Elyse didn't start in a classroom. She started with a social work degree, answering crisis calls at a children's home in Texas, where she learned what good education does for people. Teaching looked like the sustainable version of that for her family, so she made the switch. Eight years of elementary school later, the math had stopped working: work that never stayed at school, dreams about her students, five weeks of professional development every "summer off."
By year three she knew. It still took five more years to leave, because leaving isn't simple when you're a mom teaching in the school your daughter attends.
She did the responsible thing first: a master's degree in instructional design, earned while teaching through COVID. Then she read actual job descriptions and found out what it hadn't given her.
She planned to close the gaps herself over a year. Then came the phone call, the day before her contract started, telling her she was being moved to a new grade level.
"In that moment, I was done. I realized that in the position I was in, I was never going to get where I wanted to go."
She researched programs the way teachers research everything, and picked AIDA to supply the piece the degree hadn't: the applied middle, portfolio included.
AIDA plus the master's turned out to be the full package: theory from one, portfolio, tools, and job-search craft from the other. When someone later asked whether she'd recommend her path, her honest answer was that the degree wasn't pointless, but if she were choosing today, "I would save the money on a master's degree and just go with the Academy."
August 18: first application. September 18: first day on the job. In between, 21 applications and the networking play she'd learned: after applying, she messaged the hiring manager on LinkedIn directly, with her portfolio, website, and resume linked so he could click whichever he wanted. He responded within an hour. She interviewed the next day, three rounds in total.
Her boss later told her what that looked like from his side: 160 applications in two days, mostly transitioning teachers, very few with portfolios, and generic messages he could tell were copy-pasted.
Elyse is an instructional designer at SVI World, working from home about 97% of the time in Dallas/Fort Worth. Because the company serves 20 to 30 clients at once, her work spans airlines, food brands, clothing brands, and universities. One training she built reaches about 1,500 learners every three months. An eLearning she designed will reach 130,000 employees at a single company.
"I got to impact this many kids. Every kid matters, but every adult matters too. It's just as fulfilling. It's just different."
The bigger change is at home. She closes the laptop at the end of the day and plays with her kids. Her friends tell her she looks different.
"That's because I feel different. There aren't words to express how worth it this has been, for me, for my husband, for my children."