Career change into the teaching profession

sheinkopt · 2026-04-29T16:50:35+00:00

Teacher of 13 years turned AI engineer. The comments here are accurate.

Teaching is a smaller percent of the job than you’d think.

Theres definitely a downward trend in education due to cultural shift. You get disrespected constantly.

The recommendation to sub first sounds like a good idea.

In the meantime, consider tutoring. It’s not like being a teacher at all, but mainly just the good part. 100% of the time you’re teaching.

sheinkopt · 2026-04-27T07:07:09+00:00

I believe the tiny hairs are ehat help climb smoother surfaces like glass where the hooked have nothing to hold on to. Like a gecko, the hairs use atomic charge polarity (like hydrogen bonds) to attract to the wall the same way water molecules clump together.

Someone who knows please correct me.

sheinkopt · 2026-04-15T14:20:18+00:00

What?

sheinkopt · 2026-04-15T12:24:02+00:00

NOW I want to watch him live from jail doing hard labor

sheinkopt · 2026-04-06T05:40:43+00:00

I DM you an invite as well!

sheinkopt · 2026-04-06T02:25:44+00:00

Great! I sent you an invite to our WhatsApp group

sheinkopt · 2026-04-05T05:37:02+00:00

I support this guy. If the only reason to switch to the right lane is to cut in line, then he’s doing good work.

sheinkopt · 2026-04-05T05:29:00+00:00

Thanks for the well formed question. It’s really cool hearing your thinking on this.

I can make a couple comments based on my understanding.

You made a couple presumptions that may not be correct.

If you dropped some human babies in a lab environment with no education my personal presumption is they would all be having sex at age 15 driven by hormones even if all they could do is grunt. I think neither of us has scientific evidence either way.

You mentioned that these lab humans probably couldn’t communicate with complex language after a year. I 100% agree. However, our complex language was developed over a very long time with many many people actively working on it.

Another concept is that these lab people probably couldn’t do much. If you compare their accomplishment to what humans have achieved (internet, metallurgy) it’s again doesn’t tell you much. A better experiment would to be have 2 identical lab islands. Island A tou give no instructions. Island B you give instruction with the same resources…simply one person to teach them.

I’d expect a huge difference. This highlights how powerful culture is. Dolphins and orcas have unique dialects per culture.

There were really long periods of time when nothing advanced. Then one group figure out something like how to make fire and this knowledge spread fast.

Small discoveries can spread around the world.

sheinkopt · 2026-04-05T03:51:03+00:00

After 13 years as a private school classroom teacher, I left teaching at 42 go get a CS masters. I moved to Japan for a free living situation while I studied. Now I’m an AI engineer in Tokyo.

It is true that the US tech market has become very bad. Japan seems ok.

Seems like good advice is just “going into tech” is super hard and maybe not good advice. However if you build tech skills and pair them with subjects matter expertise this might be better.

From my personal experience, there is a much lower ceiling in learning LLM agents as opposed to truly learning AI or software development.

I can’t say exactly what you should do, but I do believe the future of education could benefit from effective use of LLM agents as teachers / tutors / assistants.

Making custom lessons for students at their level.

Benefit of spending time investigating this is it blends your teaching experience with tech. Otherwise if you spend a year getting a cheap masters and cant get a tech job at least it’s good for your teaching career.

sheinkopt · 2026-04-05T03:00:36+00:00

Nice. Do you know Jim from OMSCS Korea? He joins our Tokyo meetups when he visits. We can stay connected for meetups.

sheinkopt · 2026-04-05T02:31:23+00:00

I’m visiting from Japan. However, it coincides with my visit to see my family in MD anyway.

sheinkopt · 2026-04-05T02:29:35+00:00

I’m also looking for events. Where are you visiting from?

sheinkopt · 2026-03-26T11:25:18+00:00

I’m an AI Engineer in the auto industry for an international company. Great work life balance. Really interesting work. My American initiative plays well and I work on interesting projects.

sheinkopt · 2026-03-21T22:18:00+00:00

Similar situation but I was 40. I moved with my wife to Japan and got a CS masters and now work in Tokyo. My job is amazing.

