Transferable Teacher Skills: Your Path to a New Career If You Are Looking to Leave the Classroom

 Welcome back. I hope you are all hanging in there in the home stretch if you are listening in real time. So today, this podcast episode isn't for everybody, but I think it still is worth a listen. Even if you're not thinking of transitioning out the classroom, and I'll tell you why in today's episode, I am talking with Lisa Harding, who is CEO of Teacher Career Transitions Academy, and I'll tell you a little bit about her and her mission in a minute.

And I have to say, you know. I'm no big deal in the podcasting space, right? This is pretty niche podcast. I don't have a huge audience, but I gotta tell you, I get at least five emails a week, kind of generic people pitch in to be on my podcast. And I, the guests I have, I have actually invited, I've reached out to them and invited them to be on the podcast.

I don't really take pictures, but Lisa reached out to me and she had this idea for a podcast swap. So I would go on and talk to her audience, which are teachers looking to transition out of teaching about how to overcome burnout and different things. And I talked about the dangers of making sure that you know.

You are not the issue. You know what I'm saying? Like if you know my story, you know, I burnt out in corporate career and then came to teaching and within three years I'd created the same circumstances for myself because I just didn't know how to set boundaries. I didn't know how to set no say no, and all those things.

So anyway. So I talked to her audience and then I wanted her to come to talk to your, because she has this incredible message of hope and positivity about overcoming imposter syndrome and all the different things and skills that teachers have that can easily transition into a new career. So even, you know, obviously I'm not looking to recruit people out of teaching.

I'm just saying if you're stressed and you're worried, maybe even if you just need us. Second job. Goodness. I had a, you know, I had a side hustle for 13, the last 13 years that I was a teacher. I just needed to make more money. So that's kind of what happened, to be honest. Or if you're looking to take early retirement and wonder what's next for you, there are so many things.

So anyway, I think you'll really enjoy this interview with Lisa. I'm gonna tell you just a little bit about her professionally and then she can tell you about her herself and her long family history of teachers, which I think is so cute. But she is former. She's a former ed tech executive with over 15 years of experience driving growth in innovation.

I have to read slowly in the ed tech market and most recently she served as president of Simple K 12, an online professional development company for educators. She has had all kinds of roles, but she's dedicated her career to providing. Award-winning training and development classroom teachers, but she became a certified career coach, and now she's CEO of teacher Career Transition Academy, which is a very well regarded and very well staffed.

I mean, the people on this team are incredible and they help exactly what it sounds like. Teachers transition out of teaching if. They choose to do so help them understand what marketable skills they have and how to market them and how to you know, negotiate and all the things. We might not be so great at that, right?

Some of us went straight from school to teacher training to being hired at a school district. Maybe we've never even gone through a whole. Interviewing process before other than in the school system. And it's very different out there in the world. And we might have a lot of fear and anxiety about that and doubt, but she can crush all that.

So anyway, on the inside here is our episode and hold on till the end. Oh my gosh. The resource she has that she's offering to you for free. Is incredible. I downloaded it and I'm keeping it for myself just in case. Hey, you never know, never say never friends, never say never. Okay? So I will see you on the inside.

I appreciate you being here. It's a shorty, it's like 25 minutes. And again, even if you're not immediately looking to leave teaching, hopefully not all of you are. But eventually you'll no longer be in a classroom and maybe you feel you. Still have more to offer to the world. You know, this will answer the question, you know, now what?

What happens then? All right, see you on the inside. Welcome to the Teacher Self-Care and Life Balance podcast, where we focus all things personal development to help teachers feel empowered to thrive inside and outside of the classroom. If you are passionate about education, but tired of it taking over your whole life.

You have found your new home in the podcast universe, you'll love it here. I'm Grace Stevens, your host, and let's get going with today's show. All right, so welcome to the podcast, Lisa Harding. I am so appreciative that you are here. Something different right this week for my audience. And they all know I'm the last person to wanna like aggressively coach people out of teaching.

But if the time has come, you need help. You need support, you need somebody who's really on your team who. Understands everything that we put into teaching that can be transferred into something else. Another beautiful career, right? I always tell people, just because you leaving teaching it doesn't mean you don't and can't have immense value in other areas.

