15 Jobs you can get with a Teaching Degree

A teaching degree is a degree that can give you a huge range of options after graduation.

Today, I’m going to share with you some of the careers my college friends with teaching degrees ended up in. I hope they inspire you on your hunt for an alternative career now you’ve got that teaching degree in hand.

Jobs you can get with a teaching degree include:

• Retail Store Manager.
• ESL Teacher Overseas.
• Entrepreneur.
• Freelance Copywriter.
• Guidance Counselor.
• Professor.
• Academic Advisor.
• Online Curriculum Designer.
• Youth Outreach Coordinator.
• Community Organizer.
• Au Pair.
• Exchange Coordinator.
• Tour Guide.
• Researcher.
• Ski Instructor.
• Surf or Stand Up Paddle Board Instructor.

Jobs you can get with a Teaching Degree

1. Retail Store Manager

A retail store manager has to have skills in managing a group of people and multi-tasking. Highlight the management skills that you acquired through your degree.

A retail store manager is in charge of managing staff, ordering stock, organizing stocktaking and inventory, and doing financial reports.

Managing groups of people is a skill that all teachers have. Any time you’ve taught in front of children, you had to balance the needs, wants and personalities of a group of children. It’s not much different managing adults. In fact, perhaps managing adults is a little easier!

It’s also worthwhile highlighting your organization skills when applying for a job like this. Show that your teaching degree taught you the importance of organizing for the next day, keeping clear records of what’s happened each day, and turning up early and well-prepared. Kids don’t care if you’re tired and nor will customers

Skills you Can Demonstrate from your Teaching Degree:

• People management
• Organization

2. ESL Teacher Overseas.

An ESL Teacher can exercise their teaching skills in a fun and adventurous job. Teaching English overseas gives you experience abroad and, clearly, you can sell your teaching skills when applying for this job.

ESL stands for “English as a Second Language”. ESL teachers work with people who do not speak English but are trying to learn. As an ESL teacher, you will be spending your days working in groups and one-to-one helping people learn English phrases, verb conjugations, idioms, and so on.

There are jobs available both at home and abroad as an ESL teacher. You’ll find many jobs in cities with high immigrant populations. Overseas, jobs can be found in any country where English isn’t the main language.

Popular ESL destinations include Korea, Japan, Colombia and China.

Search for ESL Teacher Jobs on the following job boards:

• Teach Away
• ESL Base
• Transitions Abroad

Skills you Can Demonstrate from your Teaching Degree:

• Teaching strategies
• Language and literacy instruction
• Managing groups of young people
• Patience
• Competency with people of diverse cultural backgrounds

3. Entrepreneur.

Is there a business you’ve always considered starting yourself? Consider applying your organization and time management skills you developed during your degree to making your own job for yourself!

An entrepreneur works for themselves. Most entrepreneurs have inspiration to start a business in something they’re passionate about. If there’s a business idea you’ve always wanted to pursue, why not give it a go? Maybe you want to start a cafe, a daycare center, or a farm.

Skills you Can Demonstrate from your Teaching Degree:

• Training staff
• Hard work and determination (aka intrinsic motivation)
• Navigating bureaucratic requirements

4. Freelance Copywriter.

Teachers need expert writing skills. Use that knowledge of paragraph structure, punctuation and writing style to make some money! A great benefit of this job is that you can work from home.

As a freelance copywriter you’ll write articles for websites, blogs and newspapers.

Throughout your teaching degree, you had to write papers that demonstrated professional writing skills. If you were trained as an elementary school teacher or language teacher, you’ll have even more specialist knowledge in writing.

There is no barrier to entry for freelance writing. Anyone with a bit of “get up and go” can get started. You’ll have to set your rate per word low to start, but as you get more and more writing gigs, your rate will rise. Expect to be paid between $50 and $200 per 1,000 words. A good average payment from a decent brand is $150 for 1,000 – 1,500 word articles.

Search for freelance gigs on the following websites:

• Pro Blogger Job Board
• Contenta

Skills you Can Demonstrate from your Teaching Degree:

• Writing skills
• Working to deadlines

5. Guidance Counselor

Teachers are people with a great deal of compassion and patience with young people. Put these positive interpersonal traits to work providing counseling to young people.

