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Being a good teacher is more of an inate skill set. The best one's are natural teachers, regardless of their profession. So keep that in mind. There are plenty of people on both sides of the fence who were born for it.On top of that, not all grade levels are the same. Elementary school teachers require a different skill set than middle and high school teachers. And even within those levels, certain grades require more specific approaches. Kindergarten, 5th grade, 7th grade and 12th grade are worlds apart.I think in the Elementary school level “real world" careers aren't as important. Teachers at this level don't have to worry as much about applying life experiences to their instruction. At this level, the focus is on the very basics. We aren't even trying to teach them how to learn. This is foundation building.But at the highschool level, things change. We aren't just trying to establish foundational education, but develop children into adults. So, if you have a person who is a good teacher, that's great, but life experience becomes significantly more important.Career teachers who started straight out of college, by and large, sorely lack life experience. They've been brought up in an institutionalized life. They've had a very singular track pounded into them. They have never had to adapt or think on their feet. And their tunnel vision narrows as they get older.I was in the Army for 21 years. I started as a substitute, then did student teaching and finally got picked up for my own classroom. I'm a good teacher. I always have been, even prior to doing it as a profession. I filled a few instructor positions, and I spent most of my time training my Soldiers to do their job as opposed to actually doing mine (that being said, training my guys was 70% of my job.) So, going from “Troop to Teacher" wasn't a big leap.Here's what I saw. Life long career teachers in highschool lack life experience. They can't really fathom not going to college. In their mind, not going to college is failure. It makes no difference that most people they know who didn't go to college are doing at least as good as they are or better. College is sacrosanct. Odds are, it was the greatest time of their life and/or where they peaked as an individual. They don't know how to talk to somebody about any other alternative.They have no idea how easy their job is. Seriously, teaching is a very easy job compared to almost every other profession. After the first two or three years, you've pretty much got all the kinks worked out, and you do very little in terms of preparation and adaptation. You work about 190 days a year. There are two exceptions to this, special education teachers; particularly those who work with severely disabled kids, and teachers from about 3rd grade and below. Those people are the Special Forces of teaching. Kindergarten teachers are on a whole different level of unique.An important part of mentorship is a diversity of experiences. The academic world tends discourage this. For the most part, this is a feature. We want our academics to be immersed into a subject with a singularity of purpose. But in the high school world, we aren't trying to make experts in a field. As such, teachers need a balance between academic focus on their subject, but also a real world experience and application of said subject. They need to know how it fits in with the rest of the world.They need to be able to help a kid make a decision on what to be when she grows up. When your world revolves around an institution as insular as education, its difficult to speak from a position of knowledge. Most teachers lack that. Not all, but most.A quick anecdote. I taught business communications for a year. My first assignment was to write a paper on “What I Want To Be When I Grow Up.” The purpose of the paper was to teach the kids how to do research and write a proper college paper. We used MLA format and had to properly cite materials, etc.One of my students wanted to be a heavy equipment operator. He was a sweet kid. He wasn't special education or even lazy or stupid. He just wasn't college material. Yet they pounded away on this kid in order to prepare him for what is largely seen as the only path to success.His paper, by any level of objective review, was trash. I gave him an A. He did his best. His spelling and grammar were adequate for very basic communication. The format of the paper was… not great. His citations were not even the ballpark of proper format. But he worked his ass off to get it as close as he could. One of his citations was his Grandpa. He was the only kid to actually interview a professional in their career field. I specifically mentioned doing this. Several other kids had even mentioned they had relatives in the field. I mentioned myself as a military service member, a construction worker and a welder. He checked all the blocks, finding out starting, average and maximum pay. He looked up training or educational requirements. He researched two companies that featured his career field. He wrote a basic overview of the career field.I showed it to a colleague. He was sure the kid was screwed. I showed it to a bunch of other teachers. They all saw a kid on his way to poverty. I disagreed. Is saw a kid who was going to out earn a lot of his peers because he was a hard worker and he knew exactly what he wanted to do with his life. And that's a problem with our lifetime academics in general. They lack perspective. As it turns out, I was right. A colegue of mine saw him at a restaurant and they talked. He was working as a heavy equipment operator. Based on the truck he was driving, he was making pretty solid money.So, experience outside of education may or may not make you a more effective teacher in your field or subject. But it will make a good teacher better at helping kids find their way around the world after highschool.