So. I'm so glad you're here. Lisa. I would like for you to start, you know, I read your formal bio, but tell us really just briefly, how did you get here to doing what you're doing? What was your journey like? 

Well, it, it, it all started 41 years ago when I was born into a family of teachers, grace. Oh, wow.

So my, my parents were teachers. I have countless aunts and cousins that are teachers. And I feel like teaching just runs in the family. And I was, I guess, the black sheep 'cause I took a little bit of a different path after college. I went to work. For an educational technology company. We did online teacher pd.

If teachers have gotten CEUs online, you, you may have mm-hmm. Run into me. I worked there for 15 years, had the honor to serve as the CEO for the last five years made my own career transition to what I thought was. Gonna bring me joy and happiness being a stay at home mom. And it did, but I really missed working with teachers.

Mm-hmm. And they started reaching out to me on LinkedIn, asking for career advice on how to get into the fields that I was in because I had hired and mentored and recruited so many teachers to work in corporate America. One thing led to another. And I realized I could fill that bucket where I missed working with teachers.

So now instead of providing pd, I help provide a different type of professional development, which is finding a new career outside of the classroom. I. Grace, I will say be before I, I started this venture, I, I did have some guilt of my own. There was a, a little bit of a moral question I had to ask myself, you know?

Mm-hmm. I dedicated 15 years to helping teachers be better in the classroom and, you know, could I really Now. Yank them out of the classroom and, and I realized that's not what I was doing. These are folks that are going to do it anyway. So I can just make that a little bit easier and streamlined and provide support.

I. So, yeah, that, that's what I do now. Yeah. It's 

not like you're headhunting, you're not calling campuses and like, can you put your most miserable teacher on the line, please Let me tell 'em what I got from. Right. That's not how that works. I'm pretty sure Right. Teachers come feet to you, they need help.

Especially if somebody just left school and got straight into teaching. They have no, they. They've never maybe even really interviewed for a job, right? No. We just don't have the skills. So tell me this, I, because I, I'm sure this is where a. Teachers start, right. I always start with mindset. So what are some misconceptions do you find that teachers have about changing careers?

Yeah, and it, it's, it's interesting 'cause the academy starts with mindsets. That's kind the foundation of the coaching not to the level that you provide which maybe there's ways that we should be working together, grace on that. But basically a big thing we talk about is imposter syndrome.

Teachers kind of come to the table. Having imposter syndrome. They don't visualize themselves, they don't believe that they can do it outside the classroom. I hear things like, I'm just a teacher, which, just 

a teacher, 

which just makes me cringe. Like I, yeah, it, it, it literally breaks my heart because some of my all time best employees were teachers and they came with no other experience than their teaching experience.

And not only do teachers have transferable skills that go into the workplace. There's, it's all the intangibles about teachers, I think, that make them the best employees. Like they're loyal to a fault sometimes, you know, you don't have to worry about them showing up on time. Passion, the passion that they bring to their work.

It translates from the classroom into corporate America. And then rising their career, you know, they're, they're getting promotions because they are dedicated. But yeah, teachers have this sense of imposter syndrome that. I love to just kind of unveil because they are and you are absolutely incredible employees and have so many skills that can apply to such a wide variety of jobs.

Yeah, no, I totally get that. Where I was, I knew you were gonna say just a teacher like, oh, that makes me cringe. I gotta say, you know, my own, you know, my listeners probably know my own journey, but I do remember there were quite a few people in, in my life, I was the per person in my immediate family ever to go to college.

I ended up gonna college in four different countries using three different languages. You know, I had this amazing corporate career and everybody was, you know. Rallying behind that. And then when I said I wanted to be a teacher, I got so much pushback. People just feeling like I was somehow underachieving.

Like really just a teacher. Like, are you kidding me? Like how important it is and how challenging it is, and how many skills you need to have to do that. There were many people who I know who I worked with and worked for in corporate America, who I know for. Fact wouldn't make it five minutes in a For sure.

So what right now, you know, the job market changes so quickly. So quickly. What careers are you finding right now are a good match for teachers? 

