What career change would you suggest for me?

[delilabell]

I'm 40 years old and I don't known if it's this or what but I'm feeling very restless in my job.
I have a degree in history , I worked in heritage for 10 years, worked for a children's charity for 5 years alongside it.
I then moved to a secondary school where I worked as an unqualified teacher for 10 years. I then moved to my current job where I'm a special needs Ta.
I love my job but there is nowhere else to go in the school. I also have looked at working with adults with learning difficulties but pay looks like its often oer hour and on and off rather than a set wage.
So if you were me what would you look at doing?

I would do a PGCE and be a special school teacher 😊.

Perhaps you have transferable skills for a career in HR? Pay tends to be good.

Projects/transformation work in the public or third sector

Me too.

Teaching English as a Foreign/Second Language?

Or this I would do a PGCE and be a special school teacher .

I've been put off being a teacher seeing all the stress its put my colleagues under, that's part of the reason I left being a teacher. Sorry I should have explained this at the beginning.

Hey - it’s been a few weeks since you posted this so might not be relevant any more!

I’m a heritage / charity person and know how niche a sector it is so thought I’d dive in and offer you my two cents worth :)

Ive worked across and adjacent to the sector and in many guises for 20+ years. But health warning - I don’t know much about teaching though! Started out in fine art conservation, moved into museum / heritage conservation, then UCL masters in sustainable heritage, part of project teams delivering large capital projects in heritage sector, had a consultancy specialising in social impact & hard to teach audiences within nature, heritage, charities for the bulk of this time. Did the consulting for 12+ yrs and am now working for a large national charity delivering nature and wellbeing solutions to communities and schools UK-wide. It’s mainly a social impact role which I bloody love!

anyway I’m rambling, but if you are looking for something heritage / culture / charity / natural heritage / arts / education or museums related there are a variety of avenues you can explore;

• working within an education / learning / schools team in any of the above sectors. Most charities and organisations now have dedicated learning / school teams and tend to hire from a wide variety of backgrounds and prior experience. They LOVE anyone who has spent more than five minutes in a classroom and doesn’t seem to matter if you are a qualified teacher or not.
• look at the jobs on offer in larger organisations who are more likely to have these sorts of teams- national trust, heritage England, natural England, wildlife trusts, local authorities, museum networks etc. basically any large charity / cultural org should have these.
• consider getting experience in freelance / consultancy projects. Loads of little tenders about seeking freelance heritage education / learning support. Or find a consultant and ask for a short placement / shadowing position. I used to do this a lot in my consultancy.
• community outreach jobs / contracts in the heritage / culture / nature / charity sectors.
• Both learning and outreach roles are often found in national lottery funded projects which can help with your Google hunting.
• good job websites - environment job, escape the city, the arts council job page, GEM (education in museums group), charityjob, guardian heritage and charities sections, evaluation society, ethicaljobs.com plus local authority websites or gov funded museums.

this might all be me going off tangent but hope you find something helpful. any questions at all - pls just ask!

x