My wife has a strong academic background in pedagogy and LOVES teaching high school, but with the pandemic teaching has really affected her relationship with our girls due to the sheer amount of work being dumped on her. Teacher and admin attrition at her school was suffering terribly and it was leading to her being forced to pick either continuing to work as a teacher and sacrifice all of her time with our kids or figure something else out. I was in awe of my wife's capacity for work and the number of plates she can keep spinning while still getting the highest teacher evaluation scores at her school... Only to be met with blanks stares when asked for assistance or any sort of compensation or promotion for the amount of work she was picking up.
So she left.
After some reflection, we're both worried that teaching in general is at a place where most schools will be similar. On top of this, she originally went into teaching thinking that I'd take mornings (get the kids ready and to school/ daycare) and she'd get afternoons since schools are usually out ~3pm. But since the pandemic school hours continue to stretch, further cutting down on what little time she can be with our children.
So, back to my question: She's at a crossroads, but my professional experience doesn't overlap much and most of my connections are not adjacent to education or instructional design. I'm poking my network and friends and family, but it's pretty difficult to find anyone willing to give her a chance outside of education. My gut is that she needs to talk with people because throwing resumes into the void isn't going to work if you're switching industries and don't have the right key words.
(Edited this to make it more clear): So, I'm looking for advice regarding how to get through to people who are currently passing over her resumes and cover letters. I think if she could get someone to talk to her, they'd realize she's a strong candidate.
Also, if there are significant others who have been in my position, any advice on what I can do on my end to help would be appreciated.
We also live in an area where teachers are poorly compensated relative to the cost of living. I'm well paid as a software engineer, which just makes her feel worse about the value of her career in teaching when she works longer hours than I do.
We've talked about her leaving teaching at the end of the school year with the plan to get her PhD so she can teach at a college level.
I'm trying to get mine to switch to project or product management because she'd be awesome at it and has, for years, kept taking on big projects at schools she's worked at (think: leading teams to create and implement new educational systems from scratch, running various extracurriculars, et c) and basically doing one or both of those roles, with great success, while enjoying it. I'm like "you could have half the stress and double or more the pay". She's semi-open to it and I'm continuing to wear her down, but she's likely not going back to teaching next year regardless (may just take a year off—the last four or five years have been really rough)
Now she's totally burnt out on that, and I'm advocating those roles for her (after a multi-month sabbatical).
Good luck to you guys
Background: Software engineer for over 15 years; twin 3 year-olds at home; wife is a teacher.
Everything else suffered, of course - forget improving myself, I had little time for basic maintenance! - but she graduated from bootcamp, got a job, and now has a much better career trajectory than at her previous career.
I found it incredibly exhausting at the time (definitely didn’t take care of myself either) but it was fortunately worth it. My wife went from soul crushing, dimly lit, repetitive, poorly paid hydrographical work for the navy to real ocean sciences. She gets to survey the coastal waters of BC, Canada, participate in technical dives, install cool tide sensing units, check out places we’d otherwise never see, and is something like 9000% happier.
I probably set my career back less than hers went forward, and ultimately, I think we’re both happier for it regardless of our earning potentials.
But yeah, what a slog. I get tired just thinking about it. To be honest, there were times where it was hard on both of us and I wasn’t sure we’d pull through! That’s why I wanted to add this note and say yes, it takes sacrifice, it’s hard, etc. Go in more prepared than I did. Above all, support the people you love. You’ll be glad you did.
She's not frustrated with needing to work, it's frustration with the sheer number of hours. A more normal job that would allow us to drop off the kids and pick them up together consistently would be great.
Edit - my wife made a massive career change about a decade ago. But, different industry and background. No college, but worked to director-level at her then-employer. She knew she wanted to change, so got them to pay for her MS degree, worked the required time after, and found another job.
My part was just being extra helpful with our son - more of the driving to sports and things like that. Helping more around the kitchen. And also serving as editor while she working on the MS - it was an adjustment doing academic writing after many years of corporate jargon.
We're pretty evenly split on most housework, but I agree that picking up some extra to help out would be good.
Long-term, she could aim for something like an HR Business Partner (HRBP) - they are often equivalent to senior manager/director/AVP. They seem to do a bit of everything, frequently with senior leaders in the business unit they support and/or senior external consultants.
You can afford it, and having a parent that can be around 24/7 with the kids is immensely valuable.