Yeah. And that's a very, very common question. 'cause a big thing is I don't know what I would do next. Mm-hmm. And I think a big part of it is that there are so many careers that teachers can get into that getting that career clarity in the beginning can be very overwhelming.

And every teacher is different because it's not just your skills. You also have to consider your personality, the type of work environment that you would thrive in. The, the way it fulfills you, but I can tell you some popular ones. Okay. There are lots of careers in the world of corporate learning and development that are a very, very easy fit for teachers.

Mm-hmm. So yeah, corporations have trainers, facilitators, there's folks behind the scenes that make the training, and then there's folks that might deliver the training, and there's a whole variety of job titles. Just in that there is also, I, I see a lot of teachers going into data analysis, which is a different type.

Like if you're the teacher that loves the reports, loves uploading things, loves working in Excel, there's lots of careers in data analysis I. But there's a lot of careers in the world of nonprofit from being a nonprofit manager to managing different programs. We've had teachers that become grant writers for nonprofits.

I mean, literally the list goes on and on, and that's kind of why career clarity in the very beginning of the process is, is so important. 

Alright. And what do you find, let's say that a teacher has been in the classroom for a long time. Even like in my case, I was in the classroom 20 something years.

I didn't even start till I was almost 40. So you all can do the math. I have no qualms about it. Yep. I'm 60 and I just started my, you know, next career. Like I still got a lot of energy left, but think of like the teacher who started straight out school. You know, they're, even if they'd put in 20 years and they think this is all I can do, they're still like.

Early forties. Oh, honey, I wanna tell people you're just getting started. Right. Sometimes you don't even know what you want when you're just right. You just Absolutely. Things change. But they might have only ever done that. Right. And then they're really insecure that they are lacking some particular skills.

Right. Do you see that there? Like if. Would a coach somebody like, oh, okay, well I wanna leave like a year from now, or whatever. Are there some skills you feel like people could work on while they're still in the classroom to make them more marketable in the, in the job world? 

Well, the number one skill that every career transition needs is networking.

And if you're even thinking that you maybe want to leave at some point, okay, you need to start networking now. So get your LinkedIn up and going. Every person that you meet in life, go connect with them on LinkedIn. And then when you know that you maybe wanna start leaving, just start putting feelers out.

It can start with something as simple as striking up a conversation at your kids, at your own child's soccer practice with mm-hmm. The person next to you. Just get in career exploration mode. Ask people, Hey, what do you do for work? Oh, that's an interesting job. Like, tell me about it. And then say, yeah. You know, I, I love teaching, but I, I feel like I'm looking for a new challenge, you know?

Are there any, any careers at your company that you'd think I'd be a good, just get comfortable networking. And then as far as skills specific to a career. You. What's important is, again, I keep saying career clarity, but mm-hmm. You want to put the time in to figure out kind of where you wanna go, because the skills that you would want for a data analysis job are gonna be different than skills for something else or something else.

So as soon as you know, like a general path that's a fit for you and, and your networking, you're going to be finding out what hard skills that you need. Mm-hmm. And it could be taking courses online, it could be learning a computer program that they use every day. But if you're doing that first skill of networking, you're going to discover what those other skills are that align to where you want to go, that you can start working on when you're in the classroom.

All right. And then I assume that part of the whole process is also taking the skills that you use every day that we take for granted in the classroom, and then kind of rebranding them like, you know, project management. Like, we don't think of ourselves as project managers. Really look at all the things that we do, right?

Here's the test the kids need to to pass at the end of the year. Here are your kids. Good luck with that. Right? It's all project management, right? It's like you just, so there's gotta be some is that something you can help provide for teachers? Like, here, let me see your resume. Let's kind of make it take.

Career tool. Right? There's gotta be a lot of skills that are transferable. 

Oh yeah, absolutely. That's a huge thing that we work on, is identifying your transferable skills and again, kind of aligning them. You need to align them with the job that you're going for. Since a teacher does have so many different transferable skills and then as you mentioned, positioning them mm-hmm.

Into. If you're talking about the resume into strong bullet points, and I, I have a formula that we like to use. It's, you know, action verb what you did, the result in impact. But using, wow, using the words that you see in the job descriptions. Yes. And taking what you do and just putting it into corporate words.