A guidance counselor works with young people on academic, social and emotional issues. They will often also provide careers and college advice.

You’ll need to work on plans of action for young people to work toward their goals, and regularly meet up with them on their progress.

At times, it will also be your job to mediate conflict between students and their friends or teachers.

Guidance counselors often work within schools so you’ll be able to work in a familiar environment, but just a different role.

Skills you Can Demonstrate from your Teaching Degree:

• Patience and compassion
• Behavior management
• Working with youth

6. Professor

If teaching younger people isn’t your cup of tea anymore, consider teaching adults. Apply your expertise in pedagogy and curriculum to train the next generation of educators.

If you want to get some more intellectual stimulation and spend less time on classroom management, consider stepping up to a role as a professor. You can either teach education theory or in a subject-specific role.

Colleges are often looking for instructors and adjucts to teach Education subjects. Look at jobs going at your local college.

You may need a masters degree or Ph.D to get a tenured position, so consider going back to school to get a doctorate in education.

(P.S. – this is what I did when I stepped out of classroom teaching).

Skills you Can Demonstrate from your Teaching Degree:

• Teaching strategies
• Your expert knowledge in your subject area
• One-to-one guidance skills
• Curriculum design and development

7. Academic Advisor

An academic adviser is a person employed by a university to help students navigate through their degree. They provide information on program requirements and course options.

You’ve probably had some experience with an academic advisor. They are the people at university who talk to you about your program, what courses you need to take to complete your degree, and how to change majors.

You will be able to take your skills advising young people straight into this role. You will need to get to know college students one-on-one and learn about what they want out of life. Then, together you can work on getting them toward their goals.

You can also demonstrate your knowledge and understanding of curricula to potential employers. You’ll need an understanding of how a curriculum works to help young people navigate degree structures.

Skills you Can Demonstrate from your Teaching Degree:

• Curriculum knowledge
• Patience and compassion
• Skills working with young people

8. Online Curriculum Designer

An online curriculum designer creates training content for online courses. They are common for workplace training courses or online certifications.

As an online curriculum designer, you’ll spend your time creating training materials on online learning management platforms. You will create video and text lessons, followed by quizzes and discussion forums to allow for learner interaction.

This job will require some technological skills, but they can be learned fast. The most important skills are the ability to teach and present information clearly and entertainingly.

I’ve noticed that this job is increasingly common on job boards like LinkedIn. It’s a growing industry where work can be found, particularly in major cities.

Skills you Can Demonstrate from your Teaching Degree:

• Ability to explain concepts very clearly.
• Skills in multi-modal teaching.
• Ability to create assessments and quizzes.
• Facilitation of discussion.
• Curriculum design and development.

9. Youth Outreach Coordinator.

Youth outreach is a common job within NGO and government organizations. Spend your time creating extracurricular educational experiences for young people.

Consider this: a local community garden has been given a grant to promote healthy eating to local youths. It hires a person with a teaching degree to create two-hour sessions on healthy eating, to be delivered twice a day at the community garden. You’ll also have to contact schools to try to organize field trips to the garden.

As a youth outreach coordinator, you will spend your time designing and delivering lessons to young people for a specific organization. You’ll need to constantly update the curriculum and keep up strong relationships with local schools and youth groups.

You might work for an environmental, Indigenous, entrepreneurial, sporting, or similar community organization.

Skills you Can Demonstrate from your Teaching Degree:

• Ability to communicate with school management.
• Writing curricula.
• Teaching to young people.
• Behavior management.
• Organization and project management.

10. Researcher.

Use your research skills developed in your degree for this role. You can work for a university professor or market research organization to facilitate focus group discussions or gather empirical data.

Researchers work in government and non-government companies to gather and process population data. You could be employed to conduct focus group interviews, gather statistical data, or crunch the numbers to identify trends.

You’ll have to sell your research skills that you developed during your degree. If you completed an honours or capstone research project, you’ll have an advantage over some other applicants for this role.

