Kirah taught high school English in southeastern Virginia. She ran an after-school club, taught AP courses, and was named teacher of the year. She was also done. Three things pushed her out: safety, stress, and pay. After the pandemic, the school she loved changed. The teacher who kept an open-door policy, with extra supplies and snacks on hand for students who needed them, ended up teaching with her door shut because of what was happening in the halls. And on pay, she could see her whole financial future on a printed salary scale, and the only way up led into administration, which she didn't want.
The thing that cracked the door open was noticing what she'd already pulled off. During virtual teaching she had mastered a pile of new software in months, because her students needed her to.
She almost just transferred schools. She was talking to a former principal about it. Then a recently transitioned teacher on TikTok, lit up about her new instructional design job, made her stop scrolling. She researched the field, told a coworker she was serious about it, and a week later that coworker sent her Jill's free workshop.
Day one humbled her. She walked in confident she could rebrand her resume and walk into the field, and heard Jill say that so many hopeful teachers think they can slap a new job title on their resume and land their dream job, and that it's not that simple.
"I just remember deflating. But it made me realize transitioning meant more than acquiring a new job. It meant acquiring a new skill set."
She gathered the funds and joined.
Kirah calls herself a recovering perfectionist, and she moved at her own pace, working through the program while still teaching, including through her last summer in the classroom. Every new project sent her into what AIDA calls the learning pit: this looks easy, this is impossible, I think I can, I did it. Her success advisor kept her honest, once sending her a quote comparing being busy to a rocking horse: moving, but not going anywhere.
"I look back and think, wow. I cannot believe I was able to acquire this skill set in such a short period of time."
By around month six she felt job-ready, with a portfolio to prove it.
Her search was short and focused: 21 applications over six weeks, about 15 hours a week of effort. The role came through LinkedIn. Using what she learned in AIDA's salary negotiation sessions, she asked the company to bring the base up in line with market rates, without ever naming a number. They came up.
The offer came in October: Instructional Designer at Premier Research, a global company, fully remote, at a 53% increase over her teaching salary.
In week two, a family emergency came up. Her boss moved their meeting and told her to just go. When she half-jokingly asked whether she could work from the Bahamas for a month or two, the answer came back: sure, up to 180 days with the right documents. She's a caretaker for her grandmother, and for the first time that time together isn't running on fumes at the end of a depleted day. The move she'd shelved because of cost is back on the calendar. No more countdowns to breaks, no more Sunday scaries. She's since moved on to GovCIO, where she's a Technical Instructional Developer.
"I feel like in a lot of ways I've been able to regain my personality by being in a different industry."