And. Very, I guess give you some examples, like Yeah, gimme 

some examples. Because sometimes we feel like the impact is isn't quite so tangible in teaching, so 

you know what I mean? Let's, it's not Yeah. 

Yeah. Right. Let tell, tell me, so let's say 

project management was a skill that you wanted to showcase.

A week example might be, I planned an organized daily lesson plans for students. Yes, you did that. That is a great skill. But as an employer, that means nothing to me. Yeah. Just retweaking it. You could say developed and managed structured learning plans, ensuring a hundred percent curriculum alignment and timely completion.

Nice. 

Oh yeah. Yeah. So as a hiring manager, I'm like, okay. They're, they're deadline oriented. They're managing things. They're making a hundred percent, you know, alignment to curriculum, like small things like that. If again, data analysis instead of saying something like tracked student progress and grades throughout the year.

Okay, you did that, but as a hiring manager doesn't really relate to me. An example of retweaking that one, analyze performance data to identify trends and implemented targeted interventions, improving student outcomes by 18%. 

Yeah. Wow. Okay. That's like, it sounds like a lot of, administrators I work for might have taken new training.

That's exactly how they talk. But because it's, you know, I mean, sometimes we forget, oh, I don't kind of wanna go there. But school is a business too, right? The first time that. An administrator asked me how many seats I had and I said, how many seats? I'm like, are you asking me how many students I have?

Right. Oh my goodness. Gosh. Right. Like, and then that's one of the teacher's frustrations, right? That children are especially, you know, and now it's like all about, oh, a data meeting. It's like they are, you cannot. You know, kids are more holistic than a data point on your spreadsheet. But that's an, those are excellent examples.

I mean, wow, I would hire that person. They sound amazing. I just never thought of, you know, I said rebranding. You said, you know, you said it in a better way. How to really make them look more transferrable and because those are things that we do. And like I said, I feel a lot of teachers coming back to imposter take.

What a huge variety of skills we actually do have that are transferable, right? We are thinking like, oh, well one of my, you know, superpowers is classroom management. I'm not gonna have to do that. Yeah, but you communicate with those parents, you gain consensus, you get people to work together. Like there's, that's all the foundation of team building, communicating all those things.

So I think that's really cool. Alright, so what and grace real 

quickly, and I know that your listeners probably don't want homework, but this is really great. Maybe follow act, follow up activity that I love to do is if you want homework listeners after the the podcast, write down all of the transferable, all of your skills, everything that you do every day, write down.

Absolutely everything you can think of. Then go back through the list. Highlight the ones that you are great at, right? Because we all know we do things we're not. Mm-hmm. Maybe the best teacher that does X or Y or Z. Mm-hmm. So highlight what you're great at. Circle what you love and what brings you joy.

And then the ones that are highlighted encircled are the ones that are going to start to guide you on what that next career path might be. You'll see the skills that you're great at that bring you joy, and just looking at that list, you're going to start to see like maybe the type of career. That you wanna go for is going to be targeting those highlighted encircled skills.

Oh, that, I love that. And Lisa, what you keep coming back to that I love so much is this idea of what brings you joy. Yep. What brings you joy? Don't leave one career that you are stressed out and miserable in and trade it in for another one that you are stressed out and miserable in because I can tell you, give me a job with data analysis.

No. Please, I would hit my head against a wall. That is not where my passion lies. Do I have skills in that area? Yeah, I can do it if I had to. I managed budgets, I managed all kinds of things in corporate. And that was part of my burnout factor was the part I loved was feeling I had purpose in helping people.

And I moved up the corporate ladder and moved away from those things, and lo behold, found out I was miserable, right? So I really love that. Find the intersection of competency. And, and joy and potential for joy, right. And purpose. Right? I, I, I don't think there's any teachers gonna be totally happy unless they feel like what they do has some kind of value.

Right. And certainly data analysis can have value, right? Is you are analyzing the right data. So I, I love that. I think that's really good advice. Not just to think like, okay, well I know how to do Google Classroom. Like that's, that's the part of your day that brings you the most stress. If you know you don't like interacting with tech and you prefer to interact with people, okay, then we need to start there, right?

