worked. I had, I think it was three different interviews the same couple of weeks around when I was testing for the PMP, made it a couple of rounds with one of them, the other one I think I was a little bit late joining the group so they already had somebody else in mind but were curious to hear about me.
Daphne:
Yeah. What were some of the questions that they asked you that you noticed or that you can remember even about transitioning from teaching into project management?
Carol:
Well they were definitely curious about what projects I used, especially with me going for the PMP. So you were asking like, how did you translate that? What was your project experience? So I would describe that. But also they were just interested in the day-to-day life skills of how do you stay organized, how do you keep up with things, what do you do to keep up good communication, questions like that. I was actually really impressed with the company I ended up getting hired with because their interviews were just so conversational. It didn’t feel like, here’s a question, give this detailed response to it. It was really nice.
Carol’s experience interviewing for project management positions
Daphne:
Yeah, in the conversation that we’ve already had, you have given so many clues that you are a very organized and tech savvy person. You like to keep things in spreadsheets, you like to keep your own project management software. Are those points that you were strongly articulating when you were in the interviews with them?
Carol:
Oh yeah, definitely. I made sure to tell different tools that I’d used, but not just, hey, I used this, but how I used it and how that helped me be better as a teacher and how that improved outcomes for my students or made things easier for my fellow teachers. Things like that.
Daphne:
Did they ask any questions about why you were leaving the classroom in general?
Carol:
Not the company I ended up with. One of the other ones did and you could tell they were just like, they felt like it would be a bummer to take another person out of the classroom knowing that there’s such a shortage and big movement of teachers leaving. But that was something I proactively thought about how I would answer for them if they did ask me that. And I just explained, I teach first grade, that’s six and seven-year-olds. My own children are getting to that same age. And my son in particular, I wanted to have energy at the end of the day to help him with his needs because he’s like ADHD diagnosis and all this and I was just thinking, woo, homework and all that. I don’t want to have exhausted teacher energy for him. I want to be the best version of myself once I’m home with my own family.
So I just explained it that way. But also a lot of what I enjoyed the most about teaching and didn’t enjoy came into really stark contrast during the pandemic when I was virtual teaching. So when I didn’t have a classroom full of students where I was having to do so much classroom management and running bathroom breaks and all of that, I found that my stress level went down so much and I was enjoying my job so much more because really when it comes down to it, I like managing and planning and just getting things all organized for people to follow through with a process of reaching success and virtual teaching where I was basically partnering with the parents so much more and telling them how to help their students move forward. I really enjoyed that. So I would just explain in the interviews what things drove me and brought me joy in my job that I saw I would be doing for their company too. Because people want to know their employees are going to be happy and enjoy what they’re doing.
Daphne:
Yeah, I think one of the struggles with answering that question is doing it in an optimistic way. And that’s always the best way to actually focus on what you loved about teaching. Oh, here are three bullet points of things that I love about teaching and how it is applicable to your job and why I know I’m going to be so excited for this specific position. I was able to reflect and understand that. It sounds like you absolutely did that right. Let’s talk a little bit about your day-to-day responsibilities as a project manager. So what do you do in your new job, what does that look like?
Carol:
So I’m supporting our customers that are implementing our software. So they might have had an old version of it, maybe it was on premise at their company and I’m helping them through upgrade or migration projects where they’re trying to bring it up to the latest, greatest version. And a lot of them are moving to the cloud. That’s such a big thing in all kinds of industries right now with people trying to get off of things that are just locally at their business and something they can work on from anywhere. So I’ve got several different customers at the same time and I’ve got to keep up with where are they at in this upgrade process and meet with them for status checks and making sure that they’re moving forward on the tasks they have to do. Because a lot of the work, my company, it’s kind of out of our hands. We have to put it on them and their accountants and everything to make sure they’re getting it done so nothing goes haywire in their upgrade process.
Daphne:
And how many accounts are you managing or juggling at one time?
Carol:
I’ve got 14 right now, I think.
Daphne:
And that’s part of why it’s so important that you’re organized and able to track things.
Carol:
Yeah, yeah, definitely. I’ve gotten into using one note like crazy since starting it since I can first of all keep my extensive notes on how to do everything for this company, but then I’ve got my whole notebook of each customer and where are they at and all their little details.
What it’s like for Carol working as a project manager
Daphne:
In this role, do you find yourself also taking on a little bit of a training position where you’re training them on how to do things?
Carol:
Well, I did get to start with two other people that literally started as project managers with this company on the same day as me. So I guess the teacher in me, I’ve been helping them especially with using OneNote because both of them are totally new to that being like, hey, here’s this great tool we can use to manage our projects and keep up with all these details for the 15 different steps for each of them for our 15 different customers. So in a way, I’ve helped with that, but also they’ve been very open to feedback, especially about their onboarding process. So I would communicate with the right people about how onboarding was going and what maybe I would move around and do differently if I were to do it again and helping them out with that. But also one thing I’d just pointed out, even when I was interviewing with them, I told them I’m a very courageous person about asking questions.
If I’m not sure about something, I’m not going to just pretend I know what’s going on, I’ll ask you. And if it’s say a process that it just doesn’t make sense how it’s working, I’m not just going to roll with it and let it be. I’m going to come to you and say, why are we doing this, this way? Why don’t we try this instead? Or just stop at that why question to better understand it. So yeah, they get an earful from me, but I think they like it because it’s making them rethink a lot of things and improve some of their processes. They’ve started giving me a lot of the one-off odd projects and I think that’s part of why because they’re like, okay, she’s going to help highlight anything that could be done differently and really drill down to every little detail about these.
Daphne:
And for a project manager, do you see a lot of room and area for growth as far as financially and also your career trajectory?
