High School Teacher’s Assistant As A Part-Time Career Gives You An Opportunity To Express Your Skills To Students Without The Pressure Of The Full Timer

High School Teacher's Assistant

Being an actual high school teacher--with all the grading, classroom trauma, long hours and stress that involves--isn't really feasible as a second career. If you're interested in working in secondary schools, though, the next best job option available is to be a high school teacher's assistant. You'll get classroom experience, the ability to teach a few lessons when you like or when it's convenient, and best of all, the ability to interact with students without the stigma of being the "boss"--the actual teacher.

Which Kind of Teacher's Assistant Job Is Best For You?

There are two kinds of teacher assistants in most high schools: the kind that actually teach, and the kind that don't.

Non-teaching teacher assistants often get to do interesting jobs, from clerical work to gym assistants to safety monitoring. These non-teaching jobs are often much lower-stress and involve an interesting variety of things to do every day, but typically don't give you good classroom experience.

Classroom teaching jobs basically involve the same duties as a regular teacher without the prolonged daily grind of regular teaching. Expect to do some grading, some actual lecturing, some classroom management and some personal student tutoring.

As the regular assistant for a certain class, you'll also most likely be the first choice for any substitute teaching work that needs to be done. It's a good idea to find out what procedures your school district has for assigning substitute teachers and to make sure your name is at the top of the "call list"--it'll give you some extra experience and some good substitute pay as well.

What Qualifications Do You Need?

Generally, school districts like their high school teacher's assistants to have at least a high school degree and two years off college. This is a more flexible issue if you're going for a non-teaching job, but even if you never went to college, it's still possible to get hired as a teacher's assistant if you have some solid workplace experience, ideally in training, management, or other supervisory positions.

Other important skills that school districts look for are computer knowledge, valuable foreign languages (Spanish in particular), and some experience working with special needs students. If you're interested in working with special needs students as a second career path, you'll find it very easy to get work, as there's always a demand for dedicated, qualified people.

Classroom Technique

The biggest part of your day as a high school teaching assistant is the hours you actually spend in the classroom. And it's a sad fact that very little of the work of teaching actually involves delivering information to students, especially in high school. High school students are individual people, after all, and the late teenage years are when students start to develop their own problems and concerns outside of school.

Because of this, you can expect to spend much of your time helping to maintain control over the class, reprimanding students for talking, and other fairly unsatisfying jobs.

The key to classroom management is to maintain a firm level of control without seeming unreasonable and without getting personally angry. This usually means establishing a few ground rules and enforcing those rules no matter what. But it's also important to pick your battles.

If you notice a pair of students in the back of the room whispering to one another during a class discussion, it's sometimes better just to turn a blind eye rather than disrupt the class by pausing the discussion. Apply discipline only when there's a serious danger of losing control of the class.

The bottom line, though, is this: teaching may be 70% classroom management, yes. But there's also that 30% of the time when you and the students are really connected, when you can see them start to understand what you're teaching. It's these moments that make teaching worthwhile, and as a teaching assistant, you'll see your share of them.

Starting Your Second Career

The market for teacher's assistants is brighter than ever, with government reports estimating a 10% growth in employment in the field by 2016. There's a high turnover rate for teacher's assistants and a variety of new jobs becoming available every day, which means plenty of prospects for you. It's as simple as going to your local school district office, asking how individual schools hire teacher's assistants, and either turning in your resume or getting contact information for a specific principal or teacher who's looking for help.

Even if there's no job immediately available, leave your contact information--it's a very good bet that you'll be getting a call soon. So have some fun and become a high school teacher's assistant.

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