Because those are sometimes different people. Right. Those are different skill. Those are different passions. Yeah. Alright, so that is, I was gonna ask you, what advice would you give someone who's thinking of leaving education? Making that list I think is amazing. That's an amazing place to start. What else would you say if you could gimme like.

A couple more things that you think, okay, if this is what you're thinking, here are some things you can start doing. Networking, make the list, find the intersection of competency and joy. What else? 

Well, I have a great free resource that I'm happy to share with the audience. It's a directory. There's over 200 careers for career transitioning teachers.

It gives job summaries. It also gives like core skills. So once you have your list. You can compare them to that to try to help find some. It also gives average US salary range because I know that's important. Yeah. I mean, that's an important piece, an important piece of this as well. And, and some jobs they, you know, they just don't pay what you might need.

So you also have to factor that into consideration. So I think that's, I think that's also very helpful just to get your mind wrapped around like what's out there. Yes. Yeah. And, and trying to let go of those negative mindsets and replacing them with positive ones. And another very simple activity that I love.

Just write down everything that you're. That you're great at, like all of your accomplishments, any award, anytime you've helped a student, just every great thing that you've done. And ask your spouse, your partner, your friend, your family, to write a list about all of your great things too, and read that over.

And I love this because I just wanna make it top of mind of how amazing you are. So as soon as a negative thought comes in. You can go to that mental list of mm-hmm. The amazing things and you just wanna push that negative mindset. Out of the picture because it is just going to hold you back. 

Oh yeah, no, I love that.

We are so aligned on so many things, Lisa. So I'm sure you do you know Jen Ro she wrote the book, you Are a, I'll Say the Word, we're Adults, badass, do you know that book? But anyway, yes. So she talks about the Badass List and I always encourage teachers and one, the programs I do go Make Your Badass List.

And honestly, when I. I shocked, you know, being first person in to. Graduate college and not only that, four universities using three languages. Right. Different countries. Right. And just becoming a US citizen. Like there were things that I have accomplished transitioning out. Becoming a vp, but transitioning out of it going back to school in my late thirties while I still had a young family.

So there are a lot of things on that list. And the days when even, you know, for me, I get imposter syndrome just like everybody else, I made the list. It's on a note on my it's in. Old school always had my planner, but it's in my phone sometimes when I'm anxious about something, just even I've got a bit of time waiting at the doctor's office.

I look at my, my list. And then the other thing that that I always love teachers to have is go ahead and make that list. Think of. Every student who you have positively impacted, because a lot of times we don't remember, we look at the students in front of us and some of them, you know, are what I would call my spiritual practice, right?

Like every day my spiritual practice is like, I will not, will lose my, you know what, over this kid, right? I'll be calm, I'll be right. And, and so that kid is top of mind instead of. All the other students that we've positively impacted that maybe we didn't know about till a few years later, or, you know, their mom, one kid, I remember graduation it was eighth grade graduation and I had had a student about.

Seven, eight years before, and the mom came up to me, she was there for the eighth grade promotion of her niece and she said, oh, you had such and such. And I said, yes, I did. And she said, he's never forgotten. And she told me something I had done for him. And literally I wanted to cry. Like I had no idea that that had stayed with that kid that that had.

Always get to have those moments in teaching, but it's important to like make the list. Right. And that way when we're having a bad day with students, I always like to look at yeah, my badass list. Like, no, I, I, you know, I got skills, man. I got accomplishments. And then the list of kids that we have helped.

I think that really helps with the imposter syndrome. I love that. Okay. So I think this has been a really great conversation. I think there have been some teachers out now that their minds are starting to like, Hmm, I do have transferable skills. I don't, I feel like for a lot of teachers, just knowing that you have options, one of the things that you know, the mind does is when we get so stressed and we start telling ourselves stories and the story is, I chose this career and I'm overwhelmed and there's nothing out there for else, out for me, and I gotta be here till I retire. And everybody's miserable. Right? Like we get right.

You know, that just. I like to tell people, separate the fact from the story. So the fact is right now I'm stressed out. Right? That, that, that's the fact. Other facts are, there are options available to me. So maybe let me put a timeline on it. Let's see how I feel six months from now or whatever. Let me explore some options.

