And teacher career change advice?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

My wife is a first grade teacher. She doesn’t want to be any longer. :smiley: Like many teachers her age (26) she’s about burnt out with the whole situation. Long hours, low pay, low respect from parents, etc.

So she’s been looking around at new jobs. Any advice? We’re young enough that we could probably survive a bit of a pay cut to get her on a new and better career path, so she’s open to a lot of suggestions.

Have any dopers escaped the school system for something either more fun or more lucrative?

2

Ex-teacher here. First off, I commend your wife’s decision. She wasn’t happy, and she got out early enough to start another career. I say this because its seems the whole world is against you when you quit the business. People say stuff like, “I can’t believe you quit teaching. That was stupid. I remember that movie where the teacher was really cool.” It’s amazing how many people think teaching is fun job because of some movie they saw.

Just as with any student who just graduated, your wife’s goal is now to obtain as many job skills as possible. I would suggest trying to get hired with a small company. Small companies often take chances with less-experienced employees, they allow you to learn a number of different skills if you take the initiative to teach yourself, and you can move up to management relatively quickly. As a teacher, your wife’s best skills are in planning and management. At a small, say unorganized, company, these skills will be needed and valued.

  1. Identify the field she wants to work in. She probably already has a background in science, math, or English.
  2. Identify what skills are needed to be employable in that field.
  3. Spend a year or two obtaining those skills, even at a lower wage.
  4. At home, obtain basic computer skills and learn how to type. MS Outlook, Windows Explorer, Microsoft Word, and Microsoft Excel are probably the big ones.
  5. After getting a year or two’s experience, apply for a better job with better pay.

Here are a few other rambling notes.

  1. Even after quitting, teachers suffer from the Sunday night jitters. They worry so much about Monday morning, that they start getting anxious on Sunday night. You might want to keep an eye on your wife on Sunday nights and try to be a calming influence if necessary.
  2. Since teachers are placed in a command position, they tend to tell people what to do and treat everyone like kids. That doesn’t go over so well in the adult work place. Your wife might want to monitor her behavior to make sure she isn’t doing that. This is especially true in the job interview. Try to answer the questions and not give orders.
  3. She must make it clear to the potential employer that she is out of teaching for good. People often assume an ex-teacher is just applying for a summer or temporary job and will be gone in a few months.
3

Thanks for the post, yellowcakesolid - I passed it on to Mrs. S. :slight_smile:

4

I’m assuming your wife has a B.A. or equivalent. Despite rampant joking about English majors working at McD’s, many businesses hire a liberal arts grad as a sort of tabula rasa with some demonstrated smarts and stick-to-itiveness.

If your wife has any aptitude for business (which she may, even if it’s never had an opportunity to express itself as yet), she may do well.

While we too often run towards the autobiographical in our responses here, I’ll mention that I’m an example thereof. At 27 (I didn’t decide to go until I was 22), I graduated with a B.A. with a Psych major. Having a much heavier concentration of natural science courses than most liberal arts grads allowed me to stumble into a position as a geophysical trainee with an oil company. While it did involve several more years of evening classes, it was providential that I bumped into this path; I’ve very much enjoyed my career as a geophysicist - something I’d never even thought about at your wife’s age.

But let’s steer it away from the autobiographical. My long time college roommate just barely graduated with an English major. He’s done very well as an advertising executive. While he’s a creative guy - writes, clothes designer, etc. - he’s not an advertising artiste. He works with them but handles the business side.

Another very good friend graduated as a Philosophy major. Whaddya do with that? Well, he took a job as a grunt with Texaco’s real estate division, worked his way through a few other related gigs, and is now a very successful independent commercial real estate broker.

And that is all, of course, purely anecdotal, rather than some statistical summary. Just what we need, methinks, when considering the case of the individual Ms. Slacker.

There are all sorts of marketing, business administration, technical and IT possibilities open to your wife at this point. And there’s also grad school possibilities. Lawyers come with all kinds of bachelors degrees.

Good luck with it!