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Teachers have found great success making social media content—so much so that some have traded their classrooms for careers as full-time content creators.
“Teacher TikTok” has videos about life in the classroom which get hundreds of thousands—sometimes millions—of views and likes. Videos on everything from classroom tours to time-saving suggestions for educators circulate on TikTok day after day, and some educators have found so much success creating social media content that they have left teaching altogether.
It’s not just on TikTok. Teachers have been able to build their personal brands on other social media platforms, like Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, and create resources and content services offered through their own websites. Many of them have a wide reach and can monetize their work on social media through brand partnerships and platform creator funds.
While the amount influencers earn varies greatly, some can make as much or more than they would in the classroom.
Some teachers-turned-influencers still produce education-centered content and share their experiences in the classroom to help others in the field. Others now post content from other parts of their life instead. But they all have one thing in common—they chose a career in influencing over being in the K-12 classroom.
Teaching gave many educators their big break on social media
Jen Manly has been an educator in Maryland in some capacity for almost a decade. She was teaching high school computer science in spring 2022 when her TikTok posts—featuring time-saving tips, advice on how to set work-life boundaries, and recommendations on how to foster student-led learning—started gaining traction.
At the time, Manly had been doing a lot of presentations and public speaking, where she gave teachers actionable strategies to create tangible change in their classrooms.
She remembers asking herself, “How do I take this thing that I do really well and put it into a one-to-two-minute format?”
As her platforms grew, she received positive reactions from educators using her online content. Her students also reacted positively, saying they thought Manly had “clout.”
For Manly, “the goal has always been to be solution-oriented,” she said.
As a teacher, Manly didn’t have a lot of time to work on social media posts, which led to her content feeling authentic and relatable.
“There’s been a shift in content to authenticity being really well-received by people. People don’t want super curated content anymore,” she said, adding that a lot of her initial content was simply videos of her talking in her car in the school parking lot before the first bell.
Alyza Ngbokoli began posting on social media when she was in her third year of teaching 2nd grade in Philadelphia. For her, content creation was her “escape from the classroom” and the burnout she was experiencing.
Ngbokoli posted a variety of videos on TikTok, including humorous captures of life in the classroom and compilations of the outfits she wore to work as a teacher. The first of her videos to go viral in January 2023 was a recording of one of the students reading 16 as “one-ty six” during a virtual class, and Ngbokoli’s humorous response.
Ngbokoli initially thought she would stay in education for a while, moving up the ladder from teacher to principal and maybe even superintendent one day. However she found a passion for making social media content, especially the process of filming and editing videos, and realized that she could make a career out of it.
However, when she first considered leaving teaching, the stigma surrounding being a full-time content creator held her back.
“I know that stigma … and what it feels like to want to do something but not do it because of what other people think,” she said, adding that content creation “is a real job, (and) you can make real money from it.”
Rebecca Rogers taught high school social studies for five years in North Carolina. In the fall of 2020, she was struggling to engage her students while teaching remotely. As a last-ditch effort to try to make her students laugh, she pitched the idea of creating a TikTok account that they could contribute to.
She presented the idea of her students choosing different TikTok trends for her to participate in, and one of them even chose the name of her handle—@rrogersworld, which she often still uses. Her students were not physically featured in her videos, but they had a hand in what kind of content she posted.
“It was the first time all semester that they got excited about something,” she said.
What started as an inside joke between Rogers and her classes soon became a sensation online. She started posting accounts of amusing things her students did and said in class, and the internet loved it.
Over time, Rogers began creating humorous posts about issues that teachers were facing, like challenges with virtual learning and student behavior. She said this content was widely circulated because she framed the problems in a lighthearted way.
“I switched gears to … using the ‘we laugh so we don’t cry’ moments to raise awareness about the issues of public education,” she said.
Once these content creators found success on social media, they exited the K-12 classroom
Manly’s success with social media coincided with her having a baby.
“I loved teaching,” she said. “It was simply not a fit for the phase of life that I was in, in the school and the district that I was in.”
Manly left the K-12 classroom to focus more on social media and speaking engagements and to prioritize her family. She now also teaches one class each semester at a university.
For Ngbokoli, teaching itself became overwhelming. Still, she said, she had “tunnel vision on teaching,” where even though she felt burnt out, she didn’t see any other career options.
Social media allowed her to realize she could find success outside of teaching. She left the classroom in June 2023 to pursue content creation full-time.
Rogers decided to leave teaching in 2021 after she became eligible to monetize her social media posts. Her district informed her that they would not allow her to monetize her social media success. Since she was filming herself with school property in the background of videos, her district told her that she could not use county resources—which the walls of her school were classified as—to generate income outside of her teaching salary.
After seeing how much money she could make from social media, she made her decision.
“Even just starting out, YouTube was already quoting that I was going to make more than my teacher salary in one month,” she said. “It was really hard to justify (staying in the classroom) for me and my family and my future. … I wasn’t going to give up the social media, it was bringing me so much joy.”
