Allow Yourself To Ask The Question, “What's Going To Be Best For Me?”

Have I told y’all that teacher transition LinkedIn is my new favorite corner of the internet? It’s hands-down the most positive, professional and helpful place for teachers looking to leave the classroom—and Jami Cope embodies all of that. She is so generous in her offers to help other teachers, and all because she knows how hard the transition can be. I was grateful to sit down with Jami and hear her full story. Thank you, Jami!

Introduce yourself! Tell us your name, location, the number of years you taught, and the number of years since you’ve left.

My name is Jamie Cope. I’m in Lubbock, Texas. I taught for five years. I started teaching in 2011, and I left the classroom in 2016.

What brought you to teaching?

Teaching was my second career. I got my bachelor's degree in social work and did that for a year or two. Then I had children and stayed at home with them. I made like $26,000 as a salary in the early 2000s, so it cost me more to work and put my kids in childcare than to just stay home. So I stayed home and started looking at other things. 

I ended up getting a master’s in teaching. At the time my oldest son was starting kindergarten, and he struggled a lot. He ended up having dyslexia, and of course, I had to fight just to get him tested and all of those things. So at that time, I was like, “Okay, well, I can at least make a difference for these kids that learn differently.” Because when I was in school, I learned differently. I suspect now that I probably have ADHD, and there may be some autism in there. It would explain so much about my life. 

That was the thing that drew me to teaching—wanting to work with kids who learn differently.

Briefly describe your experience teaching.

Things really went pretty well while I was in Texas. I was teaching mainly in Frisco, which is north of Dallas. It's a large school district, well-funded. I did a lot of work at what we call Title IX.

I enjoyed working with the students. It was refreshing to be the one person who could be their advocate. But as the years went by, more and more was added on to our plates as teachers.

And then we moved to Colorado and I took a $12,000 a year pay cut. With a master's degree and several years of experience, I was making $39,000 a year as a teacher.

Teaching in Colorado felt like a complete free-for-all I mean in the district. Our curriculum was all over the place. None of it was connected. I was a generalist teacher in fourth grade, so me and my partner teacher were basically writing curriculum from scratch based on the books we had been given. We had to figure out how to make that work for our students and for the school year. So I was getting really, really burnt out. 

Sometime towards spring break, I took my kids to the gas station to fill up with gas. We went in to get a drink, and I just remember reaching for the door and seeing this big advertisement that said, “Assistant manager positions, full-time, $65,000 a year.” It was such a disparity in terms of what I made as a well-qualified teacher who had years of experience, an ESL supplemental certificate, and one for gifted learning education. I had done all these extra things to be a well-qualified teacher, and I could still go work at a gas station as an assistant manager and almost double my salary. It was very pivotal moment for me. 

I went home to my husband and I said, “I have to get out of teaching. I don't know what that's gonna look like but I just can't keep doing this.”

And he said, “This may be a little bit weird, but I've been tracking how many hours you spend working. Do you realize that on average, you're spending about 65-70 hours per week working?”

Because as a rule, I would be at school from 7 am to 7 pm. My kids were in after-school care, and then they would just come to my classroom and play while I got work done. Then I would go home and fix dinner. We would eat, then clean up and get the kids to bed. Then we would sit down to watch a TV show and I would have my computer out, doing curriculum or lesson planning. I also got pulled out of my room that year a lot for tech support because we didn't have a tech specialist in the building. I was asked to do teacher trainings on how to utilize technology, to make your classroom run more smoothly. So I was exhausted.

My husband did the math on my salary, and it working out to like $5 an hour. It was less than I made when I was babysitting when I was 14.

So it all just kind of compounded that week. That was when I really started looking for something else. I had no idea what I was gonna do. I just knew it had to be not in the classroom.

That was in 2016. So after five years of teaching. I didn't even make it very long, which goes into our thought processes as teachers: “This is what I've worked so long to do.” I felt so much guilt about leaving, like, “I should want to stay with these kids, I should want to enrich their lives, I should want to do all these things.” I almost talked myself out of it. 

At that point in the school year, I had kind of gotten all of my curriculum written. So the times at night, instead of doing lesson planning while I was watching TV with my husband, I started looking for what jobs were out there. 

I put some resumes out, filled out some applications for different tech support jobs. I got to the third interview for one, and then they said, “Well, since all of your experience really is in the classroom, we just don't know that you will have the kind of experience we need.”

And I said, “Here's the thing: I can support teachers better than anyone, because I've been there. I understand what they're going through.” But they ended up going with somebody else, because all of my experience was in the classroom.

I got very discouraged at that point and just started looking for what I could do within education. I got an interview and was also offered a job with Houghton Mifflin as a traveling consultant training teachers. 

So then the next year I traveled. I would be in like three different cities every week. I was training teachers who were all as frustrated as I had been the year before—frustrated with the curriculum, frustrated with the educational tech that didn’t always work.

