If It Can Happen For Them, It Can Happen For Me Too

I first came across Dr. Robyn McPherson on transitioning teacher LinkedIn, AKA my new favorite corner of the internet, when I saw one of her Robyn’s Rideshare video posts. I love the positive mindset and helpful insights she shared in these pep talks and knew I had to talk to her. Thanks for sharing your story, Robyn!

Let’s start at the beginning. Give your name, location, the number of years you spent teaching and what you taught, and then how long you've been out of teaching.

My name is Robyn McPherson. I'm in Norfolk, Virginia. I was in education for 12 full years. I spent two full years as a math specialist out of the classroom, doing observations, co-teaching models, that sort of thing. Before that, I spent three years teaching middle school math. The seven years prior to that was all elementary.

Two weeks after this last school year started, I landed my new role. I'm now a learning analyst with State Farm. This is actually my fourth week.

I’m in the department called agency learning. Essentially we take training requests from different departments within State Farm. I come up with what the course should have in it, and then I send that to the parallel team, where they do the storyline. So they’re on the actual content creation side, and I'm on the curriculum creation side.

I finally figured it out! I finally understand what I do, almost 30 days in. The first two weeks I was asking my teammates, “What the hell is it that we do here? What do we do as a team?” So I finally got it.

What brought you to teaching?

I had no intention of ever going into education. I went to business school. So I have a bachelor's and an MBA in marketing. But I came out of business school in 2008, during the Great Recession, so I could not find a job. I ended up working odd jobs.

And then I got into TFA in 2012. Honestly, I joined TFA  because I was working retail at the time, and I hate retail. So it was really, “What can I do to get out?” TFA was a way for me to just make a quick pivot out of where I was.

What did you like about teaching? 

The thing that I like the most about teaching is the kids just being kids. They would just say the weirdest off-the-wall stuff, and I can't count how many times where I’d have to stop teaching and just look at them. They’d say the funniest stuff; I’d be dying laughing.

In teaching, I figured out that I like to help people in their quest for knowledge, getting from point A to point B. So in a perfect teaching world, I like being able to teach. But really, how often are you able to just teach?

What did you find challenging or unfulfilling about teaching?

The thing that really irks me about education is the unrealistic expectations. And also the unfair pressure that is put on teachers to perform. It's like, you're grading me on whether or not this percentage of kids pass their end-of-year state exam. But I'm not in full control of how that fleshes out. I'm one piece of it. But you know, did they get sleep? Did they eat, do they have test anxiety? There's all these other factors that go into it. 

My last principal told us during in-service training that she wanted this group of students who had just in May scored a 7% proficiency rate in math–she wanted the same group of students to now perform at a 75% proficiency rate for this year.

(Just to give you some context as to how bad this school was last year: with seven elementary classes, we had two certified teachers. There was a constant rotation of substitutes, and the reading specialist and I were writing lesson plans for these substitutes.)

And the principal wanted teachers to put this goal on their evaluation document, like, “This is your goal.” So I had lots of problems with that. How are these kids, in seven months, gonna go from 7 to 75% proficiency, not growth? They're not gonna meet it. And you want to evaluate me on this unrealistic goal? Make it make sense to me.

After that meeting, the principal essentially said, “This is the goal, and if you don't like it, leave.”

So that’s what brought you to the decision to leave?

So the reason that really propelled me to start the transition is that I developed this issue in my ears. Basically my ears feel full all the time. So think if you're on an airplane and your ears pop—they feel full, but then they pop. Well, mine feel full and they don't pop.

I was diagnosed with Eustachian tube dysfunction in both ears. And so, of course, I was going back and forth to the doctor a lot, but I would take leave just in time to get to the appointment. After one of the appointments, the principal actually sent the assistant principal to tell me that I was taking excessive leave because of these doctor's appointments.

So that was really what started it. I said, “Okay, you're telling me I'm taking excessive leave because I have a medical issue. And you didn't have the balls to come and talk to me about it yourself.” While I was there, she never once said, “How are your ears feeling? Is everything resolved?”

It developed into one of those relationships where it's like, “I just need you to leave me alone.” And all we heard as teachers was, “If you don't like it here, go to HR and ask for a different placement.” And I put myself on the transfer list too. But no schools opened up.

