Nyack College
Many people want to pursue a career in teaching throughout their lifetime, with many seeing this as a stable and fulfilling career option. However, before you pursue your teaching dreams, there are some elements of the potential careers in teaching that you should know about first, including your salary and advancement opportunities.
How can you advance your career?
Although you might believe that you will be satisfied teaching within your specialist subject, many teachers decide they want to pursue a promotion and take on leadership responsibilities. There are many advancement opportunities available for teachers, and these include becoming a headteacher or deputy headteacher, becoming the head of your chosen subject area, or specializing in a certain area of learning, such as special educational needs.
To advance your career, you should consider taking an educational leadership degree with Bank Street Graduate School of Education that will allow you to access all of the knowledge that you need in preparation for more responsibility. They will be able to teach you about many of the managerial aspects of leadership roles, such as finances, handling employees, and problem-solving, and give you insight into the types of roles that you might be looking at. You can also take online education courses for teachers if you really want to pursue your dream to become a teacher. It can also prepare you for various educational jobs like administrator, curriculum development specialist, teaching supervisor, or educational consultant.
What is the salary?
Although you might be pursuing a teaching career because teaching is your passion, you cannot survive on contentment, and the salary that you earn is still important even if you love and adore your job. Starting salaries are usually below $40,000, with the average for the profession reaching just below $61,800. However, this depends on which state you choose to practice teaching within, as there is a vast difference in salary expectations between states. The state with the highest salary for teachers is New York with an average salary of over $85,000, with Mississippi paying teachers the least nationwide.
What are the most common challenges?
However, teachers experience many challenges each day that you need to be aware of if you want to succeed in your dream career. The most urgent of these is a lack of work/life balance. Teachers need a large amount of dedication and commitment to their job, and this often eats into their downtime, leading to burnout and stress. As a teacher, you will not only be working throughout the school day, but your evenings are often filled with marking and lesson plans too.
Another common challenge for teachers is the need to complete the curriculum in time, against the need for their students to understand the information that they are being given. Teachers often feel a lot of pressure to achieve high attainment levels, and this can lead to them struggling to provide their students with the most educational experience possible.
Teachers also often struggle to be able to understand and aid every student, regardless of the way they learn or the speed at which they retain information. They may also struggle to communicate effectively with parents, or to make sure that their classroom is disciplined effectively.