So I went off-script a lot, just trying to address some of their frustrations. And usually by the time I left, they would say, “You make me feel like there's hope.” It made me feel good, but also bad at the same time, because I knew that in a few weeks, there would be some other initiative that they would have to tackle, and it would be just as frustrating. 

During that time, I was still trying to figure out what I was going to do. This to me was a bridge job. I didn't want to stay in education at that point because I could just feel the frustration all around me. 

My goal was to be a developer, so I decided to do an engineering boot camp. It got really hard with doing the boot camp while traveling and trying to make sure my kids had everything they needed while I was gone during the week. So I resigned from Houghton Mifflin and started looking for filler jobs that I could do.

I ended up finding a job with Zillow, just answering phones. It was kind of a terrible job, but they paid me more than I was paid as a teacher. I had incredible benefits and they had a fully stocked kitchen, so I could eat breakfast and lunch there. It was a Monday-through-Friday and I left it all at work. I just focused on getting through that boot camp and trying to figure out what I was gonna do.

Right at the end of the boot camp, I was introduced to a couple who owned an aviation business. They were looking for a developer. Come to find out, it was a much bigger project and they hired me because they knew they could pay me less than a senior developer. But when I got there, I said, “Okay, there's no way that I'm going to be able to complete building this app in the timeframe you have. How about I get all of the requirements that are needed on this side, and then I can be the liaison between a third-party developer who can get it done in your timeframe?” And so they were very excited about that.

So I basically became an accidental project manager by managing their project. I had no idea that project management was a field. Coming from the education world, I had no idea that there were so many possibilities out there with project management and business analysis. As a teacher, we do all those things already. So I was like, “Oh, yeah, I can do that.” That was really when I started on the actual project management track.

What are you doing now for work?

I am an IT project manager for Southwest Airlines. I've been doing that since November of last year. It's a contract to full-time position. So I'm hoping that sometime very soon, I will be pulled into a full-time role with them.

Aviation is a fun place to be. And Southwest has a huge technology department. My little piece of that department helps the app teams who are building the actual customer app. 

What do you think was the most challenging part of transitioning out of education for you?

A lot of it was figuring out how to become relevant to the corporate world. I was really good at putting my resume together and making it sound good to a principal or an assistant principal, using all the educational terminology. But making that relevant to the corporate world was pretty tough.

I think one of the biggest scary moments I had was when I was going to look for a job, and I was like, “How on earth do I take this crazy resume of teaching and development and project management, and make this experience relevant to getting a job?” I was really scared because I didn't know how to make that into a story. 

For me, the biggest challenge was turning all that experience into a journey where somebody in the corporate world could see value from all of the places I have been, and not just, “Oh, you decided to go into teaching, and then you decided to go into development, and then you accidentally ended up in project management.” Making it so it's not all these separate roles. Instead, it’s a whole journey where as a project manager now, I am so much better because of all the experiences I had as a teacher.

Because in talking with administration and talking with parents, who are very invested stakeholders, I developed a lot of emotional intelligence. A lot of people who are project managers don't have that. They haven’t had to deal with somebody's parent and try to get on the same team as them. So for me, the challenge was just trying to kind of come up with, “How do I put this on a resume that makes sense? And then how do I translate that in interviews into a journey that provides value for the company that I'm working for?”

So how did you do that? Because now, there's tons of coaches and resources online you can find. How did you do that then?

That is a really good question, because there was not a network on LinkedIn for transitioning teachers at that time, for sure. By the time I was looking for a job in 2020, the whole world had turned upside down. But I didn't feel like I fit in that transitioning teacher world anymore, because I’d already been out for three or four years. So I just kind of fumbled around. I redid my resume, I don't know, 100 times.

And then, most recently, in 2023, the business I was working for was closing so I knew I had a short runway of time to find a job. So I put my resume out there again. A recruiter reached out to me and said, “Hey, would you mind reorganizing your resume? I think instead of bullet points, you should organize it by project, and then do your bullet points by each project under your role.”

I did not even end up working for that company because they wanted a hybrid position, and I was looking for remote at that point. But the information she gave me and the request to reorganize my resume is really what turned the tide for me. I immediately could see a difference, because you open my resume and you can see, “Oh, wow! She's got three projects under Terminix and they're very different areas.” It shows the breadth of experience and the cross-functional teams that I had been a part of, as well as the number of projects that I had been involved in. 

I changed my LinkedIn profile to match the same style, and I started hearing back from four or five recruiters a day. 

I always hear, “Networking is like the only thing that matters. You have to network. You have to meet people. Blah! Blah!” I'm an introvert, and so that terrifies me. I would do it anyway, but I did it really awkwardly. So I never had great success with networking.

But I did have a bunch of recruiters start reaching out to me. And of all of those recruiters, there was only one weird, scammy one. There were also people trying to sell me different trainings and things like that, but for the most part, I was hearing from legitimate recruiters.

