Free · The First Conversation

Grow Beyond Teaching
FREE · FOR TEACHERS · ABOUT 10 MINUTES

Want to leave teaching without starting over?

The First Conversation is the one I'd have with you over coffee if I could. These are the questions I'd ask, in the order I'd ask them, and this is how I'd read your answers. You pick from short lists. You leave with your next 3 moves.

  • 1Which kind of work outside the classroom your experience already fits.
  • 2The job title to search tonight, and where to search it.
  • 3One line from your teaching, written in hiring language.

Get The First Conversation

Free. About 10 minutes. Runs in the AI tool you already have, so there's nothing to install.

Free · About 10 minutes · Start while you're still teaching

You'll get The First Conversation by email right away, a check-in a few days later, and occasional notes from Kim about leaving teaching well, including first word when The Exit Plan opens. Unsubscribe in one click, any time. Privacy policy.

WHERE TO START

Start with what you already know.

Maybe you've been searching for months. Maybe you haven't typed anything because you don't know what to type. Either way, you're starting from a blank page, and nobody does their best work from a blank page. You already know your own work better than anyone. Let me coach you through reading it the way the hiring side reads it, so you have something real to build on.

Your experience is the starting point. The committee you were asked to join, the family night you built and run every spring, the schedule you wrote when the district went full day with no plan. That's the experience these roles ask for, written in school words.
There are more doors than the three you've heard of. Most of us can name instructional design, curriculum, and maybe sales, and those happen to be the most crowded. There are dozens more that teachers rarely search for.
The hard part is knowing where to start. This gives you three moves you can make this week.
WHAT IT DOES

Here's what your teaching experience looks like to someone hiring.

Same teacher, same work. The only thing that changes is who the words are written for. I'll show you how to translate your experience so it stays yours and stays true, in the words the posting uses.

4th grade, team lead · 14 yearsFITS: Training and professional learning
HOW A TEACHER SAYS IT
  • I run our weekly PLC and do PD a few times a year, mostly on guided reading.
  • I made a new-teacher binder. Our principal hands it out every August.
  • After the winter diagnostic we regrouped all four classes for a 6-week fractions block.
TRANSLATED FOR A RÉSUMÉ
  • Designed and delivered guided-reading professional development for 40 staff, three sessions a year, [raising classroom implementation to X%]
  • Authored the new-hire onboarding guide issued to every incoming teacher; the district adopted it at 3 additional schools
  • Raised spring fractions scores across 95 learners by designing a 6-week, four-classroom intervention from diagnostic data
How you'd say it in the interview

"Tell me about this one: Raised spring fractions scores across 95 learners…"

S
After our winter diagnostic, most of 4th grade was stuck on the same fractions skills, across all four classrooms.
T
As grade-level lead, I needed a plan that didn't have four of us reteaching the same thing on our own.
A
I built a 6-week intervention block, regrouped 95 students by skill across the four classes, and made the grouping spreadsheet we tracked progress in.
R
Spring scores in that fractions domain went up. [By how much: the number to go find]
7th grade science · 9 yearsFITS: Instructional and learning design
HOW A TEACHER SAYS IT
  • The unit we had was basically a textbook PDF, so I rewrote it over the summer.
  • Kids could define food webs but couldn't use them, so I moved the lab earlier and added a mid-unit task.
  • The other 7th grade science teacher uses parts of it.
TRANSLATED FOR A RÉSUMÉ
  • Lifted mid-unit proficiency from half to three quarters of learners in one year by resequencing an ecology unit around assessment results
  • Rebuilt 3 of 6 core science units as Canvas courses with labs, knowledge checks and rubrics, serving 110 learners a year
  • Created lab and rubric materials adopted by a second science teacher for her sections
How you'd say it in the interview

"Tell me about this one: Lifted mid-unit proficiency from half to three quarters…"

