Teachers → C-Suites (it's easier than you think)

You know those high-pressure sales scenes in Glengarry Glen Ross where executives bark about "Always Be Closing"?

Well, kindergarten teachers have been doing the ABCs better than any boardroom. But we just call it "Always Be Connecting."

Meet Ana Romero—former kindergarten Spanish immersion teacher who managed 30 five-year-olds (and their over-protective parents) before becoming our Chief of Staff at Subject. 

And she has a message you’ll want to put that red pen down and stop grading papers for: Teaching 5-year-olds is actually harder than closing million-dollar deals.

It’s true.

Teachers already have C-suite skills. They just need someone to translate their classroom superpowers into corporate-speak. And she’s going to tell you how she did it herself.

Want to learn how managing snack time prepares you for managing board meetings?

More on that below.

Here’s what’s on the dashboard this week: 

So you're a teacher who manages 30 students daily, their helicopter parents, and district administrators who haven't seen a classroom since the Clinton administration. 

Cool. 

Now here’s something you need to know: You're likely already more qualified for an executive role than an MBA grad.

Don't believe us? Ask Ana Romero, who went from teaching Spanish to kindergarteners to becoming our chief of staff. "It's such a different world," Romero admits she first thought. 

Then she realized that it might be a different world, but it required the same skills. 

Except these are skills she—and other teachers—mastered to an exponentially higher degree while most executives spend decades acquiring.

Managing five-year-olds and managing adults requires identical core competencies. Both demand rapid assessment, strategic intervention, and constant calibration toward larger objectives. 

The only difference is children are actually harder! 

Children are your harshest critics and most honest audience. Five-year-olds won't sit through bad content. A teacher will know exactly when they've lost them. 

That’s what makes them experts at reading rooms. They know when to pivot and keep them engaged, which are the valuable quick-thinking skills that translate directly to reading executive rooms.

They master backwards planning, breaking annual objectives into daily executable tasks. They learn to pivot seamlessly when planned approaches fail, developing contingency strategies on the fly.

These are things that MBA grads learn in the classroom, but this is something you’ve excelled at for years. Let alone, in a chaotic (and probably sticky) environment.

All you need is a skills translation guide from classroom to C-suite—and Romero’s got you covered:

Look, you're not preparing for executive roles. You've been doing executive work with worse resources, harder constraints, and people who eat glue.

You're overqualified. It’s time you start believing it.

Read Romero’s extended teacher to C-suite playbook here.

Why We’re Obsessed: Because nothing says "educational metaphor" like teenagers fighting demons with synchronized dance moves. (If that won’t grab your students’ attention, then TikTok has really doomed us all.) Plus, it's basically what teaching feels like on standardized testing week.

Recommended lesson integration:

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

Want to learn more about our curriculum offerings? Contact us today.

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