A teaching career isn’t going to contribute much to your family unit.
Do you naturally assume that all mothers want to stay at home with their children full time?
I ask because you might get more useful answers if you clarify a bit; the post is fine!
I’m probably the wrong country (UK) to help directly but I lead a team of technical educators and happy to have a chat about the path of useful. Email in bio.
If I've learned anything: technical skills need to be medium, teaching skills need to be high. I also observed about 5 teachers (sitting in on their classes with their permission) and have seen teachers that have:
- high programming, high teaching skils (e.g. compiler construction, web-design, SIMD stuff, reverse engineering with x64, PHP, C++, trees with cycles, it didn't matter, he could do it)
- high web dev, low teaching skills (he got fired)
- high web dev, medium teaching skills, from a macho culture (he got fired, as I come from a more egalitarian/feminine culture)
- medium web dev, high teaching skills (he aced it)
- Myself
1) Set a timeline for her to take time off with the kids. Summer would be perfect, and she can start applying in the fall. She’s probably burnt out and needs the time off more than either of you know.
2) If you’re not already, develop a written plan to get completely out of debt except for your mortgage. This will lower your monthly fixed costs as much as possible and allow for flexibility.
3) She should be lightly looking and networking (but not stressing) for opportunities over the summer. Bump that information against the review of finances and you can determine whether or not she needs to (or wants to) go back to work or stay home with the kids. Recognize that only 1 income adds stress to your life, because if you lose your job then it gets real, really quickly.
4) Longer term, she can look at online training opportunities or local colleges if she wants to switch careers and feels a degree would help her transition.
This may lead to a reduction in lifestyle, but in a lot of cases (not necessarily yours) lifestyle inflation may have eaten up all of her salary anyway. Cut back on eating out, nicer cars, etc, and you will have more time with the family while the kids are young. The reality may be that she can’t take a break right now due to your financial situation. Then I’d spend the next couple of months figuring out what to cut, realizing that time with family is likely more rewarding than a slightly bigger house, BMW over a Subaru, and more toys.
TL;DR: Take a break. Get your finances in order. Figure out your next steps without pressure.
She has been loving the quality time with our children while job hunting which I think is helping to convince her to slow down and find something that really fits the work/life balance she's aiming for.
If she wants to continue in education, a good next step might be a Customer Success role for a company whose customers are schools/districts, e.g. edtech and curriculum companies.
Customer success roles are definitely on the radar, just getting through the resume filter has been tough.
However, *many* teachers want to get out of education for the reasons you have described, so unfortunately here it's quite competitive even for relatively entry level positions on that side of the house.
It might be worth considering applying to education companies specifically, which would give some corporate/business experience that might enable a future pivot elsewhere for her.
My brother and sister-in law (not married to each other but just by coincidence) also both work for tutoring/supplemental private education companies, but more on the business/leadership/curriculum side of things. Because of the nature of the job, their hours are unusual (late starts, not Monday-Friday), but otherwise seems like a better environment than public education. I know both of their companies hire public school teachers for instructional roles, but I don't know what the advancement paths are like.
In recruiting processes where the listed contact is an HR or recruiting person, cold resume/cover-letter pitches are tough, because the person you're talking to actually doesn't know enough to promote someone who doesn't fit the profile they've been told to look for. If that's what's happening, the common advice is to hunt down other people in the company and talk to them directly.
Regardless, I work for TeachersPayTeachers, and a lot of my colleagues are former teachers themselves; I'd recommend taking a look there if she's not looking to remain a teacher, and you're welcome to contact me with any questions
Edit: As far as how to break into curriculum development, she should highlight any of her work adapting or implementing cutting-edge educational content. Or play up her management skills if she was on any committees or pushed things through at her school. Maybe take up freelance writing or editing? Start a blog and accumulate enough high quality content there to have something to point to
For a complete career switch, recruiters are also in very high-demand at the moment.
Other ideas: - Potentially sell curriculums, etc on teacherspayteachers or alternatives - Apply for jobs with education-industry companies like Scholastic, ed-tech companies
Best of luck!
My spouse was supportive of the extra time I had to put in to studying concepts and building toy things.
Some countries that come to mind would be the Netherlands, Germany, the nordics.
An added bonus to this is that your family will be able to benefit from the strong family support programs that these countries offer - tax breaks, grants, friendly city planning which gives children more independence.
