I was told that private schools do not require a credential to work for them. This piqued my interest, as I am graduating this December and while I was somewhat interested in becoming a teacher, having to stay an extra year for a credential seemed discouraging. I have worked as a tutor for a major tutoring chain for two years, taught piano for a year, and worked as a crossing guard for nearly three years. Would any of this prior experience help me?
Not trying to be a smartass, but one of the main things they look for is a willingness to work for low pay. None of the experience you listed is likely to really impress a school administrator. If you want to teach, get your teaching certificate. Many, if not all, private schools hire certificated teachers because they choose or need to meet state standards of various kinds. Finally, you will be competing in a job market with other candidates who do have the certificate.
It really depends on the school and the area. Around here you would never get a position without your certificate, it is very competitive and the pay is pretty good. I know several well-qualified certified teachers that had to leave the area to find jobs. I know in other areas there are schools that are begging for teachers. You really have to find out what the situation is near you.
I don’t know about California, but around here you definitely need certification to teach in a private school if that school has any hopes of becoming accredited. My kids attend a fully accredited private (Christian, non-denominational) school. The major requirements to teach at this school are:
- Christian religious beliefs
- Full teaching creditials/certifications
- Teaching for the love of it, because the money isn’t great.
FWIW, we rarely have trouble finding well qualified teachers.
Up here in New England they look for excellence. No … really, they do! Some of the best private schools in the country are located up here. Most of the privates in NE care about credentials, and sans a certificate, you’d be hard pressed to find work in even a public institution.
Yup…
I still remember my first job offer after graduation.
It was for teaching math in a private school…
…for $9000 a year…
…and this was not way back in the 50’s or 60’s but in 1988.
I remember the Superintendent/hiring committee-board discussing this and trying to convince me to take it. They finally gave up 10 minutes after I started putting together a budget. They tried to help me with the budget but it was impossible - especially since rent/utilities took up about 2/3 of the take home and that left about $31 a week for food, gas, clothes, car, insurance etc. After about 10 minutes they realized it was impossible (or realized that I realized) and we both went are separate ways.
Yup…$9000 a year…
That episode and a couple others quickly convinced me to not bother with private schools.
I have a BIL who got a degree of sorts from an unaccredited Bible college. I’m not sure what his degree was in, even tho I typed up his final report for him.
He spent the next couple of years as a sub in the public school system. He wasn’t a very good teacher, but he’s a big guy, and I guess that was important in the schools where they sent him. A few years later, he got a job teaching 5th grade in a private Christian school. I don’t know what the pay was, but I know it wasn’t much.
This all happened in Florida, for whatever that’s worth.
sigh then its not looking good. 
I was trying to find a way to be able to teach without having to get the credential, but it seems that the only way I could do that is if I work for breadcrumbs out in the middle of nowhere.
It is kind of discouraging to almost have my Bachelor’s degree, and realize that in many cases, it is simply not enough to have a garden-variety college education.
Private schools may not be required by law to hire teachers with certifications, but most of the better ones do. Even when I attended Catholic schools back in the 1950s and 60s (and Catholic schools were notorious for lousy pay) I think nearly all of my lay teachers had their certifications, or had been working for years and years and were sort of “grandfathered” in.
Failing that, your best bet would be to have extensive experience in a particular subject (for example, you’ve had 30 books published and you want to teach writing). . . and be willing to work cheap.
I’m not sure if California is still doing it, but you used to be able to get an emergency credential which allowed you to teach in public schools while pursuing (maybe rather slowly) a credential. They did this in areas that needed teachers, but had a difficult time attracting and/or keeping them. Think inner city L.A., or Oakland, or way out in the boonies out past Bakersfield. Often the pay was excellent, although one friend did refer to it as combat pay.
There is a grrowing number of alternate schools–some religious, some based on other values or teaching methods. These may be willing to hire non-credentialed teachers because they may not be accredited (or may be too new to get accredited). This type of school would probably look for people who held the same core beliefs or were willing to work with the theory du jour. As for the pay–who knows? They could be very well funded and pay a ton, or just scrapping by and holding yard sales to pay for salaries. But you’d be in on the ground floor of education reform!
