NPR

How One Teacher Tweaked Her Lesson Plan For A New Career

Liz Stepansky decided to become teacher to follow in the footsteps of her parents. But the profession was not what she had expected based on their experiences a generation earlier.
Former schoolteacher Liz Stepansky at her new job as a speech pathologist at a hospital in Washington, D.C.

Growing up, Liz Stepansky, the daughter of two schoolteachers in small town Illinois, thought teaching was the way to a stable, meaningful life.

"My dad would have students that would come back and visit him even years after they had graduated high school," she said. "And to see him develop relationships like that, it seemed like a pretty important job. I liked that."

After graduating from college in 2008, Stepansky, now 33, decided to follow in her parents' footsteps,

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