Skills you Can Demonstrate from your Degree:

• Ability to present information in a professional format.
• Ability to interpret and verify the validity of information found online.
• Ability to conduct research to find information.

11. Day Care.

Working in day care or early learning will require your child management skills. Early childhood is also increasingly seen as a time of life in which a great deal of learning and teaching needs to occur.

Working in day care isn’t just about minding a child. We often call “day care workers” something new these days: “early learning educators”. This highlights the importance we’re now placing on the need for pedagogical skills for people working with very young children.

In this role, you’ll take a side-step in your career. Your pedagogy will become much more play-based as you help inspire children to engage in imaginative and cooperative play. Help children develop gross and fine motor skills and move through the stages of child development.

Skills you Can Demonstrate from your Teaching Degree:

• Pedagogical skills.
• Patience and care for children.
• Trustworthiness with children.
• Prepare authentic learning scenarios.

12. Librarian.

Bring your education skills to your local library. A librarian will often run educational programs for children in the community, organize regular adult training sessions, and of course curate and organize books.

Bring your skills in teaching and working with children to your local library. A librarian will do a lot of work organizing library events. As part of this, you may be asked to run sessions showing children the importance of reading books, or find people in the local community to run their own sessions. You will work on programs that support the community such as resume writing sessions and computer literacy sessions. There may be an opportunity to work on support programs for new immigrants, also.

Of course, you will also be integral to the organization and curation of the library’s books, too.

Skills you Can Demonstrate from your Teaching Degree:

• Literacy skills (particularly if you’ve been educated in elementary or high school literacy).
• Content curation.
• Teaching skills.
• Organization.

13. Tour Guide.

A teacher’s group leadership, public speaking and pedagogical skills come in useful for this role. You will be guiding people through notable spaces and explaining their significance to tourists.

A tour guide is an educator. She needs to be able to explain interesting and sometimes complex historical information to groups. It needs to be entertaining, too – after all, they’re paying for the tour!

When applying for this job, highlight your skills in explaining things in layman’s terms. Highlight your personable style and approachability. Another trait tour guides often need is organization. You need to keep the group moving and on time, even while they’re trying to take selfies everywhere. See: it’s just like classroom teaching!

Skills you Can Demonstrate from your Teaching Degree:

• Group management.
• Approachability.
• Skills in explaining and teaching.

14. Ski Instructor.

Bring your teaching to the great outdoors as a ski instructor. You’ll still be teaching, but often in one-to-one sessions. Plus, what better way to spend the day than on the slopes?

Here’s another job I did for a while when I took some time off teaching. As a ski instructor, you’ll have to exercise those skills in observing someone’s skill level and providing guidance to help them improve. You’ll be demonstrating good technique and then letting the skiers behind you have a go, before giving them feedback.

You can teach either adults or children as a ski instructor. When you teach adults, the tips can be surprisingly good!

Plus, you get to ski all day – for free! It’s also an amazing social job.

Skills you Can Demonstrate from your Teaching Degree:

• Ability to teach.
• Highlight your skills in scaffolding.
• Patience.
• Capacity to rally the troops on the not-so bluebird days.

15. Surf and Paddle Board Instructor.

Ski instructors only work half the year. For the other half, consider instructing that other awesome sport: surfing!

There’s regularly demand for surf and paddle board instructors, especially in tourist towns.

It’s a lot like ski instructing: give clear and concise instructions, demonstrate the correct technique, and give feedback to your students.

The amazing upside of this job is you’ll get to wake up every morning and head out the door with your surf board in hand!

You’ll need to be a strong swimmer and have the capacity to oversee all your group to ensure their safety.

Skills you Can Demonstrate from your Teaching Degree:

• Ability to provide care and secure the safety of groups of people.
• Teaching skills.
• Positive outlook, even when you’re not feeling so great!

Conclusion

That’s it – my list of alternative jobs you can get with a teaching degree. Believe me – as a teacher, I’ve pondered quitting and pursuing one of these alternative careers more than once or twice in my time. I’ve even had a go at doing a fair few of them!

If you’ve got any more awesome ideas (or want to know my opinion on some other alternative career choices), please feel free to share them with me in the comments below.