199. What Actually Makes Teachers Successful Beyond the Classroom?

0:00Welcome to Educator Forever, where we empower teachers to innovate education. Join us each week to hear stories of teachers expanding their impact beyond the classroom and explore ways to reimagine teaching and learning. Okay, quick question. If I ask you today in the skills that make teachers successful outside of the classroom, you might say something like communication or curriculum design or organization. And those are real. We learn so many transferable skills as classroom teachers. But after working with tens of thousands of teachers who have successfully transitioned to expand their impact beyond the classroom, I've been thinking about what actually made the difference for them. And it's almost always not just a skill on the resume. It's really a behavior, a way of being, a way of moving through uncertainty. And so today we're not doing another teacher skills employers one episode.

1:00We're doing the one that nobody really explicitly asked for, but I think we all want to, which is what are the people who actually make this transition successfully do differently? And so let's figure it out. First we're going to think about the myth of figuring it out alone. And this is a big one because I think it quietly wrecks more transitions than we realized. Teachers are trained to be the person in the rooms with answers. The one people go to, you're the one who plans, who problem solves, who doesn't get to say, I don't know, in front of 28, 9 year olds. This instinct is incredible in a classroom. We learn to be the one who's dependable. We learn to be the one who's in charge who's making the plans that people follow. This instinct is not helpful when you're trying to switch careers because here's what's happened. A teacher decides they want out. And their next move is to go quiet. They start googling at 11 p.m. They rewrite their resume for the ninth time alone at a kitchen table.

2:01They tell maybe one person a spouse, let's say, and nobody else feels unfinished or embarrassing or like admitting defeat if it's not all figured out. And I think this is the downside of becoming a very competent teacher. It's when we do things where we feel less competent, i.e. anything new. It can be really, really hard on ourselves. And so the people who actually get somewhere, they ask for help before they feel ready to do so. They're not like, hey, I have a polished plan. Can you review it? It's more like I genuinely don't know what I'm doing yet. Can I ask you three questions about your job? And that can be uncomfortable. Teachers haven't practiced being the one who doesn't know the answers. But that discomfort is so important because we need to ask other people to help us as we do anything new. Same thing in the classroom, right? We are the people that's doing this ask for help.

3:02But now we need other people to help us through these transitions. And so that brings us to networking. This is a word that almost every teacher I know wants to make them want to crawl out of their skin, right? Like, networking seems gross. And I get it. It sounds transactional. Cold emailing strangers, quote unquote, picking brains, collecting LinkedIn connections. Sure all those things can be helpful, but that's not the extent of it. What actually is helpful networking is smaller and kind of weirder than that. It's mentioning out loud to more people than feels natural that you're thinking about the change. It's putting it out there. It's telling people whether it's your job, or not, it's not. It's your friend's cousin who works in ed tech or a random person in the grocery line. Talk about what you want to do. That behavior isn't the networking in the like LinkedIn sense, but it's narrating your goal to more and more people because you can't genuinely predict which conversation will

4:07lead somewhere. The job that works out to might not be the one from the job board. It might be the one who came from the person who happened to remember that you mentioned the thing you want to do. You can't decide the exact moment in which things will change for you, but you can only increase your odds of being in it. You can do this by saying what you want out loud to more people even and especially when it feels uncomfortable. We've talked about figuring it out with other people, networking authentically by speaking the things we want into the world. The next part is taking the imperfect opportunity. When you think about leaving the classroom, you might have a very specific picture in your head of the right next job. It's fully remote. It doubles my salary. It's totally builds on what I've done before. We often hold out for this picture, this perfect picture, and we turn down things that

5:10don't quite fit. I want to encourage you not to do that. I want you to encourage you to take imperfect action. Sometimes people do this by thinking about this messy kind of like, this isn't quite it, but it's close enough opportunity. It could be a part-time curriculum writing job, a three-month contract, a role that's 70% aligned to what we want. As it turns out, this imperfect opportunity is usually the thing that gets them to where they want to go. Not because it was the destination, but because it gave them a title to put on their resume that wasn't just teacher. I hate saying just teacher because teacher is so much more than that. What I mean is it gets you closer. It gives you a reference. It gives you experience. It gives you yourself proof that you can do something else. I want you to let go of perfectionism here. You may have a dream in your head of exactly what you want, and that's amazing.

6:10But I also want you to be flexible with it. I want you to think about small imperfect actions you can take that will get you closer and closer to your goal. The next part is really thinking about learning because as teachers, we have such relevant skills, but we're going to need to learn more too. You can learn by doing it. You can learn by taking imperfect action. We often get stuck in this idea of I need to learn X before I can apply for these jobs. I need to get my master's degree before I can start working in curriculum design. You know whatever it is. Sometimes that's true. Sometimes there are things you have to learn or shouldn't learn. But often also we use this as a procrastination tool. We need to apply for jobs that we're not 100% qualified for. We need to learn the skills we need as we do it. And so if you're applying for a bunch of curriculum jobs and you're like, okay, I need to learn

7:12these skills of curriculum development. Great. Keep applying and keep learning these skills. They don't have to be mutually exclusive. And we can build the skills while we're moving forward. The next part that successful teachers who have made the transition beyond the classroom have found out is treating rejection as data. It's not a verdict on you. It's not a judgment call. We all face rejections. And when we try anything new, whether it's a toddler learning to walk or a kid learning to read or an adult changing jobs, it will involve a lot of failing, a lot of nose. And so applications that go nowhere, interviews where you're never here back, all of that is frustrating and normal. And so we need to not internalize this rejection. If you get rejected, it does not mean that this path is not for you. It means let's think about this as data. What could I do differently next time?

8:13What would have made this a yes? And then keeping on moving, not internalizing, keeping on moving, keeping on putting more of yourself out there, increasing your chances and moving through that rejection. So to sum up, teachers who are successful beyond the classroom, they don't go out alone. They network authentically by sharing their dreams and their goals. They take imperfect opportunities to gain experience and they learn through doing it. They learn skills through these imperfect opportunities, not waiting for it to be all tied up in a bow with all the skills and knowledge we need in the perfect job. And they reframe their relationships with the rejection. They see rejection as data. And so I want you to think about as you make this transition or explore options beyond the classroom, doing it imperfectly, that doing it is how you learn.

9:15And so don't wait, jump in. You can join our Educator Forever Network where we are really taking imperfect action together and exploring different ways we can use our education expertise beyond the classroom. And you can really do the thing that you want to do on a small scale. Take that small leap. Think about what small step forward you can take and follow that momentum. And remember not to do it alone. Share the things that you're doing. Share the things that you're learning. Share the things that you want to do. That sharing, that community is how you make your dreams a reality. Ready to find rewarding, impactful work in the education world? Take our free quiz to discover your next right career step. Will you be a curriculum developer, an education consultant, instructional coach? The list of possibilities goes on and on. Take the quiz to find out the best fit for you at Educator Forever dot com slash quiz.

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