5 WAYS TO SUPPORT
EDUCATION WITHOUT BECOMING
A TEACHER

5 Ways to Support Education Without Becoming a Teacher

Let’s face it, teaching is becoming scarier and more stressful these days from public education all the way up the university level. Test scores and administrative work are more important than the actual education and well being of students, and funding is getting slashed across the board.

What can we do?

Just because you don’t have a teaching degree or have left teaching if you do, doesn’t mean that there aren’t ways to help kids instead of teaching or to independently support education. You might not even realize that a lot of the time, those are the ways that have the greatest impact on children.

Here we’ve laid out 5 ways that you can support education on your own without becoming a teacher:

1. Career Advisor

While it may not stand out as one of the most obvious ways to help children who are still in school, being a career advisor and speaking to children about their future post education is more important than people even realize. Committing to a career can be incredibly daunting, even paralyzing, as the time and pressure gets closer and closer, but introducing career options to kids early on can help take away the fear around what their next steps should be after school.

You really can help kids instead of teaching by just talking to them about what they like about school, what makes them happy, and bring up different jobs that could interest them and use those skills that they like. This way, the seed gets planted early and the children are up close and personal with versions of their future from the beginning. Much easier to navigate compared to having a “career” looming over them that they are scared to even approach.

2. Academic or Life Coaching

Along the same lines as the above, you can independently support education by becoming a coach to students. Either academic or general life coaching is beneficial for all levels of students, from children to post grad. In fact, it is proven that in higher education, coaching benefited students’ mental health, academic performance, and increased their motivation to set and achieve goals.

Academic coaching includes 1×1 and group tutoring focused on multiple or specific subject areas where the coach works with students to improve their skills. This can be done completely independently where you build your own business, or you can work with an organization who provides coaching services to schools or families.

Just as important as academic coaching, life coaching can give students the confidence and skills to navigate the non academic moments, like mental health, interpersonal relationships, and career decisions. Once they are reassured of their confidence and self worth, students are unstoppable! However, nurturing these has taken a backseat in the discussion on education, so a great way to support education on your own is to highlight this approach, especially for women and girls.

3. Work in After School Activities

The best education is a well-rounded education, with equally as much attention needed on nonacademic aspects of life for children as school work. Passion is essential in building strong individuals, a great way to independently support education is to work in after school activities with students to help them find something they’re passionate about, develop their skills, and build relationships around that. This could be anything from sports coaching, teaching music, book clubs, nature programs, etc.

Students are much more engaged with their education at school if their lives are filled with things they love and are interested in, causing them to have a greater sense of purpose and confidence. The way to do that is to cultivate students’ interests and let them know that they can learn more about anything they’d like, giving them the power to drive their own education.

As a nonacademic role model in a space that they love, you then become less intimidating to them and can help kids without teaching in a very effective way.

4. Become an Education Consultant

If you are a trained educator and have experience in the school system, one of the most profound ways to support education on your own is to become an education consultant for schools. You are properly trained, but not bogged down by the day to day grind that is destroying the will of teachers everywhere, putting you in a better position to know where the education trends are going and bring fresh and helpful ideas to the classroom.

It is these fresh ideas that are ways to help children in education since the lifeless, burnt out, standardized test focused approaches that are in schools now are not working. You can breathe life into new, personalized curriculums, teach a workshop on how to implement AI into teaching, or develop programs that alleviate teachers of admin work, allowing them to spend more quality time teaching.

We desperately want to put the future of education on a positive trajectory, and this is where you can take part and help kids instead of teaching.

5. Get Involved with Education Non-Profits

Even though the day to day of working with an education non-profit seems removed from working hands on with students, compared to the previous examples, you still independently support education, and can make a much bigger impact on a higher level. Depending on which organization you work with, you can help influence government policy and regulations regarding education, help raise money for schools, or even help in building new schools and/or education centers. Organizations like Room to Read even support direct tutoring and coaching.

At NARA Education, we run our own schools, support the individual children who attend those schools, and also develop new education technologies so that those who can’t go to school can still get a quality education. Every donation to NARA directly supports the children. NARA Education was started strictly out of the desire to make sure all children have a chance to change their lives through education, and all of our board members are fully committed to finding new ways to help children.

Just because you are not a teacher, does not mean there aren’t ways to help kids instead of teaching and to support education on your own. Try any of the above, and see how that commitment can simultaneously awaken a real desire in you and completely change the life of students of all ages.

Support education together with us! Donate to NARA Education today.

About Author

Ilona Sindhu

Ilona is a writer focused on Old Norse mythology, drawing from her Hungarian, Pakistani, and American roots. She holds a BA in Dramaturgy and Theatre History from NYU and a Master’s in Religion and Literature from the University of Edinburgh. Her work blends myth, culture, and storytelling across borders.