I taught at a Catholic school in California that did hire non-credentialed teachers, but the pay was (nominally) better if you had one, and they would pay for you to keep your credential, but not for you to get one. (For years, most diocesan Catholic schools paid around 80% of what local teachers were getting.) Willingness to work for low pay was one thing they looked for (teaching is a vocation, you see, so you are getting so much spiritual benefit from it that the ability to pay your bills isn’t really that important). Mostly though, they looked for committment and enthusiasm. Catholic school teachers have a tendency to do “double-duty”–you’ll be a speech coach, a club moderator, a sports coach, the director of the Senior play, in-house substitute teacher, the Glee Club director, etc., in addition to your teaching duties. In elementary schools, it’s being the after school activity director/staff, lunchtime assistant, floating art or music teacher, computer room monitor and peer-to-peer tutoring moderator–in the Catholic system, nobody is just a teacher. So they look for people that like to be with students and will give the extra time to do these extra duties. Youth, energy, passion and no desire for a social life will all benefit you for this type of job.
As a bonus, because you will be looking for a position to start after December, you are in a perfect position to fill an emergency opening (that single female Catholic teacher who shows up pregnant, the very, very old Catholic teacher who finally does die at his desk), so I wouldn’t give up on the idea altogether. Teaching for a partial year may let you know if you really want to make this your first career, and will help you separate the bulls*** from the good stuff when you do take education classes (education classes are approximately 62% theory and tend towards information absolutely useless in the real world).
You may want to look into subbing at public schools. I think you just need to take the CBEST. I’ve seen the CBEST. It’s just about the easiest test known to man. My friend is subbing while she gets her MA in Education, she makes pretty good pay ($130 a day I believe) and she’s mostly enjoying it. It may be a pretty good alternative for you while you’re looking for longer term work.
If you’re willing to move, some states (I know Mississippi used to do this) help you get your teaching certificate (and bachelor’s degree, for that matter) if you teach through college. (This requires you to get the degree and certificate on nights and weekends, of course.) I’m sure other states have other deals in place.
Is it just an extra year to get a certificate because you’re considering it late in the game? Where I got my BA, you could major in whatever you wanted and end up with a teaching certificate as long as you took a few education classes and student taught your senior year. I didn’t do it, but it’s something I thought about.
You do have the “male” thing going for you - there are places where one can get assistance from private funds and such to get more men in the classroom. I used to know somebody who had most of college paid for him because he was a black male getting a teaching certificate. Can’t hurt to check into that sort of thing (except I don’t think you’re a minority, but I could be wrong.) Anything with a penis is a minority in the classroom!
Additional notes on teaching…
If you want to find out if teaching is for you, subbing is the way to go. I subbed full time for two years in California, as well as working at as a tutor for a private company. If you can be an effective sub, and you enjoy it, then you can be fairly sure teaching is for you.
Charter schools also take teachers with no certificate although they usually have to have a certain percentage of teachers who ARE certified to keep their charter.
Did you mention whether you wanted to teach elementary or secondary school? Usually, for an elementary certificate, you need a lot of courses in pedagogy, and just a few in content areas. For a secondary certificate, you need an undergraduate degree in the content area you want to teach (English, Physics, Latin…) and just a few pedagogy courses.
You can also work as a classroom assistant in public schools that have them to see if you like teaching without having to be the one in charge. You can then pursue a teaching certificate in an online program like the University of Phoenix. I’ve had several friends do just that and they are now employed as certified teachers.
And as an aside…teaching is a great, but tough, profession. If you don’t love it, the lack of money, prestige and future advancement will weigh heavily. If you DO love it, you’ll do it for peanuts and not really care—much. But please don’t go into teaching to see what it can do for you, or to kill time while you try to decide what you REALLY want to do. Our children have enough trouble with the high number of poorly trained and dissatisfied teachers as it is.
**pepperlandgirl **, that is a good idea. I think I’ll look around to see where I can take the CBEST test on campus. Substitute teaching sounds interesting.
To clarify, I am in my last semester at school. This is the last semester I can go to school without getting into debt, so if I can get a full time job after this state, fantastic.
This is just for contrast - sorry, it won’t help you get a job in the US.
I teach at a private School in the UK.
We get paid more than the State School teachers, have better facilities and smaller class sizes.
What my School wanted from me was the ability to run School chess full-time. 
Because that’s what I do! 