There's that moment in Goodfellas when Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) says, "As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster."
The movie makes it look inevitable—like some people are just born knowing exactly what they're supposed to do.
Schools buy into the same (gangsta) mythology: real teachers come straight from education programs, bright-eyed at 22, ready to save the world with their laminated hall passes.
Sometimes it just takes longer to get there. Jason Miller spent 20 years as general counsel before arriving at what he was supposed to do all along—teaching kindergarteners to read.
Here’s what’s on the dashboard this week:
Today’s Deep Dive: Career-switchers = great teachers
Reading Rainbow: Parents ruin math + kids bet on hoops
From Our Desk: Catch us on the road
Watch of the Week: What Jacob Hill and his cardigans teach us
Retired career professionals make great teachers
Jason Miller knows something most principals haven't figured out yet: 5-year-olds are basically tiny lawyers with less impulse control.
At 50, after two decades as general counsel, Jason now teaches students at a small public school in Honolulu, Hawaii. He writes classroom rules the way he wrote contracts, as in closing loopholes before students find them. (Trust us, kids are creative.)
But professional skills aren’t what makes “career-switchers” like Jason valuable. Talk to them a little, and you’ll see it’s because they chose teaching after already succeeding at something else.
Here's what that choice brings: Years of dealing with humans who push every boundary. Former project managers already know how to wrangle chaos. Social workers can spot a meltdown three moves ahead.
If you've managed adults professionally, kindergarteners feel familiar—just shorter and more honest about their feelings.
Career-switchers like Jason also bring the organizational backbone schools are missing. Engineers see patterns. Accountants obsess over tracking progress. Marketing folks can explain complex ideas in ways people actually understand. All of that matters when you're managing 25 students at different skill levels.
The Crème de la crème: Second-career teachers are not worried about climbing ladders or proving themselves. That creates freedom most early-career teachers don't have. The freedom to speak up in faculty meetings, advocate for students, and take risks without worrying it'll tank their entire career, because teaching isn't their entire identity. Financial stability buys honesty—and schools need more of both.
The teacher shortage isn't complicated. Schools need people who can manage boundary-testing humans, build systems, and stay calm under pressure. Career-switchers have exactly those skills.
Districts just need to stop screening them out for having them.
Our extended playbook shows you how.
Your Kid Hates Math Because You Do: Everyone can learn math, but when movies make it look effortless for a select few and parents say "I'm just not a math person" at every parent-teacher conference, kids internalize that math is for other people. A Stanford professor found that targeting students' beliefs about whether intelligence is changeable led to students feeling more positive about math and scoring significantly higher on assessments. So, get parents to tell their kids they can get better at math instead of shrugging and saying they were bad at it too!
Belonging Beats Behavior Plans: Three principals nominated for national awards use belonging, mentorship, and creative incentives to boost attendance instead of just adding more rules to the handbook. One assistant principal in Delaware plays a key role in brokering resolutions when parents and teachers disagree about student discipline, because apparently "just making kids feel like they actually belong here" works better than another assembly about hall passes.
Poetry Isn't Dead, We're Just Teaching It Wrong: Older students resist poetry because we've convinced them it's supposed to be boring and inaccessible (like brussels sprouts but with more iambic pentameter). Teachers who actually like poetry and show students how it's everywhere (music, spoken word, TikTok captions that hit different at 2am) get students writing poems that don't suck. The trick is showing kids that poetry already exists in their world instead of treating it like a relic from 1850 that only English teachers understand.
March Madness Meets Math Class: During March Madness, schools are figuring out how to talk to students about gambling—especially since 36% of boys ages 11 to 17 gambled in the previous year. Health classes could cover gambling risks, math classes could tackle probability, and one Massachusetts researcher is developing curriculum with a "buffet" philosophy: programs for parents, teachers, and students. Basically, if your students are betting on basketball brackets, at least teach them why the house always wins.
Our CEO Mike Vilardo recently sat down with Adam Ewing of Total Package Hockey Academy to talk about how athletes really train.
Ever wondered what it’s like using Subject for the first time? Check out the experience of one of our teacher friends at Surfside Academy.
And as always, we’re hitting the road! Reach out to [email protected] if you’ll be at any of these conferences:
GSSA Spring Bootstrap Conference in Savannah, GA, April 15-16
OAASFEP 2026 Federal Programs Spring Conference in Columbus, OH, April 15-17
TexasTech and Learning (Region 4) in Houston, TX, April 17
RTM, NSF in St. Louis, MO, April 19-21,
WABE 2026 Annual Conference in Yakima, WA, April 23-26
K12 Collaborative, Spring Summit 2026 in Naperville, IL, April 29
MAEO Spring Conference in Traverse City, MI, April 29-May 1
CCEA Plus in Los Angeles, CA, April 30-May 3
Our pick of the week: Abbott Elementary
Why We’re Obsessed: This mockumentary nails what teaching actually feels like: the budget cuts, the absurd admin requests, the moments that make you remember why you showed up. Quinta Brunson created a show that teachers watch and think "this is uncomfortably accurate" while everyone else thinks it's comedy. Jacob Hill also teaches middle school history with the earnest energy of someone who owns multiple cardigans.
Recommended lesson integration:
Classroom Management: Watch Janine's techniques fail spectacularly, then have students design their own classroom rules that actually work. Let’s hope theirs are better than Janine’s!
Budget Math: Study the school's budget crisis as a real-world problem: if Abbott Elementary gets $1,000 for supplies and needs to cover 12 classrooms, how does Principal Coleman make it work? (Well… she doesn't, but the math is solid.)
Career Pathways: Use Gregory's journey from substitute to full-time teacher to discuss career changes and professional growth, because watching someone figure out they're good at something mid-career hits different in your twenties versus your forties.
Education Policy Themes: Track recurring themes across episodes (underfunding, teacher retention, parent engagement) and connect them to actual policy debates. Suddenly Janine's optimism isn't just sweet. A cry for help, maybe? Fine, a “coping mechanism.”
Civics & Public Funding: Examine how public school funding works using Abbott as a case study, then have students propose actual policy solutions that wouldn't get them laughed out of a school board meeting.
Media & Social Commentary: Deconstruct how the show uses mockumentary format to make social commentary about education policy without feeling preachy. We love that it's satire with a teacher's lounge coffee ring on it.
Thank you for joining us for another edition of On The Subject. We’ll see you again in a week, with more stories from the hallways.
The Subject Team
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