Key facts
Know this first
- DegreeBLS says public-school instructional coordinators need a master's degree. Corporate and online-learning roles vary by employer.
- From
- Teaching
- To
- Instructional Designer
- U.S. median pay
- $77,440
- U.S. median, BLS (May 2025)
- Job outlook
- +2%
- BLS, 2025–35
- Entry education
- Master's degree
- Related experience
- 5 years or more
Pay varies by state and sector.BLS has no separate profile for instructional designers. O*NET lists "Instructional Designer" as a reported job title under Instructional Coordinators (25-9031.00), so the figures below describe that whole group, including school-district roles.
Already packed
What carries over from your classroom
- Writing learning objectives and backward-designing units
- Breaking complex ideas into sequenced steps
- Building assessments that show whether learning happened
- Adapting material for different reading levels and needs
Still to pack
What you’d likely need to add
- Adult learning principles (adults learn differently than kids)
- Authoring tools used by companies, such as e-learning builders
- A portfolio: hiring managers want to see finished modules, not lesson plans
Test flights
Try it before you quit
Small, low-risk ways to find out if you’d actually like this work.
- Turn one of your best lessons into a short self-paced module for adults
- Offer to build onboarding or training material for a local nonprofit
- Ask two instructional designers on LinkedIn what their first portfolio piece was
Is this one of your 3 paths?
Answer a few questions about the teaching work you enjoy and your constraints around time, money, and pay. See 3 careers your skills already fit, including ones you’ve probably never heard of.
Other routes from teaching
Data checked September 2026 from the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook (SOC 25-9031). Suggestions on this page are our own editorial guidance, not BLS data.