Teachers, are you looking to use your EdTech Skills? Or are you looking to transition from the classroom to a position with an education technology company? You may worry about whether they are qualified to make such a big career change. The reality, however, is that teacher jobs are excellent preparation for EdTech employment. Your time in the classroom has given you numerous skills that will make you an effective member of the EdTech field.
Here are some of the top transferable skills teachers have that make them perfect fits for a new career in EdTech with those transferrable skills.
Empathy is central to the teaching experience. As an educator, you do not just help students to develop their intellects. You also help them to develop emotional intelligence, and that means teaching them to understand and model empathy.
Great teachers teach empathy to their students in a multitude of ways. Every time you explore a character’s feelings in a story, you show them empathy. When you help a student navigate a conflict with a friend, you give them a real-world experience. If you show your class how to care for their community, you are helping them to use empathy to connect with those around them.
Great teachers also use empathy as they build relationships with students, parents, colleagues, administrators, and other educators. When it comes time to transition to the EdTech world, particularly in the fields of sales, customer support, and customer success, empathy plays a central role.
Research shows, for example, that empathy is one of the most important leadership skills. Empathetic leaders foster greater innovation, engagement, and inclusivity within their environments. You can use your EdTech skills resume in teaching and using empathy to create strong teams and effective communication within your EdTech corporation.
In addition, the school districts and educators with whom you will interact in your new role need more than just facts about the technology options available to them. They need someone who will listen to and care about their needs and who will find ways to support student learning and growth. Your skills in using empathy can help you to build trusting and effective relationships with them as you seek to meet their EdTech needs.
Documentation can seem all-consuming in the field of education. A Facebook post that circulated when I was teaching said, “Teaching is at the point that if a student passes gas in class, we have to document it.”
While the post was a bit sarcastic, there was some truth to it. A decade later, the need for documentation is even higher. IEPS. Behavior improvement plans. School lunch lists. COVID contact lists. Teachers spend many hours meticulously documenting student progress and behaviors.
When you are ready to transition from the classroom to an EdTech career, teacher career coaches want you to know that those documentation skills will be a highly valuable skill in any role you take on. From engineers who need to write a postmortem to a customer success manager who needs to document a success story for a case study to a recruiter who needs to document the outcomes of an interview, great documentation skills are essential.
Most of us remember that one teacher who struggled with organization. Late test grading, messy classroom, you know who I’m talking about. However, most teachers are extremely organized because they have to be. Thoughtful, intentional organization keeps their lives at school less stressful and equips them to teach more effectively.
You can take those same organizational skills and use them to succeed at an EdTech company. For example, in my first EdTech position, I used my organizational skills to build a tracking system to manage the company’s book of renewals and expansions. The system caught the attention of my CEO, who told me at my year-end review that “I didn’t know you had this operational side to you!”
As a teacher looking to move into EdTech, you can leverage those organizational skills as the valuable contributions they are to the field. And, you can market those EdTech skills at the beginning of the application process rather than waiting until you are in the role to let your operational skills shine!
In my opinion, one of the biggest shifts in education over the last 20 years is the practice of differentiating instruction for students. Back in the 80s and 90s when I was a student, education was a one-size-fits-all approach. Every student received instruction in the same way.
When I became a teacher, however, we began learning the importance of tailoring the curriculum to match students’ learning styles. Today, teachers are expected to provide an education that meets students’ unique learning needs.
As a result, teachers understand the importance of differentiation to student success, and they understand how to implement it in their everyday approach. You are probably very comfortable with using tools and strategies to make a curriculum an effective teaching tool for all of your students.
Differentiation is also at the core of EdTech curriculum today. Tools such as eSpark learning, iXL, DreamBox, LearnZillion, NewsELA, and ThinkCerca use technology to make differentiation easier and more effective within the classroom.
As an EdTech employee, particularly in the customer support field, differentiation is also key. We all know the constant conversation that goes on behind doors about customer segmentation and services. Teachers are not only great at understanding the concept that some customers deserve higher-touch care than others, but they can also deliver on it without the urge to over-serve the lower-touch customer. The former teachers on my customer service teams were the BEST at executing based on customer segmentation plans.
Patience may not be a skill you think to put on your resume, but it is a valuable tool that you can take from education to EdTech. Those classrooms of busy children that you manage every day have given you a level of patience you would never have been able to imagine before you started teaching.
You have also learned how to read students (and sometimes parents) in order to determine when to push them toward positive change and growth and when to wait patiently in order to optimize their chances for success in the classroom.
That balance is essential in jobs outside of the classroom too, particularly in the sales and customer support fields. You need to know when to stretch the thinking of a school district and push them toward a certain solution, but you also need to know when to be patient and wait for a better time.
In addition, you will need patience when dealing with people inside and outside your organization. You are working with human beings, whether they are from the product team, instructional design, engineering, or another department, and successful interactions with others, as you know, often require patience.
As an educator, you already have many of the tools to develop teaching knowledge you need to succeed at an EdTech company. If you are ready to begin the journey to a new career outside of the classroom, a teacher career coach can set you on the right path. I founded Classroom to Boardroom to help teachers with this often intimidating transition.
In addition to teaching you how to recognize and promote the critical skills you have, I offer job research boards, a course to complete on your own time, connections with those in the industry, and more. Here you can network, spruce up your resume, and become part of a community that supports you along the way. I work with teachers every day to guide them out of the classroom, and I’d love to work with you too.
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