Show Notes

As a principal, Laura Litton found herself dealing with everything except what she loved. Instead of coaching teachers, she was handling broken flags, bathroom floods, and press inquiries. She felt disconnected from her true passion: instructional leadership. This feeling, familiar to many educators, sparked a journey that led her to edtech, where she found a role as Director of Teacher Happiness. Now the Director of Success at LiveSchool, Laura shares her story of moving from the classroom to administration and finally to an edtech company. She offers incredible insight into the post-pandemic challenges schools are facing—like chronic absenteeism—and provides heartfelt, practical advice for any teacher wondering, "What's next?"

• The Post-Pandemic Challenge: Laura explains how LiveSchool helps schools tackle today's biggest behavior challenges, including chronic absenteeism and the social-emotional skills gap left by remote learning.
• From User to Director: Laura has a unique connection to her company—she first found and purchased LiveSchool for her own middle school back in 2012 when she was an instructional coach.
• Why She Left Administration: Laura shares candidly why being a principal wasn't home for her. She was consumed by non-instructional tasks and missed her bread and butter role of coaching teachers.
• The Director of Teacher Happiness: The job title that changed everything. Laura describes the "aha" moment when she saw a role that perfectly matched her core passion, sparking her leap to edtech .
• Advice: Find What Drives You: Laura's core advice for teachers is to "consider what drives you every day." It’s about finding a role where 75-80% of your job is the part that gets you jazzed, not just escaping the parts that weigh you down.

Episode Article

When Laura Litton was a school principal, she found her days consumed by tasks that had nothing to do with education. "Our flag got stuck at half mast... and then we got in the newspaper," she recalled. "The bathrooms broke, all of them in one day." She had become a principal after a colleague suggested it, moving up from an instructional coaching role she adored. But the reality of administration felt isolating. "It didn't feel home," she shared, "and it didn't feel like I was impacting my students anymore."

This feeling of misalignment is something many educators experience. For Laura, the turning point came at an ISTE conference. She ran into a former colleague and later saw a job posting at his new edtech company for a Director of Teacher Happiness. The title struck a chord. "That's what's missing in my life," she realized. She missed coaching teachers. That "aha" moment propelled her to make the leap from the school system to the corporate side of edtech, where she could return to her passion on a larger scale.

Today, Laura is the Director of Success at LiveSchool, a platform that helps schools improve culture with a points and rewards system. In a full-circle story, LiveSchool is the very same platform she had discovered and implemented at her own school back in 2012. In her remote role, she leads a "small but mighty" team that handles everything from sales to support, giving her a direct line to educators every day. She's helping them solve the most pressing post-pandemic challenges, especially the rudimentary social-emotional skills gaps and chronic absenteeism that are plaguing schools.

When I asked Laura for her advice to teachers considering a change, her answer was incredibly insightful. "You have to consider what drives you every day," she said. She encourages educators to look beyond the daily frustrations—the lesson plans, the administrative burdens—and identify the part of the job that truly gets you jazzed. For her, that was coaching teachers. For others, it might be working with students or colleagues. The key, she says, is to find a role—whether it's in a new school, a new district, or a new industry like edtech—where your passion makes up 75-80% of your day.