Five Transferable Skills For Transitioning Out Of Teaching
Ten years ago, I was teaching GCSE and A-Level students in South Wales.
I absolutely adored my students and watching them grow and develop, but as a lot of teachers will attest, desperately needed to switch careers for my own health.
If you're considering a similar change this year, here's how I used some of the skills teachers naturally develop to transition out of education and set the stage for a career in business...
1) Adaptability and Flexibility
If you ever need to see a real-life example of Murphy's Law, peek around a classroom door. I lost count of the amount of times I encountered curveballs in education - be that presentations and resources not loading, printers being jammed for worksheets, or - my personal favourite - exam boards changing, rendering some - if not all - of the lesson plans you created the previous year obsolete 🥴. However, all of this change gives transitioning teachers a huge leg up in flexibility and adaptability, two skills desperately needed when balancing fast-changing responsibilities in the workplace.
2) Creativity
As teachers, we are a creative bunch by design. Believe me, you will not convince a group of teenagers that social theory is interesting by forcing them to read out of a textbook, let alone set the foundations for long term learning and comprehension. You need to meet the students at their level - use references they'll understand, make lessons fun and engaging, ask them to evaluate their world through what they learn in the classroom. Developing creativity in the classroom will help you innovate in the workplace - bring new fresh ideas to the table, challenge (in a respectful way!) the status quo, and reimagine processes and ways of working.
3) Leadership
Even if you are not in a formal leadership role in a school, by teaching's very definition, you are a leader. You are leading and guiding a group of students throughout their learning journey, with all of the turbulence that this sometimes entails. Not all students are overly excited about undertaking this journey (I would laugh if that was ever the case in education!), and often you will have to demonstrate change management, persuasive negotiation, and inclusive decision-making skills to get everyone on the same page and heading in the right direction... but when these align, that's where you'll see magic happen. Exactly the same can be said for the world of business. Just with more suits.
4) Social and communication skills
Following on from this, you will have developed social and communication skills as a teacher. Whether you're in early years education, and are trying to calm and reassure four year-olds who believe they've just been abandoned by their parents, or you're in tertiary education and are boosting the confidence of a young adult with a turbulent personal life, you understand the importance of good communication and the role empathy can - and should - play in education as you get to know and develop your students. Even the bread and butter of teaching - writing notes and assessments, parent evenings, and curriculum design - requires solid communication skills. In an ever-shrinking world where excellent business relationships across various geographies are increasingly important, these skills are gold-dust.
5) Time management and organisation
Last on the list - it goes without saying, teachers are top of the time management and organisation game. My love of 'inbox zero' has become a running joke in the past two companies I've worked at, but honestly, I attribute teaching for this habit. As a teacher, you need to know where you're meant to be, what you're meant to be doing, and who you're meant to be interacting with at nearly every minute of the day. It's not a requirement of the job to be organised alongside this, but my god does it help!
Transitioned teachers and educators - any other transferable skills you'd add to this list?
PS - couldn't publish this article without posting this excellent education-themed reminder for us all for 2023: 'Carpe diem. Seize the day. boys. Make your lives extraordinary'. Wishing you all a wonderful year!
