Leaving Teaching? You Already Have 5 Top Skills New Employers Want.

As highly skilled teachers leave their classrooms for good, they bring valuable expertise to their new careers.

If you ask a roomful of teachers why they began teaching, they will tell you they wanted to shape a future generation, make a difference, and ignite a passion for learning. Yet, all too often, their calling is quickly crushed by the heavy workload and unmanageable expectations that come with teaching.

The pandemic tested teachers in new and unexpected ways. They rose to the challenge admirably, but now many of these teaching superheroes want to leave the classroom; and they are taking an arsenal of highly desirable skills with them. 

So, if you are asking how to leave teaching, take a look at the superpowers that make you the perfect candidate for your new career.

#1 Communication

According to Indeed.com, communicating involves five elements: the sender, receiver, message, medium and feedback. It is a chain ensuring that verbal and written information is conveyed and received clearly.

Teachers can switch their language easily to suit learners of all abilities and ages, as well as students with limited English, because communicating is what teachers do best. Not only do they interact with many students (sometimes hundreds in a day), but they also communicate with colleagues, parents, and managers. With so much important information at stake, it’s vital to eliminate misunderstandings. A teacher can switch seamlessly between student classroom talk to individual parent-teacher conferences, assemblies or leading workshops for fellow teachers. 

Teachers expertly communicate in various ways to broad and diverse groups, which is highly valuable to a new employer.

#2 Presentation

Have you ever sat through a slow, repetitive or long-winded presentation? Or a monotonous meeting? If you have, you will have noticed that presenting is not a natural skill for many people. Indeed, good presentations require confidence, training and - most of all - practise.

Teachers receive training to project their voices, coaching to maintain eye contact, and they are taught not to kill by PowerPoint. Essentially, a teacher presents multiple times every day, and often to an unwilling audience! Not only that, but they coach students how to improve their presentations to gain higher grades. Teachers get really good at presenting, and what employer wouldn’t want somebody who knows how to drive better results?

#3 Resilience

Why is resilience important? Well, resilience teaches you to cope - and even thrive - under pressure. An example of this is teachers in war zones delivering lessons to students in bunkers or makeshift schools . During the pandemic, teaching was entirely rehauled with little time and few resources. But even in an everyday classroom, teachers adapt lessons for varying needs and can think of a Plan B (or Plan C, D and E) at lightning-quick speed when the unexpected happens, which it often does.

Moreover, Forbes claims that resilience has many benefits: it improves wellbeing, prepares workers to manage conflict and adapt to change, increases innovation, and builds stronger teams. In teaching, change is simply part of the job. A widely circulated statistic, for example, claims that teachers make three decisions a minute and up to 1,500 decisions a day. Assuming that each of those decisions potentially alters the outcome, teachers certainly hone their resilience skills. If resilient workers are successful workers, then hiring a former teacher is a smart move. 

#4 Problem-Solving

The Monster 2022 Global Report claims that problem-solving is amongst the top three skills employers most desire, and 58% of employers say finding candidates with a suitable skill set is a challenge. Thankfully, teachers excel at problem solving, which has been identified as a key workplace skill for 2022. 

The list of problems that a teacher encounters on any given day is unpredictable. From solving student conflicts to delivering meaningful content, teachers always think on their feet. In addition, tight time frames and a limited budget often means getting creative. 

When changing careers, teachers can easily describe how they handled many problematic situations and how they influenced the outcome. 

#5 Leadership

Leadership is not about doing but empowering others to do, and teachers know this better than anybody. Teachers know when to take the stage and when to coach from the sidelines. Furthermore, they notice students who have fallen behind and coax them back up again. Therefore, teachers are leaders helping multiple groups solve problems and complete tasks effectively.

Like most other skills, we learn leadership skills and we must work to improve them. Teachers learn to be leaders, but they also teach others how to lead. Hence, hiring a former teacher brings a massive advantage to any team.

Of course, career-changing teachers possess many other valuable skills: such as time-management, collaboration, patience, empathy and resourcefulness, to name just a few. In addition, they are quick and agile learners. The classroom is an ideal training ground that prepares former teachers to handle every challenge they face in a new career.