S
My unit tests showed students could define a food web but couldn't use one.
T
I wanted them applying the idea, not memorizing it.
A
I moved the lab ahead of the vocabulary and added a mid-unit task where students predict what happens when one species is removed.
R
The next year, the share of students proficient on that task went from about half to about three quarters.
High school Spanish · 6 yearsFITS: Curriculum and assessment
HOW A TEACHER SAYS IT
  • Three of us wrote the common assessments over the summer when we moved to proficiency grading.
  • We made a shared rubric bank in Google Drive. The Spanish and French teachers all use it.
  • Kids could memorize but not respond on the spot, so I added a weekly conversation day.
TRANSLATED FOR A RÉSUMÉ
  • Co-developed 6 proficiency-based speaking and writing assessments for Spanish 1 and 2, supporting a department-wide grading redesign
  • Built a shared rubric library now used by all 5 world language teachers
  • Introduced a weekly unscripted speaking task for 130 learners after assessment data showed recall without transfer, [improving speaking scores by X]
How you'd say it in the interview

"Tell me about this one: Introduced a weekly unscripted speaking task for 130 learners…"

S
Our first common speaking assessment showed students could recite memorized phrases but couldn't respond on the spot.
T
The proficiency rubrics we'd just written asked for spontaneous speech, so that gap was mine to close.
A
I added a weekly unscripted conversation day for all 130 of my students and kept it the rest of the year.
R
[How the next speaking assessment compared: the result to go find]
Middle school special education, case manager · 12 yearsFITS: Program and case coordination
HOW A TEACHER SAYS IT
  • I have this tracking thing the regular teachers put stuff into so I can see how a kid's doing.
  • When we lost our aide mid-year I had to redo the whole schedule so the kids still got their minutes.
  • I run a lot of meetings with parents. It's a lot of people.
TRANSLATED FOR A RÉSUMÉ
  • Kept 100% of required service minutes for 14 learners across 3 grades by rebuilding the service schedule after a mid-year staffing loss
  • Built a Google Forms and Sheets progress-tracking system that 5 general-education teachers update weekly
  • Facilitate 30 case meetings a year with families, teachers and specialists
How you'd say it in the interview

"Tell me about this one: Kept 100% of required service minutes for 14 learners…"

S
We lost our classroom aide in the middle of the year.
T
I'm case manager for 14 students across three grades, and every one of them has required service minutes.
A
I rebuilt the whole service schedule around the staff we had left.
R
Every student kept their required minutes for the rest of the year.
6th to 8th grade math, building tech liaison · 11 yearsFITS: Learning technology
HOW A TEACHER SAYS IT
  • When anything breaks, people come to my room. I made a Google Form so they'd stop stopping me in the hallway.
  • I ran the Chromebook rollout when we went 1:1.
  • I showed pretty much every teacher how to use Google Classroom. Lots of one-on-ones.
TRANSLATED FOR A RÉSUMÉ
  • Deployed 320 Chromebooks in a 1:1 rollout, designing the device check-out process with the front office
  • Built a help-desk intake system that has handled 200 requests from 28 teachers in two years
  • Trained all 28 teachers on Google Classroom; wrote an AI planning guide distributed to all staff and led a follow-up session for 11
How you'd say it in the interview

"Tell me about this one: Deployed 320 Chromebooks in a 1:1 rollout…"

S
Our school went 1:1 with Chromebooks.
T
As the building tech liaison, I was responsible for getting 320 devices to students and keeping track of them.
A
I ran the rollout and set up the check-out process with the front office.
R
[How long it took, or how few devices went missing that year]
High school counselor · 8 yearsFITS: Academic advising and student services
HOW A TEACHER SAYS IT
  • I have a caseload of about 300 kids. Schedules, grades, the college stuff.
  • I run freshman orientation and the financial-aid night every year.
  • Teachers come to me when a kid's struggling and I put the plan together.
TRANSLATED FOR A RÉSUMÉ
  • Advise a caseload of 300 students on course planning, academic progress and postsecondary pathways
  • Plan and run new-student orientation and an annual financial-aid night for [# of] families
  • Coordinate intervention plans with teachers, families and outside providers for [# of] students a year
How you'd say it in the interview

"Tell me about this one: Advise a caseload of 300 students…"

S
I have a caseload of 300 students across four grades.
T
Every one of them needs a course plan, progress check-ins and a plan for after graduation.
A
[How you keep it organized: the schedule, the tracker, the meetings you run]
R
[What it produced: on-time graduation, applications filed, aid forms completed]

Composite teachers, not testimonials. Open any card's interview answer to see the story behind the bullet: situation, task, action, result. The conversation writes one line like this from your own work. Where a number is missing, it leaves a bracket so you know what to go find.

