Jobs for former teachers: where your classroom skills fit

In short

• Look at what you do all day, not at the word “teacher”. Most of it is wanted outside schools.
• Training, instructional design, technical writing and customer education keep the most of your daily work.
• The roles below are examples, not recommendations. Which one fits depends on which parts of teaching you enjoy.
• Test a direction during the school year or the summer before you resign.
• On your CV, translate classroom tasks into the new field’s words, with results.

What teachers already do that other jobs need

O*NET, the US Department of Labor’s occupation database, lists the tasks of each job. For secondary school teachers they include setting clear objectives for lessons and units, adapting materials to different needs, preparing and grading assessments, and presenting through lectures, discussions and demonstrations. The top work activities are training and teaching others, and coaching and developing others.

Many other jobs are built from the same tasks. Training and development specialists, for example, design and run training, build course materials, assess what people need to learn and check whether the training worked. Research suggests that skills carry over well between jobs that share tasks like these, even when the titles look unrelated.

It also helps to know which parts you want to keep. Make a list of what you do in a typical week and mark each task as energizing, neutral or draining. Someone who loves planning units but dreads behaviour management is looking for a different job from someone who loves the live moment in front of a group.

Jobs for former teachers: examples that build on teaching

These roles share many tasks with teaching, and several are close to tech. Pay is the US median for each occupation in May 2025, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A median includes people with many years in the role, so a newcomer may start below it, and pay differs a lot by country.

With five or more years of related experience, training and development manager is a later step from the first row. BLS gives its median pay as $133,000 in May 2025.

Teaching jobs outside the classroom: instructional design and training

These two are the most common first stops, and they’re different. Instructional designers mostly build: they plan courses, write materials and create e-learning, often without presenting it themselves. O*NET lists “Instructional Designer” as a job title within instructional coordinators. Trainers mostly deliver: they run sessions, workshops and onboarding, and adapt in the moment. If your favourite part of teaching is planning, look at design. If it’s the room, look at training.

Your interests can help you choose. In O*NET’s interest profiles, teachers, training and development specialists and instructional coordinators all score highest on social interests: helping, teaching and caring for people. Technical writers score highest on conventional interests, with artistic second. If you’re not sure which pulls you more, our free career interest test takes a few minutes.

Remote jobs for former teachers

Some of these roles are advertised as remote, mostly in instructional design, technical writing, online training and customer education. We don’t have reliable figures on how many, and it varies by employer and country. Search job ads for the role with a “remote” filter in your country to see what’s really out there.

How to test a direction before you leave the classroom

• Build one short e-learning module on a topic you know, using a free trial of a common authoring tool.
• Rewrite a confusing set of instructions, from your school or a product you use, as a clear how-to guide.
• Offer to run a staff training session or onboard new teachers at your school.
• Volunteer to train volunteers for a local organisation.
• Talk to three people who left teaching for the role you’re considering.

For those conversations, think beyond close friends: former colleagues who left, people from your training course, parents who work in the field. In large randomised experiments on LinkedIn, people you know a little led to the most job moves.

The school calendar can help: a summer is long enough to build a small portfolio and have several conversations.

How to describe teaching on your CV

Hiring managers outside education may not know what a teacher’s week involves, so spell it out in their words, with results. Research suggests that specific accomplishments work better on a CV than lists of duties or self-praise.

Fill in your own real numbers. Then frame the move as a next step: the part of teaching you want more of, and why this role. Research suggests employers hire people whose path looks like related steps more often than people with unrelated jumps.

Career change for teachers: a four-week plan

1. Week 1: List what you do in a typical week and mark each task as energizing, neutral or draining. Take the interest test.
2. Week 2: Pick two roles from the table. Read ten job ads for each and highlight the tasks you already do.
3. Week 3: Message three people who made a similar move and ask for a 20-minute conversation.
4. Week 4: Start one small test from the list above.

For the full method, see how to change careers when you don’t know what to do next, and our guide to transferable skills.

Questions people ask