Carol:
Oh yeah, definitely. So it helped that I had the PMP because I was able to jump above associate project manager or coordinator level positions straight to project manager. And that was a pretty significant pay bump beyond what my teaching salary was. So just right there, I’m super happy. But within my company we have senior project managers and then above them, we’ve got managers over a team of project managers and senior project managers mix of that. And then there’s a director level beyond that. So there’s plenty of opportunity in the future to step my way up through those different steps.
Daphne:
I love that. And it does seem like you also are working at a company that’s not directly an education company, it’s not an EdTech company.
Carol:
No.
Daphne:
Do you mind saying what industry it’s in?
Carol:
Yeah, so they do enterprise resource management software. So all my clients are manufacturers. That was like, I’ve always been curious about how things are made and it’s just super fun. Literally one of my steps when I’m taking on and onboarding a new project is pulling up their website and being like, so what do these guys make? And it’s fun seeing it. Got one that would line up really well with one of my son’s interests and was able to pull him in and be like, hey look, look. They make these things. You like those, right?
Daphne:
That’s so cool. And I feel like it is less competitive outside of the EdTech space, at least as we’re recording this. The time that I know that many teachers are really looking for those transitional roles and EdTech companies are still hiring, but when you do start to look outside of that specific area, you may find more available opportunities or more companies that aren’t flooded with teachers who are applying for those positions. Did you hear from your hiring manager or anyone, any indication of what you did that really made you excel outside of other candidates during this process?
Carol:
Well they were happy to see the PMP, they did mention that, but I think a lot of it just came down to one, networking. Because I had met through LinkedIn, a former teacher that now works as a project manager with them. So she was able to connect me with the recruiter and it was just happenstance really, that we came across each other on LinkedIn. But that was part of my daily habit throughout the career transition to spend some time on there, trying to meet new people and see what I could learn and connect with.
Daphne:
That’s such an amazing story. Many times people who are strangers on the internet are not able to actually help pull each other into the career. So that’s so great to hear that.
Carol:
Yeah. And really, we didn’t even have a coffee chat as they call it. We just texted back and forth a few times of, oh hey, it was like she had just started the job and it was one of those, you see a connection of a connection started something. And I just asked her what even the company did and was she liking it because that was important to me. What was her employee satisfaction kind of experience with them. Yeah, went from there.
Carol’s work-life balance in her new career
Daphne:
And then I heard one of the most important things to you when you were looking for roles, you were looking for something with work-life balance where you were able to have a better relationship with your own family when you were done with the day. Have you noticed an improvement in that area?
Carol:
Oh yeah, definitely. And I’ve tried to still keep my ties to helping the schools in the area, like my kids’ school that they had to move to since they couldn’t continue with the previous one where I taught, so they’re in our neighborhood school. They didn’t have a PTO, so I was like, well hello. I’m a project manager now. I love organizing things and getting things to happen and PTOs are basically just running a series of projects with a lot of good communication thrown in there to bring some stakeholders together. Perfect, I can do this. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, but I figured I could figure it out. And with this new job I’ve had the time and flexibility to work on that and get that off the ground. Just earlier today we did a fundraiser at the school with a local car dealership.
I took my work laptop with me. I had an hour gap where I didn’t have any calls or anything and was all caught up for the moment. So went over there and helped out with that fundraiser for a little bit, went home and took a call and it was just wonderful. I never could have done that before. I go and help on my son’s classroom for about half an hour once a week, sometimes more. Just simple little things like that. But I’ve got that control over my schedule because I set when am I going to be meeting with clients? I know exactly what my day and week is going to look like pretty much. I might not know what issues are going to crop up in between everything. But having that level of control over the schedule has been beautiful.
Daphne:
And it is also just such a, it shows that teachers who leave the classroom, they still have giving hearts. They still want to help other people. They still want to impact education. Like you are volunteering your time and going back into the school now that you’ve been able to have your own autonomy and have your own time and your own mental health back. And I feel like many of the teachers that I talk to once they do leave the classroom, find themselves going back, but with their own new boundaries to create what they can support. Because before everyone was just telling you, here’s a list of everything you have to do, and it was just too much.
Carol:
Right. Right. So I’m trying to do whatever I can from this new parent angle to help them. Our superintendent has a parent counsel, so I was like, yes, sign me up. Let me see how I can help you from the parent side of things. So things like that. I feel like I’m able to contribute in a different way while also having that autonomy to say whatever I feel like needs to be said without any potential adverse effects from that.
What Carol learned about herself through the transition process
Daphne:
Yeah, absolutely. Carol, I have one last question for you. It is the question that I ask every transitioning teacher when I interview them. What did you learn about yourself during this process?
Carol:
Oh, well, I think I’ve learned that I’m much more of an outgoing people person than I ever gave myself credit for. People have always said that I even give them the impression of being the slight little shy, quiet person. But I’ve come out of my shell so much, especially with my experiences, meeting people on LinkedIn, doing calls, helping people in other continents and them helping me. Things I never thought I would get to do and interact with and be a part of. It’s just been, it’s this real life kind of moment all the time. Just knowing that I’m capable of all that and so much more just makes me much more proud of myself and curious to see where I’m going to go from here.
Daphne:
So you are breaking outside of your comfort zone.
Carol:
Yeah.
Daphne:
I love this. I love all of the work that you put into it. It was well researched, but it ultimately got you to somewhere where you are much happier it sounds like. And I am just so proud of you and I’m also so grateful for you to come on and share your story with this audience and your advice. So thank you so much for taking the time to do this, Carol. It’s been such a pleasure.
Carol:
All right, you’re welcome. Thanks for inviting me on and I appreciate your program so much. That was my first step of figuring out what to do, which way to go, and then I just took off from there. So thank you.
Mentioned in the episode:
- Our career path quiz at www.teachercareercoach.com/quiz
