From Lesson Plans to Launches: What Teaching Actually Taught You

You've been doing product management for years. You just didn't know it.

Every time you wrote a unit plan, you were doing backward design. Every time you scaffolded a complex concept, you were building an onboarding sequence. Every time you differentiated for the kid in the back who learns differently, you were doing user segmentation.

The business world has fancy names for things teachers do instinctively. And they pay a lot more for them.

Backward Design Is Product Thinking

In education, we call it backward design. Start with the outcome. What should students be able to do by the end? Then work backwards to figure out what they need to learn, in what order, and how you'll know if they got there.

Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe built careers on this. Understanding by Design. It's considered foundational in curriculum development.

In product development, they call it "working backwards" or "outcome-driven innovation." Amazon famously writes the press release before they build the product. What's the headline? What problem does it solve? What will customers say about it?

Same process. Different language.

When you sit down to plan a unit, you ask: what do I want students to be able to do? When a product manager sits down to plan a feature, they ask: what do I want users to be able to do?

You've been doing this for years. You just need to point it at a different problem.

Scaffolding Is Onboarding

Scaffolding is one of those words that gets thrown around in education without much thought. But the concept is powerful.

You don't teach a kid to write an essay by handing them a blank page and saying "go." You break it down. First we brainstorm. Then we outline. Then we write the introduction together. Then you try one on your own. Then we peer edit. Then you revise.

Each step builds on the last. You're providing support structures that gradually fall away as the learner develops capability.

Now think about the last time you signed up for a new app. The good ones don't dump you into a complex interface and wish you luck. They walk you through it. Here's how to create your first project. Here's how to invite a team member. Here's how to run your first report.

That's scaffolding. That's onboarding. Same thing.

The best product people obsess over the "first five minutes" of user experience. Teachers obsess over the first five minutes of a lesson. Hook them early. Give them a win. Build confidence before you add complexity.

You know how to do this. You do it every day.

Differentiation Is Segmentation

Every class has the kid who gets it immediately and is bored. The kid who needs more time and different examples. The kid who learns best by doing. The kid who needs to see it written down.

You can't teach thirty different lessons. But you can differentiate. You create tiered activities. You offer choice boards. You check for understanding and adjust on the fly. You meet learners where they are.

In business, this is called market segmentation. Not everyone wants the same thing. Not everyone has the same problem. Not everyone responds to the same message.

The entry-level user needs hand-holding. The power user wants advanced features and keyboard shortcuts. The enterprise buyer cares about security and compliance. The small business owner cares about price and simplicity.

Different segments, different needs, different approaches.

Teachers do this instinctively. We read the room. We notice who's lost. We adjust the explanation. We find another way in.

Product managers call this "user research" and "persona development." They pay consultants to teach them what you learnt in your first year of teaching: not everyone learns the same way, and if you can't meet them where they are, you'll lose them.

Formative Assessment Is Build-Measure-Learn

Here's where it gets interesting.

In education, we distinguish between formative and summative assessment. Summative is the final exam. It tells you what they learnt. Formative is the check-in along the way. It tells you whether they're learning, so you can adjust before it's too late.

Good teachers don't wait for the test to find out if students understood. They check constantly. Exit tickets. Mini whiteboards. Quick polls. Thumbs up, thumbs down. Did that land? Do I need to re-teach?

In the startup world, Eric Ries built an entire methodology around this. The Lean Startup. Build-Measure-Learn. Don't build the whole product and then find out nobody wants it. Build a little bit, measure whether it's working, learn from the feedback, adjust.

Ship early. Get feedback. Iterate. Ship again.

Teachers have been doing this forever. We just call it checking for understanding.

The difference is, in a classroom, the feedback loop is immediate. You can see the confused faces. In product development, you have to build systems to get that feedback. Analytics. User interviews. Surveys. Support tickets.

But the instinct is the same: don't assume it's working. Check. Adjust. Check again.

The Crayon Effect

Here's something I learnt that changed how I think about this.

When you explain something to a five-year-old, you strip away everything unnecessary. You use simple words. You use analogies. You check if they're following. You don't show off how much you know. You focus entirely on whether they understand.

I call this the Crayon Effect. Can you explain it with crayons?

Teachers do this constantly. We translate complex ideas into accessible ones. We find the metaphor that lands. We remove jargon. We simplify without dumbing down.

This is an incredibly valuable skill in business.

Most experts can't explain their expertise simply. They hide behind jargon. They assume knowledge. They optimise for sounding smart rather than being understood.

The people who can translate complexity into clarity are rare. Companies pay a premium for them. They become the bridge between technical teams and business stakeholders. Between product and customer. Between strategy and execution.

You've been building this skill every time you explained fractions to a nine-year-old or helped a teenager understand photosynthesis.

Why Nobody Told You This

Here's the uncomfortable truth: the education system doesn't want you to know your skills transfer.

If teachers understood how valuable they are in the market, many would leave. The profession is already struggling with retention. The last thing anyone wants is to accelerate the exodus.

So the narrative stays narrow. Teaching experience qualifies you for... more teaching. Maybe curriculum development. Maybe education policy. Maybe instructional design if you're lucky.

But product management? Sales? Consulting? Building a business?

Nobody connects those dots for you. The language is different. The contexts are different. The job descriptions don't say "must be able to scaffold complex concepts" or "experience differentiating for diverse learners preferred."

They say "stakeholder management" and "user-centred design" and "agile methodology."

Same skills. Different words.

The translation problem works against you. And it's not accidental.

What This Means For You

If you're reading this and thinking "okay, but I still don't know how to actually build something," that's fair.

Knowing your skills transfer is step one. Actually transferring them is step two.

But here's what I want you to take away today: you're not starting from zero.

The next time you see a job description asking for "experience designing user journeys," remember that you design learning journeys every week.

The next time someone talks about "iterating based on customer feedback," remember that you iterate based on student feedback every lesson.

The next time you hear about "product-market fit," remember that you've been finding the right approach for the right student for years.

You have twenty, thirty, forty thousand hours of practice at skills the market values highly.

You just need to learn the new language. And then point those skills at a problem worth solving.

The Path Forward

This is what we focus on in the Teach Yourself Out Community. How teachers can take what they already know and build products, income, and options.

Not theory. The actual path. The frameworks that work. The mistakes to avoid. The community support to make it happen.

If you want support along the way, there's a community of teachers doing exactly this. Building things. Getting feedback. Figuring it out together.

You were ready the whole time. You just didn't know it yet.

This is part of a series on how teachers can build products and income using skills they already have. Read the first article: The Skills You Already Have (And What They're Actually Worth).