From Teacher to Edtech?
Recently I’ve thought about and been asked about what it takes to switch from teaching to edtech. Many teacher friends can’t physically return to the classroom if/when that happens, or have realized the sad state of edtech and want to make a difference.
When I made the move, I’d already done some consulting work with OpenEd and knew that it was a bit laborious, but also cool to be working on a website used by thousands of people/potentially millions. The idea that I would write a formative assessment/curate and approve a video resource for a specific standard that to be used by myself and a teacher in (anywhere!) Maine was pretty cool and inspired me to work for the company full time.
So with COVID and distance learning etc I see more and more from teachers on twitter that they either can’t physically return to the classroom (I know I wouldn’t be able too — my daughter had pediatric ITP last year so we’ve been super super careful!) or the change to remote learning has left them overwhelmed and needing to change.
There are a variety of jobs and niche companies in edtech that I feel certain people may thrive, but the biggest question is: What part of edtech do you want to help change?
Teachers have a ton of skills that are very valuable at edtech companies: leadership, technical skills, people skills, problem solving, project management, the ability to improve a process when given feedback, etc.
I’ll describe some of the major classroom-focused platforms below and if one resonates with you, I’ve included some job descriptions that might help you search for something.
Content side jobs: Helping create content usually remotely or helping schools implement that vendors product part or full time! This is probably the biggest need, but it is difficult to see full time positions these days because companies like to hire teams when building something new then let them go.
Example job (curriculum associates Education consultant)
Business Analysts: Helps convert what the product manager says they need feature-wise and write the steps as user stories. Usually this is done in a format called Gherkin such as:
GIVEN I am a user on the platform
WHEN I click on “Export”
THEN I am given the option to export the data as a PDF or Excel sheet.
It’s not glorious but it is interesting and fun to learn about all aspects of a product AND great experience for higher-paying jobs such as product owner+manager. I believe the pay is also about comparable to a teachers pay with reasonable experience.
Project management: Schedules and managing teams but not an individual contributor per se — don’t need to know a ton about the project you’re working on but should know the lingo a bit.
Product Management: This is the job I eventually was able to secure for a few years at ACT and it was very rewarding. As the product manager you own the roadmap and talk to consumers, internal stakeholders etc to prioritize the features that make it into the product. Definitely recommend being a Business Analyst or something ‘lighter’ first — but as a discipline the Product Management segment is hot enough you can go to specialized schools to earn a certificate in it… so it’s popular and you don’t technically need a specific degree for it, aside from great organization and people schools and willingness to learn ‘enough’ tech to know what you’re talking about.
Areas Within Edtech to Consider
SIS: Student Information System (Powerschool, Infinite Campus etc)
These systems deal with grades but many are branching out into the LMS space (See: Schoology was purchased by Powerschool etc).
Sample job: “Education Business Consultant”: The Education Business Consultant is responsible for partnering with our clients to help them achieve success for their students, teachers, and their overall education business. The Education Business Consultant will use industry best practices and the PowerSchool family of products to drive our customers to achieve their goals…
Learning Management Systems: Products like Canvas, Moodle, Schoology, I guess Google Classroom and Microsoft Teams now too…
Assessment Companies: Illuminate Education, ACT, ETS, College Board, Kahoot, Edcite, Formative, Plickers, InnerOrbit etc
There are formative assessment app companies that may or may not have custom/curated content, summative assessment companies and companies that offer dashboards as well as their own assessment content. Many opportunities here that also would benefit from folks with masters and doctorates — but actual classroom experience as well!
Learning Software/Curriculum : HMH, Dreambox Learning, RocketLit, iReady, iStation, ACT Mosaic, PearDeck, Nearpod, Desmos, Geogebra, Open Up Resources,
This is a huge area and there are more small companies than I can probably think of here…
Integration/communication companies: Clever, Remind, ParentSquare
Admittedly these kinds of companies are probably more technical in nature but I have seen school/student-facing implementation manager jobs posted before.
Education Consulting Companies: Public Consulting Group (PCG), PwC, Unicon, Boston Consulting Group etc.
These are the companies that districts often go to and say “we need this solution bundle all of the pieces together and make it happen.”
Steps to ask yourself as you digest this information:
- What problem do you want to solve
- What skills do you already have
- What skills can you learn and perhaps earn a certificate from through Coursera to SHOW you have those skills?
- Look for jobs on Glassdoor, LinkedIn, Edsurge Jobs board and always try for a more personal connection first!
My blog usually gets about a dozen readers but in case you’re reading this and you don’t know me, my own career trajectory:
2006–2015: Math teacher for 8 years, increasingly involved in math curriculum development and district level leadership. Teacher on Special Assignment and earned my Administrative Credential but felt I wasn’t broadening the impact I could make but narrowing it, so accepted a job offer from OpenEd.com a startup I’d done some consulting for the summer before.
2015: Started as just the math content curator but soon was Lead Content Curator and hired a team of content contractors. Increasingly got involved in how the product was made, taught myself to write SQL queries etc
2016: ACT purchased OpenEd and I found myself the product manager of a cool new tool to create and publish “machine readable competencies”. I’d certainly never actually read and understood a specification document, but now I’m at home with the CASE specification documents and have even helped write some new ones!
2017: Continued learning about product management and stopped doing OpenEd part time/OpenSALT part time… in November of that year went full time on OpenSALT then ACT SkillSuite in 2019–20
2020: Successfully brought ACT SkillSuite from inception to market launch and now am going into a Workforce Skills startup after spending a ton of time working with academic standards and seeing that currently there’s a bit of a dead end after K12/college to career — that needs to end! I love working at a startup because you get a chance to be really involved in all aspects of the business and influence what happens!
