What Jobs in Education Are Not Teaching? Roles You May Not Know About
Last Tuesday, I showed up 20 minutes early for my 10-year-old’s IEP meeting at our neighborhood elementary, and got turned around in the new wing by the gym. I poked my head into a room labeled “Student Support Services” expecting to find a water fountain, and found three people hunched over a folding table sorting through brand-new graphic novels, laughing about how one of them had just talked a 7-year-old down from a meltdown over a broken blue crayon that morning. I apologized for intruding, and one of them waved me in and offered me a lukewarm coffee from the dented pot they had brewing on the counter. When I asked what they all did at the school, none of them said “classroom teacher.”
That’s when it hit me: for all the time I spend at the school as a parent, I could only ever name two types of education jobs—teacher and principal. That’s it. The rest of the staff just sort of blended into the background, people I waved to in the hallway but never stopped to ask what they actually did all day.
Mia, the woman who poured me the coffee, is the school’s occupational therapist. She works with 28 kids this year, split across three elementary schools in our district. Some of her students struggle with fine motor skills—learning to hold a pencil, tie their shoes, cut with scissors. Others need sensory support: she keeps a bin of fidget toys, a weighted bean bag chair, and noise-canceling headphones for kids who get overstimulated by loud lunch rooms or chaotic recess. She doesn’t grade papers, doesn’t write lesson plans for 25 kids every night. Half her day is spent sitting in classrooms observing how kids interact with their work, and the other half is playing board games or building with blocks in her office to build the skills they need to keep up in class.
Next to her was Javi, a behavioral interventionist. I’d never heard that job title before. He works one-on-one with 12 kids who have personalized behavior plans, checking in with each for five minutes every morning to talk through one small goal for the day—like “stay in math class for the whole period” or “use words instead of walking away when you’re mad.” He sits in on classes when a kid needs extra support, meets with parents once a month to adjust plans, and spends a lot of his recess time playing four-square or basketball with kids who need a calm, consistent adult to hang out with. He told me most people assume his job is just punishing kids for acting out, but 80% of his work is celebrating small wins—high-fiving a kid who made it through the whole day without a detention, sending a quick note home to parents to brag about a good day.
Lila, the third person at the table, is our district’s family engagement coordinator. Most parents I know don’t even know this job exists. Her whole job is connecting families to resources the school has that most people don’t know about. She organizes the free weekend food bags that go home to 70 families every Friday, translates all report cards and event flyers into three different languages for our diverse district, and runs monthly parent coffees where people can ask specific questions—like how to handle homework fights at home, or how to sign your kid up for free or reduced lunch. She gets 10 to 15 calls a week from parents who don’t know who else to ask for help, she said, and most of the time she can point them in the right direction faster than anyone else.
After that IEP meeting, I started walking around the school and counting all the other non-teaching education jobs I pass every time I’m there. There’s the school nurse, who does more than put band-aids on scraped knees—she manages daily asthma treatments, does vision and hearing screenings that catch issues before they affect learning, and listens to kids who come in upset because of fights at home or bullying at recess. There’s the instructional coach, who works with new and experienced teachers to plan lessons, troubleshoot tricky classroom dynamics, and try new teaching strategies without having to add extra work to their already full plates. There’s the school librarian, who now teaches kids how to spot false information online, helps teachers find free resources for science projects, and runs after-school book clubs for kids who love graphic novels. There’s after-school program directors, curriculum designers who write the lessons teachers use, college admissions counselors, speech language pathologists, and special education advocates who work with families through the IEP process.
This matters, I think, for two groups of people. First, if you’re someone who loves kids and likes the idea of working in education, but doesn’t want the daily grind of leading a classroom of 25 or 30 kids every day, there are so many options other than being a teacher. My sister has been thinking about a career change for a year—she loves working with kids, but hates the idea of grading papers every night and managing all the administrative work that comes with modern classroom teaching. I sent her a list of the roles I learned about that day, and she reached out to Javi to ask if she could shadow him for a few hours.
Second, if you’re a parent, knowing these jobs exist can help you get support for your kid faster. If your kid comes home every night frustrated because they can’t hold their pencil right, you don’t have to just struggle through it alone—you can reach out to the school OT to ask for an evaluation. If your kid is acting out in class and you can’t figure out why, the behavioral interventionist is there to work with you, not just punish your kid. If you need help accessing food or other resources for your family, the family engagement coordinator is exactly who you should call.
Last weekend, my sister finished her shadow shift and came over for dinner. She said it was nothing like she expected—half the time Javi was just hanging out with kids, listening to them talk about their video games and their dogs. She’s still not 100% sure this is the path she’ll take, but she’s signed up for an introductory course at the local community college this fall.
I still get lost in that new wing sometimes when I’m at the school. I still see people coming in and out of that Student Support Services room, all doing work that most of us never think twice about. It’s easy to only see the teachers standing at the front of the classrooms when you drop your kid off at school. But the whole system runs on all these other people, doing work that fits all kinds of different skills and interests. If you’ve ever thought about working in education but don’t want to lead a class every day, one of these roles might fit you better than you think.
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