[zapperdapper]

I'm curious - why did you go into teaching in the first place? Are you really not happy teaching? You could stay teaching and just do code on the side. Are you sure you want to leave teaching?

It seems you are facing the old "chicken and egg" situation - a perennial problem for people wanting to get into the industry. Here's what I would do. 1. Build a great looking website that links to your GitHub profile 2. Have at least one meaty project on your GitHub you've coded from scratch 3. Start contributing to a larger open source project that matches your skills/interests. 4. Start building a relationship with recruitment agencies - talk to them and build some good quality contacts 5. Start networking more (via LinkedIn if you have to) 6. Take a serious look at getting a couple of relevant certifications / qualifications.

I used to be a teacher (FE college in my case). I made the switch into software many years ago (before things like GitHub and LinkedIn). What I did was leverage my teaching skills to get into software training and from there into development. It was a somewhat circuitous route, but that will probably still work.