A colleague and I were talking over a video call today…
No… that is not true. We were bitching… we were commiserating… we were griping about careers being spent in education and the things educators can do when they leave the field… or more precisely the things it is assumed we cannot do when we leave education. It was motivated by her story about a family member who had decided to abandon their career and what they were doing to make a living.
If you are a human resources director or manager who needs someone who can identify and resolve problems, for example a project manager, consider hiring someone who has had a long and successful career as a teacher.
Those who have been successful in the field have experience taking responsibility for real problems. When faced with:
- a classroom full of students (many who have learned school is not a place relevant to their lives or futures)…
- a nonsensical curriculum (defined and directed by folks who have unrealistic concepts of students, their futures, and what society needs from graduates)…
- leaders who are misguided (because they believe the nonsensical curriculum at least superficially and they are negotiating political relationships)…
teachers get really good at identifying what needs to be done, devising a plan for accomplishing it, then deciding if the problem is solved (or if it created one ones) and repeating. They are motivated by the fact that they have been handed an untenable situation (for the reasons I identified above) and they must resolve it. If they don’t, then they alone are going to have to live and work in the mess.
The teachers who have had long and successful careers (you can tell they were successful because they speak with enthusiasm about what they did even after they left) have spent a career managing multidimensional situations. Further than simply managing those situations, they have spent a career resolving them. I suppose, then, I should reconsider my advice. If you hire successful teachers, you are going to have someone who actually resolves problems join you team.
One thing I have learned since I left my job as a teacher and since I have been talking with my adult children about their work is there are far fewer organizations that want problems resolved than there are organizations that want to work on resolving them. So make sure you want projects completed and problems solved before you hire a former teacher.