Part 1: Preparing for Your Search
Is quitting teaching one of your new year’s resolutions? You’re not alone. Teacher attrition has always been a problem in education. Now teachers are in the midst of a pandemic and a battle over a historically accurate, anti-racist curriculum. If you’re ready to quit teaching in 2022, I want to offer some advice on how.
I realized last spring that I was done. When I envisioned returning to the classroom, being in person with students again, I felt some longing. But I mostly felt exhaustion. I was like a marathon runner finishing up my 25th mile, trying to look forward to another race. I decided then that it would be my last school year in the classroom. However, I didn’t realize that quitting teaching would be a months-long journey. If your new year’s resolution is to quit teaching in 2022, the time to begin that process is now.
I did not approach my job search with urgency at first. I applied to a handful of jobs in the spring and summer. I was hopeful about some opportunities with the NYC Department of Education’s central office, but they didn’t work out. August and September went by, and after a dozen or so more applications, I’d only had one invitation to interview. I had assumed that as an educator with twelve years of experience designing curriculum, as well as designing and leading professional development I would be a prime candidate. But I was slow to realize an unfortunate tenet of job searching: It’s not just what you know, it’s who you know.
Even if you’re ready to take advantage of your network, prepare yourself for a long process. One educator I spoke to who left her district job for a role in edtech told me her process took nine months from start to finish. I have recently been hired for some part-time and contract gigs, but I am in my seventh month of searching for a full-time job. Keep this in mind, as well as your financial and mental health status when deciding when is the right time to quit.
Step 1: Research Roles
If you think you can make it through this school year, now is still a good time to start preparing for your search. Start by thinking about the type of work you’re interested in. I’m mostly targeting roles in curriculum design and teacher support/adult learning facilitation. I’m also interested in roles that give me a chance to write. Remember to get clear about the types of roles you do NOT want. As Adrienne Marie Brown writes, “Your no makes room for your yes.” Teaching is an incredibly challenging job, but it is also a uniquely rewarding one. If you are going to leave it behind, make sure you’re finding something that honors your skills, expertise, and passion. This is another reason to start your process early so you can pick the job that’s right for you and not just the job that is Anything But Teaching.
If you’re already clear about what kind of roles you’re looking for, that’s great! But I was somewhat confused by the variety of titles different organizations and companies used to describe similar roles. If you’re not quite sure which jobs fit your skillset, you can try LinkedIn’s career explorer. You’ll have to sort through to find the jobs that aren’t just different versions of teacher, but I found it helpful to be able to identify jobs like Curriculum Specialist that matched my background and my goals.
Step 2: Update Your Resume
Now that you’ve narrowed down your job search to roles that interest you and hopefully suit your experience, it’s time to prepare your resume (The Educator’s Room has a more in depth guide here). Finding a job with an ed-tech company like Brainpop, Newsela, Edpuzzle, etc. will require LinkedIn. You may be able to avoid LinkedIn for out-of-classroom jobs with school districts or local community-based organizations. Either way, you’re going to want to set up your LinkedIn and your resume in similar ways.
A crucial way to prepare your resume/LinkedIn is by thinking about the keywords job searchers are looking for. The LinkedIn career explorer can help you do this. You can also copy and paste job descriptions you’re interested in into a Wordcloud generator. You don’t want your resume/LinkedIn to become a word soup of buzzwords and jargon. But keywords can help frame the experience and skills you already have to get you an interview. For example, “Write daily lesson plans and teach them” could be “Design and facilitate standards-aligned content.”
In addition to keywords, your resume language should be action and impact-oriented. If your students performed in the top third of your school, city, or state, then let people know! As a teacher leader, I designed professional learning and coached colleagues. On my resume, I did my best to quantify these experiences. As one example, I wrote, “Designed and facilitated over 30 hours of professional learning for a diverse group of 40 instructional staff on topics including formative assessment, student-centered math instruction, restorative circles, and anti-bias/anti-racist pedagogy.”
Once you get deeper into your search, you’ll probably find yourself making tweaks to your resume for specific jobs. Having a strong “master copy” of your resume will make your search so much easier.
Every teacher knows that good preparation is the key to success. Starting your job search with thoughtful research and updating your resume are crucial first steps to quitting teaching. Starting this process now allows you to tackle it bit by bit. I recommend aiming to complete these steps by early spring depending on your job search timeline. If you made a resolution to leave teaching in 2022, now’s a great time to take the first steps on that journey.
In my next piece, I’ll walk you through the job search and application process itself.
If you have questions about this process, I’m here to help! You can find me on LinkedIn or Twitter!
