From Classroom to Consultant: No Straight Line Required
What happens when you stop waiting for permission to build a different kind of career?
For years, Abigail Steel assumed there must be an official route from classroom teacher to education consultant. A qualification. A process. Someone, somewhere, who would eventually tell her she was ready.
There wasn't.
Instead, her career grew sideways: through teaching, supply work, training, writing, publishing, school improvement, international projects, consultancy and more than a few unexpected detours.
Along the way there were difficult schools, wonderful schools, cancelled courses, long drives, publishing deadlines, professional mistakes, strange opportunities and one law degree that nearly took her in a completely different direction.
From Classroom to Consultant: No Straight Line Required is not a ten-step plan for leaving teaching. Nor is it a story about escaping education.
It is an honest, funny and practical account of what can happen when you begin to notice the skills you already have, follow opportunities before you feel completely ready and allow your career to become something less conventional.
Abigail shares what she learned about:
- building a portfolio career without throwing away financial security
- turning classroom expertise into training, consultancy and publishing work
- finding opportunities without becoming a relentless self-promoter
- setting fees and understanding what your time is really worth
- creating work that is not tied entirely to the next available day
- protecting your professional reputation and independence
- recognising when a different school may be the answer - not a different profession
- choosing work more carefully once success starts to cost too much
Above all, this is a book for teachers who have ever wondered, What else could I do with what I already know?
You do not need a perfect career plan.
You may simply need to follow the next interesting thing.
No straight line required.
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