WHO WROTE THE QUESTIONS, AND WHY THEY WORK

I've been on both sides of this. I wrote every question; the AI just asks them in order.

I taught K-6. Five years out, I design learning for adults. For five years I've sat in on the interviews and prepped former teachers to deliver our train-the-trainer programs, both teacher-facing PD and technical training. It runs about once a year, so I've seen the same patterns over and over. I've heard the answer that gets a teacher through, and I've heard the same work described as "I served on a committee" by someone who didn't get through.

This isn't a personality quiz. It's a closer look at the work you've already done, read against the five skills that keep showing up in the jobs former teachers move into, and your own words are the evidence. If your work doesn't support a direction yet, it says so, and tells you what to build.

Data & DecisionsAgile Work EthicInstructional DesignTechnologyWorking with AI
"The teachers who get hired can point at something specific they did. The ones who don't did the same work and described it in school words."What I see in the interviews, year after year.
1 in 8of the postings I studied required a certificate. The rest didn't require one.
2 in 3asked for or weighed a portfolio. They wanted to see something you made.
40roles that hire former teachers, in the library The Exit Plan reads your work against.
HOW IT WORKS

Ten minutes, start to finish.

1Enter your email. You'll get The First Conversation right away, and the link stays in your inbox for later.
2Open an AI tool and paste it in. ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini, the free version, in a new chat. It asks the questions and you pick from short lists, so there's nothing to write from scratch.
3Copy what it gives you. Your next 3 moves, written out so you can come back to them.
WHO THIS IS FOR

For the teacher who doesn't see themselves retiring from the classroom.

THIS IS FOR YOU IF

  • ✓You're a few years in or more, and you're the one people hand things to.
  • ✓You still like the work. You're ready to build what comes after it, and you want to know where to start.
  • ✓You've barely used AI. The conversation does the work. You pick from lists.

NOT FOR

  • –Your first or second year. The evidence isn't there yet, and the conversation will say so rather than pretend.
  • –Anyone who wants a salary promise.
  • –Anyone who wants a list of every job a teacher could do.
WHO BUILT THIS

I'm Kim.

Kim Lohr

In college I almost switched out of education. I was afraid my skills would outgrow what I could do in a classroom. An advisor told me her own story: biology, to education technology in a school, to teaching in higher ed, with a stop along the way where she adjusted for her family. It reassured me that the career I loved didn't have to be the end of the road.

The whole time I taught, I never saw myself retiring from it. When I got to the point where I really did want to leave, it wasn't clear which way to go. Everywhere I looked pointed in only a few directions. I researched the jobs I was interested in, found the gaps myself, and learned what I needed to build a résumé and a portfolio. People kept asking me where I even started, so I wrote it down.

Kim Lohr · teacher at heart, loving life beyond the classroom
Do I need paid ChatGPT?

No. A free account in ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini works. Paste the conversation into a new chat and send it.

Do I need to know how to use AI?

No. It asks the questions, and you pick from lists. If it starts complimenting you or giving advice, type TIMEOUT.

How long does it take?

About ten minutes.

Where does what I type go?

Into your own AI account, the same as anything else you type there. I never see your conversation. Don't paste student names, account details, or anything confidential.

What emails will I get?

The link right away, a check-in a few days later, one honest note from me about what leaving was like, and first word when The Exit Plan opens to the founding group. You can leave the list any time.

COMING NEXT · THE EXIT PLAN

You don't have to figure out your whole next career today.

You just need somewhere to start. Spend about ten minutes on the work you've already done and leave with a job title to search, one line of your experience in posting words, and three moves you can make while you're still teaching. You don't have to quit, and you don't have to start over.

Get The First Conversation

You'll get The First Conversation by email right away, a check-in a few days later, and occasional notes from Kim, including when The Exit Plan opens. Unsubscribe any time. Privacy policy.

You've already done more of this work than you think.

These are the questions I'd ask you if we could sit down together in the faculty room. Twenty minutes, one prompt, and a written list of everything you've already done.

Free. Works in ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, or Claude.

I'm Kim. I taught K-6, sat on the curriculum committee, and spent years asking a friend in instructional design what she actually did all day. Now I build training for teachers and administrators across the country, and I've interviewed former teachers for roles on my team.