Rebecca Hare

When Rebecca Hare was offered the position at Adobe as the lead for the community of creative educators, she knew it was an opportunity she couldn’t turn down. What started as a project reserved for breaks and weekends had blossomed into something much bigger.

Hare describes her role as “a global community of tens of thousands of members around the world.” When Hare started teaching in Clayton, it meant leaving her career in design.

“I wanted to have a more important impact in the world, and teaching is one of the biggest impacts you can have,” she said. The reason Hare started at Clayton would end up being the same reason she left: a desire to have an impact on the world.

“When this opportunity revealed itself, this was an even bigger way to make that impact […] instead of 150 students a year, it’s tens of thousands that I support,” she said.

Although her job no longer involves teaching in the traditional sense, Hare still has a lot of love for the profession. “My favorite parts are the students getting to know people and just seeing them develop and do really killer stuff,” she said. “I really miss my students and colleagues and the actual act of teaching. Now, I teach teachers.”

But Hare acknowledged that despite being immensely rewarding, teaching is also a grueling profession. “The worst part was the schedule. You have three minutes and you have to go to the bathroom or you really need a coffee and you can’t do that. And from August to May, you’re on this hamster wheel running. Even if you take a day off, you have to work as much as you would have to prepare to take the day off,” she said. Her words are an echo of what teachers everywhere deal with every day, and now more than ever.

Teacher retention is suffering everywhere, but the solution is simple– at least in theory. “Teacher’s compensation is important. I think everywhere, retaining really great talent means you compensate that
talent,” Hare said.

In the end, teaching is something that remains close to Hare’s heart, and the opportunity to magnify that impact, even if it meant leaving Clayton, was too good to ignore.