That made me get serious about my transition. That was actually about a year ago, so like holiday season 2023. I was tinkering with it in January. Then in February, the environment got really bad, to the point where I asked my therapist to write me a note for stress leave. I was out for two weeks, just for stress, and on three different antidepressants.

After I came back from stress leave is when I said, “This is it. I can't do this anymore.”

What steps did you start taking to transition out of the classroom?

The first thing I had to sit down and figure out was, “Where do I want to go?”

I did this exercise where it's like, “Okay, here are the things that I'm good at and here are the things I like to do. Where do they meet in the middle?” So I came up with being a corporate trainer because I like public speaking and presenting. I was also interested in instructional designer or e-learning developer roles, because I like creating and presenting content. So I got it down to those two.

Once I got clear on that, I started doing coffee chats with people. I like doing the coffee chat because there are so many people who actually want to help you. You just gotta go out and look for it. 

I got on LinkedIn and started connecting with people who were in the position or direction of where I wanted to go. I would message them and say, “Hey, my name is Robyn. I'm currently a math specialist, and I'm looking to transition into L&D. I was wondering if you would be open to doing a coffee chat with me to talk about what you do, what your day looks like, and any knowledge that you would have for me as I get ready to embark on this transition.” 

And I did not have one person say no.

Because I approached it with an attitude of, “I want you to talk to me about you.” It wasn't like, “Hey, I'm trying to do this coffee chat so you can be a referral to get me in and give me a job.” It was like, “I just want the information. I'm completely green. I don't know what the hell this is. Educate me.”

Approaching it like that, I did also get a lot of, “Hey, when you're done with your portfolio, send it to me, and I’ll give you feedback on it.” 

And then through one of those coffee chats, I was told I needed to start building a portfolio. So I started buying all the Udemy classes I could find. Actually I would wait until they had these sales. I’d buy like five courses and work through them, just so I could get the content knowledge of learning and development cause from a corporate perspective.

That's when I also started kind of tinkering around with Articulate 360. To be quite honest, one benefit of the position that I had was that what I did from day to day was very ambiguous. So I could be in my office, doing “paperwork,” but really I was working on my Udemy courses.

Once I decided I was transitioning, I was like, “I'm gonna do the bare, bare, minimum to not get put on a PIP.” So I spent a lot of my days at work storyboarding, or working through my Udemy courses or on my resume, or building my portfolio site. I understand that a lot of people are not in that position where they have this ambiguous time at work to do these things. So I understand that in and of itself was a privilege.

When did you actually start applying for the positions?

I started applying really heavily around the end of March, beginning of April.

At the very beginning, I was working myself in a frenzy trying to create entirely new resumes for every single position that I applied for. And it was like, “I cannot do this either.” 

So I actually ended up asking one of my LinkedIn friends who had just transitioned from education for help. She was another coffee chat that I did. She actually redid my resume for like 20 bucks. I had her make me one for the corporate trainer role and then one for the L&D roles. Then I took those base master resumes and tweaked them to make targeted resumes. That's where the AI part came in. 

I also did hire a career coach, which turned out to be a nightmare. She was more of a tech career coach. Her fee was $1,000. And with this resume that this coach put out, I did not get a single interview. The $20 resume was what got me all of my interviews. The resume that I paid $1000 for gave me absolutely nothing.

So I actually interviewed for State Farm in July. With this career coach, I did all the prep myself. I never had any mock prep interviews, nothing. So at the end of the interview, State Farm said, “We should be deciding who's gonna get this role in the second week of August.”

So between when I interviewed and when I was supposed to hear back was three weeks. Those three weeks came and went, and I never heard anything.

So I said, “Okay, I guess it's time to move on.” That’s when I hired the second career coach, Tyrina Lassiter, who turned out to be amazing. I love her. She looked at my resume and said, “This is good. If it’s getting you the interviews, it may not be the resume. We might just need to do just like a cover letter for you.”

I actually had one other interview with the city of Virginia Beach for a public safety training specialist role. Tyrina did help me with that one, and I ended up getting that job. But I didn’t take it because it was five days in person (and the commute would have been too far.)

When I turned that down, I did not have my State Farm role yet. I did not leave (my teaching role) until literally the week before I started. I left on a Thursday, and then I started State Farm the next Monday.