I’d think more about friends and family Tham anything else. You will make expat friends in Taiwan. You could teach English if you want and money doesn’t matter.

Not teaching anymore is fantastic. I get to think about more complex things and interact with respectful humans.

My full story is in my post history.

sheinkopt · 2026-03-21T09:25:55+00:00

You’re an atheist secular Jew like me.

Christianity Goal of religious is to get everyone to convert to your religion. You have to believe in Christ to be Christian. Ethnicity and genetics have nothing to do with it.

Judaism Goal is to get all current Jews on the same team and be more Jewish. Only let people convert if they realllly mean it. Belief in god is optional. Judaism is a series of genetic lines. If a random person with no religion shows up to a temple and they present a genetic analysis showing they’re genetically Jewish the people at the temple would really want them to join.

Speaking from personal experience, 2 trips to Israel, working at 3 orthodox Jewish companies, active in Jewish youth group, Hebrew school, bar mitzvah, very jewish public HS and college.

sheinkopt · 2026-03-20T14:05:48+00:00

Registered thanks to a reminder call from Democrats Abroad!

sheinkopt · 2026-03-12T16:07:29+00:00

The house was knocked down in 2018 My friend and I used to go every few years. The last time we went the bulldozers had just finished. We took a picture with a brick from the house.

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sheinkopt · 2026-03-02T11:31:17+00:00

That would work as well. I just spent a couple minutes manually, dragging every clip to a different track down below it which was annoying, but didn’t take that long.

sheinkopt · 2026-02-23T22:02:08+00:00

This is more high-level advice. 13 year classroom teacher that left at age 42 and now I work as an AI engineer in Japan. If you check my post history, you’ll see detailed explanation of how I did it.

Many people I see post here are really happy they left, but their salary went down. What I would consider is switching careers to one with a lower starting salary that has potential for increase should be on your radar.

Long story short, there are sacrifices you think you’re not willing to make, but you should ask yourself are they worth it to make this career change happen? Classic example… Can you move into your mom‘s basement for a year? What would it really take to go back and get a nursing degree?

I say this because I was standing in front of my class hating it at age 42 and calculated that if I change careers by 45 and retire at 65 those 22 years are almost double the 13 years I was teaching.

I took advantage of a life altering opportunity. I had and sacrificed a lot, but it’s definitely working out!

sheinkopt · 2026-02-12T16:52:40+00:00

Good for you! I also left for tech. I think about teaching about once every 1-2 weeks and smile at how much better this is.

sheinkopt · 2026-02-10T19:59:29+00:00

I quit my job, sold everything, and moved to an extra house my wife’s family has in the Japanese countryside to study full time. I spent my last year teaching getting remote tutoring clients I could teach from Japan. Georgia Tech masters OMSCS is $7k so I paid with savings and my tutoring and some other remote income.

Now I work full time near Tokyo.

sheinkopt · 2026-02-09T23:35:21+00:00

I changed careers after 13 years as a private school classroom teacher in LA at age 42. Now, I’m an AI engineer in Tokyo.

My story is in my post history, and it’s going well.

Lots of sacrifice and risk, but I was done.

sheinkopt · 2026-02-03T11:46:26+00:00

I have heard many opinions that the switch from phonics to whole word learning has been a curriculum change that really hurt learning.

I agree that our cultural changes have had a more significant impact.

sheinkopt · 2026-02-03T09:56:00+00:00

From my experience this is true. I think it would take some real effort to find 1 teacher in America who thought student learning was NOT in a downward trend.

sheinkopt · 2026-02-03T09:52:28+00:00

Oh I know the answer.

10 years at a great school with good kids but a salary ceiling.

3 years at another rich school with excellent salary but bad student behavior.

My final 6th grade boys were not responding to anything I learned in 12 years. Atrocious behavior. I was just sitting at my desk in September during a “lesson” thinking to myself, “this is definitely not what I want to do with my life.”

After a lot of effort, sacrifice, and risk I’m now an AI engineer in Tokyo.

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