I started teaching early, at 17, but I know a woman who went back to finish high school at the age of 42, after her children were grown up, and went on to get her teaching degree and then a masters, and she started teaching at 50+.

And by the way, I am 54 years old, and retired, and a grandma, and I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. It is never too late.

I did, but I did it a little bit differently. I was in the same boat – 32 years old and REALLY needing a change from the same old jobs. I took a really big risk and I have not been happier in my whole life.

I decided to get my TEFL (teach English as a Foreign Language) Certificate. With this, I could go anywhere in the world – TRAVEL! – while earning a living. I thought it was just what I needed. I decided to do a 4 week course in Prague through a school called TEFL WORLDWIDE PRAGUE. I absolutely LOVED it! It was really intense, but really fun. I learned more than I could have imagined and got a job teaching in Prague in about 3 weeks.

I totally recommend doing this if you need a change. A lot of my friends here do not have degrees and have had no problems finding work in the CZ. I’m not sure if that is true for everywhere else. Anyway…it\s something to think about! Here is the web address for the school I went to.

www.teflworldwideprague.com

I had a business degree and lots of business experience, but at 40 (mid-life crisis maybe…lol) I thought I wanted to try something different and since I always enjoyed working with children, I thought of teaching. I substitute taught for a year to make sure I liked it before I went tot he expense of going back to school and finding I really didn’t like it! That way I also determined what age group I wanted to work with. I went through the Western Governors University Teachers Prep Program (www.wgu.edu for details on the program), but I was able to work and get my degree on my own time schedule.

Right now I am 49 years old, have a teachers license in Vermont with an elementary school endorsement, a business education endorsement grades 7-12, and am working towards a middle school endorsement.

If you think you would be happier with a career change–you are still young enough to make that change and have lots of years to make a difference.

Good luck to you no matter what you decide!!

It’s going to take a number of years to do your degree, so my advice would be to concentrate on that before thinking about longer term ideas. Get some experience in schools before entering into teacher training. Your degree will open a number of doors for you anyway. After I finished my degree at 30 I just assumed that teaching was for me. I’m now fully qualified and teaching in the UK. However, I do wish now that I had taken a look around at other graduate jobs, and sought more experince in schools, before entering into the teacher training programme. Don’t get me wrong, teaching is a fantastic job, but it ain’t an easy ride.

Have you heard of the Troops to Teachers thing? It’s a program to get people who have recently left the military into teaching. Lots of them are older than you are. And, if you want to teach math, science, or special education you will be a lot more likely to find a position, as there are shortages in these fields.

After the age of 50, moved from the West coast to the East coast. began doing earnings taxes for an business enterprise, off season I worked in a plant nursery, then nights at a the USPS doing documents conversion, moved returned to the West, worked in a hotel in a hotel section for 6 months, got here returned to the city and signed up with a company, 2 calls in 7 weeks, went to artwork as a caregiver and did that till retirement a pair of 365 days in the past.

No one is old enough to go to school.