Just because you explore some options, make some lists, start looking around. Doesn't mean you don't have to feel like you're being a trader, right? Like there's the whole guilt thing, like, oh my gosh. Maybe just the fact that you feel you have options would take away some of that burnout and that stress.

But I feel like it's really important for teachers to know there is life outside the classroom. And like you said, it could be a lot, a lot of teachers I know want to get into ed tech or they'll see the people who come selling the curriculum and doing all that and they're like, oh, I could do that.

But I love, we're gonna go back to what you said about the intersection of skillset and joy. Like, but would it make you. Like, I hate you teaching a scripted curriculum. Why would I wanna go train teachers on how to do that? Like, that wasn't really where my passion lied. So that's great. I think the resources you have are amazing.

I'm gonna put that in the, the link below. Anything else you would like to leave us with? 

Yeah, I, I think another big thing on this journey and it's a big part of the, the kind of structure of the coaching that we do here at the Teacher Career Transition Academy is. And. I feel like maybe it comes from my roots as a CEO and, and having to put so many processes together at my business, but I love to turn it into a process, write it down.

It truly, there is truly a step-by-step, and that's how the academy and our coaching program was designed. As I said in the beginning. It. The first step is mindset. We, I break it into four steps, but each of those steps has a lot. But step one is mindset. If, if you don't have the right head space, if you don't believe in yourself mm-hmm.

The rest of it is, is not gonna come together. Yeah. So mindset is number one. The second thing is career clarity, which I mentioned before. Mm-hmm. Because. Especially in today's job market, you really need to target the career that you wanna go into. So if you need help figuring out what that career is, make sure that you're doing that for yourself before you move on to the next step, which I say is your marketing materials.

That's your resume, your LinkedIn, your cover letter, knowing how to apply for jobs. Networking is, is through all of this. And the last and final step is. Pacing your interview and knowing how to negotiate for your worth. And I think if you can take this overwhelming concept of Uhhuh Yeah. Changing cha, I mean, and a career change is one of the top biggest changes you can make in your life.

Yeah. Up there with deciding to get married, having children moving, moving, changing careers. If you can take it. Make it even a little bit more tangible for yourself in a list. Mm-hmm. Start with those four steps. Start at the top, work your way through. It's going to be much more streamlined and if you can surround yourself with a support system, cheerleaders, whether it's me as a coach or the academy, or just a best friend that's going through it, a a Facebook group, you know, listening to podcasts, whatever that is.

To be there for you. That is also another differentiator I see on the people that say they wanna leave and actually do, and the people that just get kind of stuck spinning their wheels. 

Yeah, no, I think, like I said, it seems like an overwhelming thing. I. To say, I wanna leave teaching and this is all I've ever known.

Where on earth do I start? Well, I love that you've given us, you know, kind of a roadmap. It sounds like that's what you provide. Here's the roadmap. You start here, you do this, and you know, we love our checklist. Oh my gosh. Teachers don't, we love our checklist just to feel accomplished that we're making some forward progress.

I, I, I've looked around at your program. I peeked into it a little bit. I love that you start with mindset, because that's always where I start, because I think without that you're just gonna, you, you know, like you said, you're just spinning your wheels. So I feel that if if people truly are thinking of making a change and exploring that, I feel like they would be very good.

Hands with having somebody who is smart, experienced, and has created a process, a proven process that's helped people do it. So, alright, well you're gonna I'm gonna tell everybody, go look in the show notes, get that resource. Hey, I'm curious now I'm gonna go look at that myself. I have I have a son who who is he has a lot of transferable skills.

He's not a teacher, but he was in one particular industry for nine years and he is just, yeah, overwhelmed. Like, how am I ever gonna. Like people only ever wanna hire me for this one. Same thing. 'cause that's all I've ever done. And I think he needs that mindset shift. Like you probably got lots of transferable skills, there's lots of other things out there you can do.

So that's very cool. All right. Well Lisa, I thank you so much for your time. I encourage everybody to go get the guide to look in.

Friends, as always. You know what I'm gonna say? Create your own path, bring your own sunshine, and we.