Teaching Degree

This site provides information on earning a teaching degree and pursuing a career in teaching. Information provided includes a directory of schools offering teaching degrees, along with forms to request additional information.

Teaching Skills: Teaching requires people that enjoy working with students (most often children), and have the patience to deal with people with different learning abilities. Teachers should also have the ability to recognize those different learning abilities and adapt their lessons to help students succeed. Teaching requires the ability to motivate students at different levels to listen and learn. Teachers must be able to work together with other staff, parents, and members of the community. In addition, teaching requires an ability to organize your work effectively, and to be able to communicate simply and clearly to others.

Teaching Degree Courses: The teaching degrees offered by the schools listed below include:

  • Master of Arts in Elementary Education
  • Master of Arts in Secondary Education
  • Master of Arts in Distance Learning
  • Master of Arts in Curriculum and Instruction
  • Master of Arts in Curriculum and Technology
  • PhD in Education

Many courses are offered across these different programs. For example, in the Master of Arts in Elementary Education, some of the courses include: Elementary Student Teaching 1, The Art and Science of Teaching, Elementary Student Teaching II, Maintaining an Effective Learning Climate, Elementary Student Teaching III, several Curriculum and Constructs courses, and much more. The overall program is designed to develop teaching skills that make you an effective educator that can help develop your students. Similar types of curriculum are used in other teaching degree programs, but with their own special emphasis to fit the specialty of the degree.

Employment in Teaching: In 2000 there were about 3.8 million teachers in the US. About 1.5 million were teaching elementary school, 1.1 million were teaching secondary school, 423,000 were teaching preschool, and 175,000 were teaching kindergarten. Job prospects for someone with a teaching degree are expected to be excellent, because a large number of teachers will retire over the next 10 years, and this will create significant demand.

Nature of Work in Teaching: Teaching involves many responsibilities. The most basic of these is to teach the curriculum of each specific course, such as English, math, science, or in more advanced levels of teaching, more highly specialized subjects. Teaching involves using many different techniques to help students understand basic concepts, be able to solve problems, and to develop critical thought processes.

Teaching also involves guiding the interaction between students, recognizing different social needs and creating an effective environment for students to think logically and work through problems. Success provides students with new knowledge and an understanding of how to apply their new knowledge in diverse environments. Teaching today also involves using technology for effective presentations, including computers, videos, films, the Internet, and telecommunication systems.

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