Leaving Teaching: How I Turned My Teaching Skills Into a Creative Business

Leaving teaching wasn't something I'd always planned to do. I'd trained as a primary school teacher, spent years working in schools and, for a long time, that was what I thought I'd always do.

And there were lots of things I loved about it. I loved teaching. I loved coming up with ideas, explaining things in different ways and watching the moment when someone suddenly realised, "Oh! I can do this."

What I struggled with was everything that came with it. The workload, the lack of flexibility and the feeling that somebody else always had control over my time. I remember counting down to weekends and school holidays and feeling like there had to be another way to work.

When I became a mum, that feeling became even stronger. I wanted to be able to go to sports days and assemblies. I wanted to be able to cook dinner without thinking about the work I still needed to do that evening. I wanted more freedom over my time and the ability to build work around my life rather than constantly trying to fit my life around work.

But leaving teaching also felt scary.

What can you actually do after leaving teaching?

I think this is one of the hardest questions when you've spent years working in education. Teaching becomes such a big part of your identity that it can be difficult to see what else you're qualified to do.

I also had two degrees and had spent years training and working as a teacher. There was definitely a part of me that wondered what people would think if I walked away from all of that. And then I ended up teaching people how to knit with their arms. I'm not sure that was the career path anyone had imagined for me. At first, I felt slightly embarrassed about it. I worried about people I knew finding me on social media and wondering what on earth I was doing.

But it turned out to be one of the best things I could have done.

I left teaching, but I never really stopped teaching

My creative business started with arm knitting. What began as something I enjoyed doing grew into creative workshops, and those workshops eventually became a much bigger business than I'd ever expected. I've since taught thousands of people, run workshops in venues across the country and built an online audience of hundreds of thousands of people. And somewhere along the way, I realised something quite important.

I hadn't actually left teaching behind at all.

I was still planning lessons (although now they were workshops), I was still breaking complicated things into simple steps and I was still managing groups of people with completely different levels of confidence and experience. I was still answering questions, adapting what I was doing and encouraging the person convinced they were "rubbish at this" not to give up. I was using the skills I'd developed as a teacher every single day and I was just using them somewhere other than a classroom.

Teachers already have brilliant skills for running workshops

If you're a teacher thinking about leaving teaching, it's very easy to underestimate how transferable your skills are. Running a good creative workshop requires you to be able to explain things clearly, plan an experience, manage a group, adapt when something isn't working and make people feel comfortable enough to have a go.

Sound familiar? Teachers do these things every day.

You also know that people learn differently. You can spot when someone needs a bit more help without embarrassing them. You know how to change your explanation when someone doesn't understand the first one. Those skills are incredibly valuable outside a school.

What could you teach outside the classroom?

This is the question I'd encourage you to think about.

Not:

What other job could I do?

But:

What do I already know how to do that I'd genuinely enjoy teaching someone else?

Maybe you paint or bake. Maybe you're brilliant at photography, floristry, calligraphy, sewing, pottery or jewellery making. Perhaps there's something you've always thought of as "just a hobby" because it doesn't feel serious enough to become your job.

I understand that feeling more than you might think. I went from teaching in a primary school to teaching adults how to knit blankets using their arms. It sounded slightly ridiculous to me too. Until it worked.

Can you make money running creative workshops?

Yes, creative workshops can become a genuine source of income but I don't think it's helpful to pretend it's as simple as quitting your teaching job, putting a workshop on Instagram and replacing your salary overnight.

It takes time to work out your pricing, find good venues, build relationships, learn how to market your workshops and understand what your customers actually want. I made plenty of mistakes while figuring all of that out but workshops can also be something you experiment with before making any huge decisions.

You could start with one workshop. See whether you enjoy it. See whether people book. Learn from it and then decide whether you'd like to do another.

You don't need to have your entire new career mapped out before you begin.

Leaving teaching gave me something I really valued: freedom

Self-employment isn't perfect. There are months when you earn more and months when you earn less. There's no guaranteed salary arriving at the end of every month and running your own business comes with its own stresses. But for me, the trade-off has been worth it. I have much more control over my time.

I can be at sports days and assemblies. I can walk the dog in the middle of the day. I can decide when I work and, importantly, when I don't. There's also no longer someone else deciding how much I can earn in an hour, a month or a year.

That freedom was what I'd been looking for.

You don't have to know what's next

If you're thinking about leaving teaching, you don't need to have a perfect five-year plan and you definitely don't need to hand in your notice tomorrow.

Start by getting curious. Think about what you love about teaching and what you don't. Think about the skills you already have and ask yourself a question I now ask people I mentor all the time:

What actually brings you joy?

For me, the answer was still teaching. I just needed to find a different way to do it.

Thinking about running creative workshops?

If reading this has made you wonder whether you could turn your own creative skills into workshops, I've written a guide to How to Start Running Creative Workshops that will help you think through your first steps. And if you've got an idea going round in your head and you'd rather talk it through with someone who's been there, you can also book a free Virtual Cuppa with me. It's simply a 15-minute conversation about your ideas, where you're feeling stuck and what you might do next.