New Girl saw Jess Day changing jobs a couple of times, but her main path was teaching – however, by the end of the series, she wasn’t teaching anymore. Created by Elizabeth Meriwether, New Girl premiered on Fox in 2011 and lived on for seven seasons full of ups and downs in the lives of the main characters, coming to an end in 2018. New Girl was very well received from the beginning and was praised for its tone and the performances of its main cast, particularly those of Max Greenfield and Jake Johnson, who became the breakout stars of the show.
New Girl followed Jess Day (Zooey Deschanel), a young and bubbly teacher who after finding out that her boyfriend was cheating on her, moved into a loft with three strangers she found on the internet. This sudden move wasn’t easy for her nor her roommates, but after a period of adjustment, Jess became very close to Schmidt (Greenfield), Nick Miller (Johnson), and Winston (Lamorne Morris), and even her best friend Cece (Hannah Simone) joined the fun and became part of this peculiar family. New Girl took the time to explore the personal and professional lives of its main characters, and even though Jess went through some rough patches in her career, she mostly stayed on the same path – until the series seemingly forgot about it.
As mentioned above, Jess was a teacher, and she mentioned various times throughout the series that teaching was her passion. At the beginning of New Girl, she worked at an elementary school, but at the beginning of season 2, she was fired. After trying some random part-time jobs (including food server for a casserole shop), she took a job in adult education, teaching creative writing. She later got a job as a substitute teacher at Coolidge Middle School, where she eventually became vice-principal and almost got into big trouble when she dated science teacher Ryan Geauxinue (Julian Morris), but she kept her job. In New Girl season 5, Jess got sequestered for jury duty and was absent for many episodes, and when she came back, she became vice-principal at another school, and in season 6 she became principal of the private school she worked at before.
After that, New Girl forgot what Jess’ passion was about, and she suddenly stopped teaching. New Girl season 7 had a time jump of three years, and began with Nick and Jess returning from Nick’s world tour to promote his book, The Pepperwood Chronicles, and she later reunited with Russell (Dermot Mulroney), who gave her a job at his company, which obviously had nothing to do with teaching. It was later revealed that her reasons to leave the private school she worked at were complicated, but still, she could have taught somewhere else as she had done before – instead, the writers took her on a different path that left viewers confused.
Whether she returned to teaching after New Girl came to an end or not is unknown and left to viewers' imagination – and it’s worth mentioning that many fans have pointed out that Nick was most likely making enough money in his new career as an author that Jess could leave the world of teaching if she wanted to and explore other career paths, though that still doesn’t sound like a very Jess thing to do.