Hosted by Concord Consortium
This fall, we will be featuring blog posts written by PhD students who participated in Career Services’ Career Exploration Initiative (CEI), a program that helps doctoral candidates explore their career interests through networking opportunities with advanced degree professionals. Click here to learn more about CEI.
I had a great time learning about career opportunities in education through my host, Kate Miller. Kate was extremely helpful in answering all questions that I had about different role titles, day-to-day tasks, application processes, and career progressions. Since Kate had worked in high school education, museum education, and an ed tech company, she had a lot of helpful insights and stories about the differences between these spaces. We met every 2-3 weeks and usually had a different topic to discuss each time. She also helped set up an informational interview with a colleague working on the developer side in ed tech.
I learned about the backgrounds scouted for different roles (especially ed tech) and realized that the most reasonable entry point into education roles would be going the route of starting as a high school educator. I learned about the certification requirements for public schools in different states and the pros and cons of public vs charter vs private schools as well as big vs small schools. I learned that after completing certification, many high school educators nourish their love for their subject expertise through a wide array of extracurricular programs that connect them with exceptional high schoolers.
If I do choose to go this route next fall, I will be sure to lean on Kate’s advice on the application process. She helped me learn about subject-specific job boards, how to market oneself as a multi-subject educator, and about the demo class interview. The CEI program helped me learn a lot about a specific set of career paths, and I recommend it to any PhD student that is trying to gauge or scope out careers outside of academia. Â