What advice, tips or wisdom would you give somebody who's starting to look at transitioning out of the classroom?

So this is one thing I have not touched on because I think it's a very controversial topic. When I applied, I did not put on my resume “math teacher” in my applications. I took all K-12 public education stuff off of my resume. I replaced those job titles with ones that would have been very similar in the corporate sector. So when I was a middle school math teacher, I said I was a “middle school learning specialist.” Or I was an “elementary learning designer.”

You get a lot of people that say, “Oh, no, that's lying. Don’t do that.” And, “You want to find a company that is proud to have you as a teacher.” Which I totally agree with. But if that's standing in between you being able to transition in six months and transitioning in a year and a half, then do it.

Because from when I started applying until the day I started, it was like five or six months. Which in this job market is actually a kind of short amount of time.

I look at it like, it's not lying. Did you design learning for elementary students? Then, yeah, you were an elementary learning designer. Did you specialize in middle school mathematics? Then yes, you were a middle school learning specialist. I was just trying to spin it to make it more attractive.

Even on LinkedIn, a lot of the teachers I see say, “Oh, I've been trying to transition for two years.” But then you go on their profile, and everything is “teacher, teacher, teacher.” So where would someone outside of education even see how you would fit?

The other thing that I see is a lot of teachers not optimizing their LinkedIn pages. So where it says your job title, there's no description. Number one, what did you do? Number two, what is that going to show the company you're interviewing with that you can do for them? I would not put on my resume that I spearheaded a classroom celebration for good behavior. So what? Who cares? With my resume, I made sure that I had metrics that answered the “so what?”

The thing that helped me the most, and I say this till I'm blue in the face, was my mindset. Because I could have the best resume, I could have the best portfolio, but if I don't feel like I'm worthy, if I don't feel like it's available to me and I don't feel like I can do it—none of that is gonna matter.

So I spent a lot of time either doing affirmations or visualizing. I did a vision board. I actually have one on my phone, so every time I open my phone, I see this vision board.

I got into subliminals. If I was cleaning, I was listening to a subliminal. If I was showering, cooking, walking, exercising—I was listening to a subliminal. It's a recording that sounds like rain but there are messages spoken so low, you can't hear them. So it's bypassing the part of your brain that's reasoning and going into the subconscious.

I also always tried to find something to be thankful for. Even while I was driving to work like, “Oh my God, I don't wanna go. Can I just get Covid so I can just stay at home?” But I switched it to, “I'm thankful for the trees that give me oxygen. I'm thankful for my new car. I'm thankful for this chilly day, so I can wear my sweater.” I’d just find something to be thankful for, even at work: “I'm thankful that I have money so I can pay my bills. I'm thankful that I have health insurance.” So even with this job that I hated, I still tried to find the gem.

I got very aware of what I was ingesting. So anything on LinkedIn talking about how bad the job market was, I was like, “Nope. I can't read that.” Because that was just gonna go into my mind. I was very intentional about what I read, what I heard and also the stories I told myself.

Because you’ll see the people who take so long to transition. But then you also see the success stories: “My green banner’s coming down!” So I was like, “If it can happen for them, it can happen for me too. If it's available to them, it's available to me.”

I chose to gravitate towards the positive story number one, because it just feels better to think about something positive. Physically, you just feel better. But it also aligns you to this positive momentum. Even though it doesn't feel like you're moving towards your goal, it's pushing you. I think if you just are stuck in a negative space, it's gonna take you longer.

I would also make sure that if somebody's green banner came down, I would congratulate them. I would be rooting for them. Because in my mind, they're gonna be rooting for me very soon. So let me root for you because y'all are gonna be rooting for me.

Oh, another thing: teachers have got to start putting filters on their email. Because if you're constantly, every day all day, seeing, “No, no, no, sorry. Sorry. No, no, sorry, no, no!”–what is that going to do for your mentality?

So I created a filter on my email that sent every rejection notice to the trash. I don't even want to see it. It was easier for me to stay positive. Not having an answer was easier to digest than a constant, steady stream of “no.”

If you're curious one day, you might go and look in the trash and see what's there. But if it's in the trash, you know what it is. Do you really even wanna open it? Because if you're not looking for me, I'm not looking for you. I'm focusing on the people who want to talk to me.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.