A School Principal's Digital Journey After Retirement: What They Learned

At my retirement function, the staff gave a small speech, some flowers, and a clock as a gift, which has always struck me as a strange choice since the person retiring is the one who now has the most time on their hands. I never figured out why a clock.

The first week at home felt fine. The second week felt fine too. By the third month I was waking up at 6 am out of habit and just wandering around the house with nothing to do. My wife finally said it plainly: "You need to do something. This isn't working."

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The suggestion I laughed off at first

My daughter works at a software company in Bangalore. On a video call one day she said, "Papa, you explained English grammar so well. Why not put it on YouTube?"

I laughed it off completely. A 62-year-old man making videos? In my time we had a blackboard and chalk. Who talks to a camera at this age?

She didn't let it go, though. The following weekend she came home, installed an app on my phone, and said, "Just try one video. If you don't want to post it, we'll delete it."

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The first video, and how awkward it actually was

The first video was titled "Understanding Present Perfect Tense." Fourteen minutes long, because I kept pausing mid-sentence, with mistakes I didn't know how to edit out since I had no idea how editing worked yet.

I uploaded it anyway. Day one brought 3 views, two of which were probably my own phone and my daughter's.

By the end of the week: 12 views total. I genuinely thought this whole idea wouldn't work, that 29 years of teaching experience counted for nothing in this new format.

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The mistake I didn't understand until later

The video was long, and it wandered before getting to the point. I'd approached it the way I taught a classroom, where a 40-minute period naturally includes side stories and the occasional discipline moment.

Nobody sits through that on YouTube. I looked at other teachers' channels that were actually doing well. Their videos were short, went straight to the point, and the thumbnail told you exactly what you'd learn before you even clicked.

Honestly, I'd assumed a shorter video meant less effort going into it. Turns out it's the opposite. A short video demands more preparation, because every single second has to earn its place.

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The video that actually worked, and why

My fourth video covered exactly one confusion: the difference between "Since" and "For." Six minutes long, straight to an example.

That video pulled in 4,213 views over eight months, more than anything else I'd posted. Comments started coming in: "Sir, you explain this so simply, nobody at school made it this clear."

Reading that felt genuinely good. After 29 years inside a school building, getting that kind of reaction from strangers online felt oddly satisfying in a way I hadn't expected.

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The money side, honestly, isn't much

The channel sits around 340 subscribers now, still quite small. YouTube AdSense brings in roughly Rs 380 to Rs 720 a month, fluctuating with views.

What's turned out more consistent is the PDF notes. I attach a short PDF of practice questions to most videos, take orders through a Google Form, get paid via UPI, and send the file over WhatsApp. I price each one at around Rs 49 to 79.

Roughly 25 to 40 PDFs sell in an average month. That income has held up better than the YouTube ad revenue, mostly because students buy more heavily around exam time. It's basically the same model as writing and selling an ebook, just in a smaller, cheaper format than a full book.

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Comparing notes with other retired teachers

I connected with a retired commerce teacher in a WhatsApp group who'd gone through a similar shift to teaching CA Foundation students online. Talking to them made it clear I wasn't the only one figuring this out from scratch at this age.

Their approach was different, and honestly a bit more ambitious than mine. They went straight to live Zoom classes instead of YouTube, batches of thirty students at a time. I tried that too, for about two months, mostly out of curiosity about whether it would suit me better. Honestly, I found recorded video more comfortable than live teaching, mostly because a mistake just means recording that segment again instead of correcting it live in front of everyone.

I also came across a guitar teacher building a student base through YouTube. Completely different subject, but the underlying approach was identical: build trust with free content first, then offer the paid version to whoever's genuinely interested.

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What actually surprised me the most

The biggest surprise was realizing that the teaching skill itself translates almost fully to a camera. Only the format needs to change.

The 29 years of running a school administration turned out useful too, just not the way I expected. Building a schedule, staying consistent, patiently handling the same kinds of doubts from students that I used to hear from worried parents. None of that came from any YouTube course. It came from the job I'd just left.

My daughter shows me the comments sometimes. One of them read: "Retired teacher still teaching with this much energy, respect sir." I took a screenshot of that one...