Latest / The Side Hustle Career Podcast with Fexingo: Second Income, Freelancing While Employed / How a Former Teacher Built a 15000 Monthly Side Hustle in Curriculum Design
Transcript
- Lucas: So there's this idea that teachers have a very specific, transferable skill set that's wildly under-monetized. And today I want to look at one person who figured out how to turn that into a serious side hustle — about fifteen thousand dollars a month. Luna: Fifteen thousand? That's not a side hustle, that's a second full-time income. What's the background here? Lucas: Her name is Megan — former middle school science teacher in Michigan. She taught for about eight years, and she was always the person on her team who volunteered to write the unit plans. Loved the creative work of building lesson sequences, hated the classroom management stuff. Luna: So she didn't leave teaching because she couldn't do it. She left because the part she actually enjoyed was the design work. Lucas: Exactly. And that's the key insight. She started freelancing on the side while still teaching — picking up small curriculum writing projects from a company called Teachers Pay Teachers. But the real leap came when she targeted edtech startups that needed state-aligned science curriculum. Luna: And if today's episode gives you a useful framework for thinking about your own skills, the way we keep this show ad-free is through listener support. You can buy us a coffee at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Really helps us keep going. Lucas: Appreciate that. So Megan identified that many states had recently adopted the Next Generation Science Standards — NGSS — and that a lot of smaller edtech companies were scrambling to update their content. They didn't have in-house curriculum experts. Luna: What was her first move? Just cold emailing? Lucas: Pretty much. She found a list of edtech startups on a site called EdSurge — about fifty companies that had raised seed or Series A funding. She picked one that made virtual science labs, and she sent a cold email to the head of product. But the email wasn't generic. Luna: What made it different? Lucas: She mentioned a specific textbook chapter — the one on photosynthesis that her school used — and pointed out that the company's existing lab module didn't align with the disciplinary core ideas in NGSS. She attached a two-page sample rewrite. That email landed her a five-thousand-dollar contract. Luna: So she didn't pitch herself as a teacher who could write curriculum. She pitched herself as an expert who already understood the standards and could show a specific gap. Lucas: Right. And that's the model. She now has four recurring clients — mostly edtech companies, but also one nonprofit that runs after-school STEM programs. She works about twelve hours a week, mostly evenings and weekends, and her rate is a hundred and fifty dollars an hour. Luna: A hundred and fifty an hour from her kitchen table. What does she actually deliver? Is it full unit plans, or more like consulting? Lucas: It's a mix. Some clients want her to review their existing curriculum and write a gap analysis — twenty to thirty pages identifying where their content doesn't hit the standard. Others want her to write full lesson sequences: five-day units with lab activities, assessments, and differentiation for English learners. Luna: That's a huge value add. A startup can't hire a full-time curriculum specialist for fifty thousand dollars a year, but they can hire Megan for a two-week project. Lucas: Exactly. And her repeat rate is about ninety percent. Once a client sees how much faster their product development goes when the curriculum is solid, they keep coming back. She's never had to do active marketing after that first cold email. Luna: What about the specifics of the work? How much time does a typical project take? Lucas: A standard project — say, writing a three-week unit for a fifth-grade earth science module — takes her about forty hours. She charges a flat fee of six thousand dollars. That's a hundred and fifty an hour. And she usually has two or three projects running in parallel. Luna: So the fifteen thousand a month is consistent? Not just a one-off spike? Lucas: She's been at that level for about eight months now. She actually quit teaching last January when her side income exceeded her salary. She was making forty-eight thousand as a teacher. Her side hustle hit fifty-five in her best month. Luna: Let's talk about the skill set. What specific classroom abilities transfer directly to curriculum consulting? Lucas: Number one is backwards design. Teachers are trained to start with the learning objective and then build the assessment and activities around it. That's exactly how edtech companies need to think about their product. Number two is differentiation — adapting content for different reading levels, which is huge for digital products that serve diverse student populations. Luna: And number three? I'd guess it's assessment literacy — knowing how to write questions that actually measure understanding. Lucas: Spot on. Megan says the most common feedback she gets from clients is that her assessments are way better than what their in-house team was writing. Because she knows the difference between a recall question and a transfer question — that's teacher training. Luna: Are there other teachers doing this? Is this a growing niche? Lucas: It is. There's a platform called EduMatch that connects teachers with curriculum writing projects, and they report a forty percent increase in project listings over the last two years. The driver is that more states are adopting new science and math standards, and the big publishers are slow to update. Edtech startups see that as an opening. Luna: So if a listener is a teacher and thinking, 'I could do this,' what's the first step? Lucas: I'd say pick one standard — maybe the one you know best, like a specific unit you've taught for years. Then create a sample. Write a two-page lesson plan that shows you can align to that standard, include an assessment, and note differentiation strategies. Then find ten edtech companies on EdSurge or Crunchbase that make products for that grade band. Luna: And then cold email, the way Megan did. Lucas: Yeah, but with that specific hook. Not 'I'm a teacher looking for freelance work.' Instead: 'I noticed your photosynthesis module doesn't address the crosscutting concept of energy transfer. Here's a one-page revision.' That's the difference between spam and a proposal. Luna: What about the portfolio? Does she have a website? Lucas: She has a simple portfolio site — just three case studies with before and after examples. She redacted the client names but showed the standard alignment tables. That's enough. Clients want to see that you understand the standards, not that you have a fancy design. Luna: What mistakes does she see new curriculum freelancers make? Lucas: The biggest one is undervaluing their time. She says a lot of teachers start out charging twenty-five or thirty dollars an hour because they think that's what freelance work pays. But if you're bringing a specialized skill — knowledge of state standards, assessment design — that's worth a hundred plus. Luna: And the second mistake? Lucas: Not understanding the client's business model. A teacher might write a beautiful lesson that takes ten hours to implement with thirty kids in a classroom. But an edtech company needs something that works for a thousand users simultaneously, with automated grading. The constraint is different. Luna: So you have to think like a product designer, not like a teacher. Lucas: Exactly. Megan says that's the shift that took her from earning five hundred dollars a month on Teachers Pay Teachers to fifteen thousand. She started asking, 'What does the company need?' instead of 'What would I do in my classroom?' Luna: I think that's the real lesson here: the money isn't in the skill itself, it's in the translation of that skill into a format the market values. Lucas: Right. And the market for this is only growing. With every new state standard adoption, there's a lag between what schools need and what publishers deliver. That's the gap that curriculum consultants fill. Megan's case shows that you don't need a fancy degree or a network. You need one good sample, one well-targeted email, and the willingness to charge what you're worth.