The transition from teaching to a career in social media came with a learning curve
Teachers who transition to full-time content creation have to learn the ropes of self-employment. For instance, they often have to acclimate to brand partnerships, which involve companies paying a creator to feature a product or service in their content, essentially advertising for the company.
Manly had to learn how to advocate for industry standard pay for this work, which was a big change from following a teacher salary schedule, she said.
Influencers have to deal with negative comments online, Manly said. And they have to learn to set their own work-life boundaries.
“It’s also really easy for content creation to just consume your life,” she said.
Even so, there is some overlap between teaching and influencing. Ngbokoli found that some of her teacher skills, like planning and organization, have contributed to her success as an influencer.
She also said the presentation and storytelling skills she used in the classroom have been helpful when growing her platforms.
A look into the continued success of former teacher social media influencers
Manly has grown her Instagram following to over 94,000, and her TikTok following to around 130,000, and the resources she provides as part of her brand, The Strategic Classroom, can be found on several platforms, including her website. She also continues her public speaking engagements.
Manly described her content as “action-oriented.” Although she is no longer in the K-12 classroom, she said her previous experience informs the content she creates.
“My whole purpose of being on social media is to help great teachers stay in the profession,” she said. “I teach about time management and workplace boundaries, and I help teachers figure out how to take their time back and to make their job sustainable.”
She encourages educators to exchange ideas and strategies in response to her posts.
“If I share a strategy and somebody tells me this no longer works for students, I’m always going to defer to the teacher that’s currently in the classroom,” she said.
Manly said social media has improved communication between educators, and creates channels for finding new, innovative classroom strategies and resources that have worked for other teachers.
“One of my favorite things about teaching is that we can all learn so much from everybody else,” she said. “I think one of the things that’s so cool about social media is it allows this kind of best practices gallery walk.”
After leaving teaching, Ngbokoli has expanded her personal social media presence, is a fitness instructor, and works in digital marketing to help companies engage an audience through social media. She has amassed 25,000 followers on her TikTok page, and over 1,600 followers on Instagram.
When she left the classroom, she decided to transition her social media brand from “teacher TikTok” to fashion, style, and lifestyle content. Her videos include clothing hauls, conversations about beauty and fashion, and glimpses into her personal life. Ngbokoli said she needed a “hard stop” from teaching, which included rebranding herself online.
“I feel like engagement has gone up because of that transition. People are still invested in what I’m up to and what I’m doing, which feels really good and comforting to know that I still have people on my side,” she said.
Ngbokoli said her entire life has changed since pursuing social media. She gets to essentially create her own working schedule, and is now able to fulfill the basic needs that she didn’t have time for when she was teaching.
“The person that I was a year ago … when I made the announcement that I was going to leave teaching (is a) completely different person from who I am now,” she said. “I just made this decision, stuck with it regardless of what people thought, regardless of what people said. Mentally and emotionally, I’m doing so much better.”
Rogers has a large following across multiple different platforms. She has 408,000 followers on Instagram, 501,000 followers on Facebook, 2.47 million subscribers on YouTube, and 3 million followers on TikTok.
She still posts education-centered content, among other types of posts, and she focuses on just being herself online, she said.
“I think that’s the case for most people who not only make it, but last on social media—the intentions matter, and the authenticity shines through the camera,” Rogers said.
Rogers said her work-life balance is much more manageable now. She has been able to buy a house and a car with her earnings from social media, and is much more content with her life, she said.
Would these creators ever go back to the classroom?
Manly believes her decision to leave the classroom and pursue content creation full-time was the right decision for her, especially because it has allowed her to expand her reach to educators all over the world.
But with social media trends and use constantly in flux, the future of making a career out of influencing is uncertain. As Manly said, “None of it is guaranteed.” Additionally, with the potential of a ban on TikTok looming, the future of content creation is up in the air.
Manly said she loves creating short-form videos for social media and will continue to do so even as the popularity of certain platforms shifts and new ones emerge. However, she knows relying on applications like Instagram and TikTok comes with a lot of instability.
She is focused on building up aspects of her brand, The Strategic Classroom, that she has more control over, such as engagement and speaking opportunities, digital resources, an emailed newsletter, and other tools for educators.
“Long term, I think the speaking and the supporting people through courses, digital products, templates, and things like that is probably what will sustain me, and the money that I earn from content creation is really like the cherry on top,” she said.
Manly could also see herself going back to teaching K-12 in some capacity in the future, once her child, and any future children, are enrolled in school.
Ngbokoli’s online content no longer revolves around education, but teaching is still in the back of her mind.
“It’s not to say that I won’t go back, but in the moment, I needed that kind of separation and that distance,” Ngbokoli said of her career pivot.
Rogers has thought about going back into education, but doesn’t know “if it would be possible to juggle both again.”
“If I’m going back into teaching, I’m going to teach. I’m going to sit in front that classroom and do what I love,” she said. “But I don’t know if I could just take that pay cut for no reason.”
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