After being alone at his office job due to hybrid scheduling, Keaton Dye feels isolated, wishing he got the fulfillment out of his job that he wanted. He considers quitting and following his parent’s careers in teaching.
Dye attended college at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. He majored in marketing and management. He had a couple of jobs out of college, but working for MusicFirst got him into software sales and account management. While working at MusicFirst, he took every opportunity to seek out job opportunities at companies like Apple, Dell and Google.
“I basically just wanted to put myself in a position where I was with a stable company I could see myself growing with,” Dye said.
At Apple, Dye rotated every 6 months to different departments, having to reinterview for the job and possibly being switched to a different department for a new rotation. Although every employee may not get moved for a rotation, this was implemented to guarantee that every employee was operating well and seeing the effort an employee puts in to get switched. Dye worked mainly as an account manager for Apple business and education from 2018 to 2023.
“[I] really loved working there for a long time, I just wasn’t getting the fulfillment out of the job that I think I wanted,” Dye said. “I didn’t feel like I was getting anything out of the work other than a paycheck which that’s part of the reason I stayed for five years, [be]cause they incentivize you to stay. They pay you well, your benefits are really good [and] the people you work with are pretty decent people.”
Towards the end of his fourth year at Apple, Dye started looking for teaching positions. He found out he could get his certificate for teaching through an alternative program, so he took up the offer and ended up quitting his job to pursue teaching.
“I enjoyed it to a point I just wasn’t getting the fulfillment and gratitude that I wanted out of my job there and over time I just realized that I don’t think I was ever gonna have that level of appreciation for the position,” Dye said. “I just wanted to do something where I feel like I was seeing the tangible results of my efforts on a daily basis. Transitioning into being a teacher I feel like that helps a lot in that area because I get to see each interaction I have. I get to see those results almost immediately a lot of the time and then I also get results over time too so I just like seeing that constant progress.”
Dye attended the Round Rock ISD job fair to seek teaching positions and discovered McNeil’s business program and CTE department.
“I felt if I was gonna transition into being a teacher, I wanted to make sure I was comfortable with the content and comfortable knowing that I had the knowledge of the subject matter so that I could be a good teacher,” Dye said. “After talking to Mr. Edwards, I felt pretty good about it.”
A week later, Dye applied for the job and started working at McNeil in January 2024 as a money matters and sports marketing teacher. This school year, he teaches money matters and BIM.
“I just felt like I could at least readjust and learn it again if I needed to,” Dye said. “I didn’t really have a choice but it’s not like I didn’t want to teach this class. We have a computer lab and more resources than some of the other classes, so I like that part of it.
A perk about business classes is the students choose their own CTE pathway, so the students in business are more willing to pay attention to the material in class.
“What’s most important to me is that the people that are in my classes actually want to learn the content and aren’t just in it because they have to be put somewhere,” Dye said. “For the most part [in] my classes the kids genuinely want to get the credits from this class, so far I enjoy teaching it because of that.”
Dye loves being able to help people, especially students. Whether it’s opening a door for them or assisting them on an assignment, all he wants to do is be a helping hand.
“Being able to help y’all out, that makes me want to come to work everyday versus what I had been doing,” Dye said. “I didn’t really feel like I wanted to go into work each day, I just kind of felt like I had to, so that’s kind of the difference for me.”
Growing up playing tennis, Dye got the opportunity to coach it, his first time doing so. Dye loves coaching because it’s serious, but not too serious and at the end of the day the team is just trying to have a good time.
“I love it so far,” Dye said. “My thing with coaching is you can really work one on one with kids when you’re coaching and it’s not like working in a classroom where you’re tryna get a kid encouraged about a subject. When a kid is in a sport they’re already incredibly interested in it most of the time and so you’re trying to get them to unlock their potential in something they’re already passionate about. I want to help other kids and other people reach their goals and reach whatever their dreams may be if it’s in that sport or not.”
Dye’s wife, Ayaka Okuno, is a Japanese former professional tennis player. Okuno has been playing tennis since she was a kid and now she is a tennis coach.
“I met her when I was visiting Houston for a DECA convention,” Dye said. “I had to come back to Austin, so we just talked for a month and then we were pretty much together. We decided after about seven months of dating that we were gonna get married.”
Dye and Okuno are having their wedding ceremony in Tokyo, Japan, Okuno’s hometown next June.
‘[It’ll] be a lot of fun, I’m excited,” Dye said. “I get to go to Tokyo with a lot of my American friends so it’ll be interesting to see how our group is in a different culture. It’ll be an interesting culture shock that I’m looking forward to.”
Dye is also looking forward to the food in Japan. Since the dollar is really strong in Japan, American money will go further in Japan than the US.
“For the time being we’ve just been sending food videos back and forth,” Dye said. “[It] really makes me want to go because the food there looks awesome. A bowl of Ramen here is like 15-20 bucks, but in Japan it’s authentic Ramen, but you pay six dollars for it, so it’s going to be awesome.”
To help his stay in Japan, Dye is slowly learning Japanese on Duolingo and has a 70+ day streak.
“It’s like learning two languages so I can’t even begin to do that,” Dye said. “The good thing about Japan is a lot of the time they’ll have it in the Japanese language and then in English as well, so at least I can read most of the stuff.”
Dye looks forward to coaching basketball, as he used to coach for local high school leagues and most of his sports background is in basketball.
“I feel like I’m a good tennis coach, just in the long term I’d rather be doing basketball,” Dye said. “My whole goal is to eventually get into coaching full time or administration full time so that I can max out my results.”
Dye enjoys working at McNeil and is excited about teaching his classes this school year. His best piece of advice is “if you’re young and you don’t know what you wanna do yet, that’s okay, [be]cause even most adults don’t know what they want to do yet.”
“The most important thing is [to] develop really good habits whether it’s studying, [even if] it’s making your bed every morning, simple things,” Dye said. “Those habits will grow into habits that will help you sustain employment in the future and help you maintain responsibility and be a productive member of society.”
Dye loves to give advice to the younger generation because they often will stress about the future and think they aren’t confident enough, but he sees what they may not.
“If there’s something your incredibly passionate about chase that passion, but if you’re not passionate about something at least make sure that you’re developing good habits so that whenever you do figure out what you wanna do, you have a good foundation for being a good person, being a good employee [or] being someone that other people can count on,” Dye said. “You’re gonna have to have all of those basic qualities in order to be successful in any field so that’d be my best advice, just develop good habits, be easy to work with, be friendly, be accountable. If you can take care of that kind of stuff, the rest of the harder things down the line will fall into place on their own.”