Later in 2023, I got my interviewing strategies together. It really started with, “How do I turn this whole journey into value for the person that's hiring me now?”

And that really was using stories, something like the STAR method. So when they ask a question in an interview like, “How do you deal with a difficult stakeholder?” I have three or four stories in my mind that I can use. As a teacher, there were so many, so many examples dealing with students, dealing with parents, dealing with principals or other teachers. It really taught me a lot about how to work with people. Now I get to utilize that.

It seems like your transition has unfolded over several years. Do you still consider yourself a transitioning teacher? 

So I still actually have an active teaching license. But I think I've decided that after eight years out of education, I'm not gonna go through all of the PDs and everything to renew it. I don't see myself going back. 

This whole time, I've been like, “You never know. I want to have something in my back pocket, just in case I get into a situation where I get laid off.” But at this point I'm like, “Would I really go back to education?” I have been able to increase my salary by three times from that initial salary that I had in Colorado. I like the value that I can find in the corporate world.

And it's not all just about the money, but it's about what comes with that. It shows you that a company values you. It shows you that you have skills they need and that they're gonna pay appropriately for that. 

I have finally been able to say that there really is no chance I'll ever go back to teaching. A little part of me is sad about that because I do love all of the experiences that I had with kids. I love seeing them on Facebook now–they're all graduated and doing incredible things with their lives. I love seeing that.

But at the same time, I sacrificed a lot of myself. I also sacrificed time with my kids and my husband—and those those relationships matter. I had to finally be able to say they matter more to me than being a martyr for the cause of education.

That really is what it came down to for me, because I felt like I was losing so much of myself and my relationship with my kids suffered. I had a stronger relationship with my kids when I was traveling at Houghton Mifflin than I did when I was teaching, when they were technically in the same building with me. I had more quality time with them when I was traveling to three cities in a week than I did when I was teaching, and I think that speaks volumes.

So obviously it's a very different landscape and climate now than when you left. But what advice would you give to somebody who's early in the journey, in the first stages of the teacher transition?

I would say talk to all the people you can. If there are different positions that you're interested in, find people you can talk to, and just ask questions and be curious. There are a lot of people out there who are kind of leeches in this whole transitioning teacher world, which I hate. But there's there's also so much value out there. I mean, just look at your Substack. I was reading through it, and I was like, “Oh, my goodness, I wish this would have been here when I went through that transition because those are all of the feelings that I had.”

So find the value where it speaks to you, but also find people who will talk to you for free, because they're out there. And just ask all of the questions, even if you think it's a stupid question, like, “What is project management,” or, “What is business analysis?” Because a business analyst is something that I had no idea existed until I worked with them at Terminix. I'm actually working on getting my business analyst certification right now.

Find different people. Find a project manager, find a salesperson. Because there's so many different roles that teachers are good at. It really depends on who you are as a person. I would never go to sales, you know, but there are so many teachers who are great at sales.

So search for positions that you don't even know exist. When you're talking to people, ask, “Okay, what are some other positions that you know? What other people do you work with?” Because that is really a foreign concept to a lot of people in education. As a teacher, you do all the things, so to have all those different roles is different.

Give yourself enough time to really investigate what you're gonna enjoy. Take that time and make it okay. Cause as teachers, we always put other people before us. So (even transitioning) it's like, “Okay, where can I make the most money?” or, “Where can I best support my family?” Think about what it's gonna best support you.

Because it’s possible to go to bed on Sunday night excited about what you're doing Monday morning. That's possible. In my current job, I have not had a Sunday night where I haven't been able to sleep, or I've been stressed and anxious about the next week. And that shocks me because I'm involved in a lot of high-profile projects where there are higher-ups looking at what we're doing and reading my status updates. And I still don't have anxiety about it, because I know that we're working as a team.

I think those are the biggest things: give yourself enough time and allow yourself to ask the question, “What's going to be best for me?” It really leads you to a place where it's like, “Okay, this is something that I will enjoy.” Don't get into project management just because you see a bunch of people doing it. If you end up hating it down the road, it's gonna be same song, second verse.

You can definitely link to my LinkedIn and let people know I'm always open to talk and answer questions. I'll share all of my information if they want more information about how I did my resume and stuff, because I think that was a huge game changer for me. Or if they want to know how to use stories in interviews. I'm happy to talk about any of that with people, and I don't charge because it's my way of giving back. 

I want to make sure that somebody who is like me can have help. When I was living on my salary at $39,000, if I had not been married to someone who was making real money, I could not have afforded even $25 to talk to somebody. So that's part of why I do what I do, because I understand that so many teachers are living at the poverty level, or maybe just above.

I feel like I have a huge gift, just being able to get out of education. I followed kind of a weird, windy path to get to where I am, and I would love to be able to compress that for people and give them everything I learned so that they could have a much faster, less overwhelming transition.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.