Private School Job Openings
Private school job openings are hard to come by. They come with a great salary and benefits, but there are fewer of them—so they are more difficult to obtain than public school employment. Private school job openings consist of not only secondary education positions, but also k-12 jobs. You can find private school job openings through a number of sources:
- Private School Review
- Private School job boards
- Private school employment networks and placement agencies
The Private School Review provides a list of 30,000 private schools in the US and Canadian territories. Private school job boards are in every private school and publish new jobs each week on a bulletin for every passer-by to see. These same job boards are also published online under the school’s name on the private school website. Schools often hire private school employment networks and agencies to find qualified teachers to fill their vacated teaching positions. If you have a specific teaching assignment in mind for a teaching career, it may be a good idea to check out private employment agencies.
There are a few types of private school job openings: (1) Religious schools, (2) Special Education, (3) Military, and (4) other. Religious schools consist of Catholic schools, Mormon schools, and Protestant schools of various kinds (Methodist, Episcopalian, Baptist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Quaker, Pentecostal, etc.). Many of these schools necessitate that a professor or teacher adhere to the denominational/doctrinal convictions of the school itself in order to serve. In many cases, faculty members must sign confessional documents attesting to their agreement with these convictions.
Special education jobs are in abundance in private schools. If there is a specific area in special education that is a passion of yours, you can apply for these specific positions—provided you also have a measurable amount of experience to go with it. Public education also has room for special education teachers. In years past, many special education teachers have been able to enter the field as “lateral-entry” teachers, meaning that they needed no special education degree in order to serve. As public schools lose funding due to the struggling economy, lateral-entry teachers will become a hiring method of the past.
There are military schools, many co-educational, that are available for both men and women teachers. Summer camps and boot camps are prime opportunities for you to serve if you are interested in gaining some discipline while making some money at the same time.
For those who are interested in none of these positions (religious, special ed., or military), there is another type of private school that you can work for—a school that is a member of National Association of Independent Schools. The National Association of Independent Schools has 40 members along with over 1,400 college and university institutions. NAIS is an independent institution, which means that it works alone as a college or university. The head of NAIS current is Patrick Bassett.
Each year, the National Association of Independent Schools hosts The NAIS Conference, a three or four-day gathering of more than 3500 NAIS leaders in a particular building, city, and setting on selected dates. This year the NAIS conference will be held in Seattle, Washington from February 29-March 2, 2012.
Since NAIS is an independent conference from religious, military, and special education schools, what work positions exist? Some NAIS careers can be found by going to the NAIS.org site, clicking on “career center” at the top left of the screen, then scrolling down to click on the section “search for jobs.” If you go to the keywords section of the quick job search box, and type in “physics,” for example, the keyword search will produce other terms closely related to the word “physics”:
- physics teacher
- physics math teacher
- physics engineering teacher
- physics science teacher 9th grade
- upper physics
- teacher of astronomy physics
- chemistry physics long term substitute
Once you select the term that interests you, click “find jobs.” The search engine will produce a list of results. If you decide to select “teacher of astronomy physics” from the possible search terms above, the search engine will produce one job available at St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire. There are a number of things that the search results will reveal:
- Job summary—salary, school, category, location, type, and preferred education
In the case of the astronomy physics position, St. Paul’s wants someone with a Masters degree who is willing to relocate to Concord, New Hampshire.
The next page elements surrounding the job that are provided are:
- employer information
- job description
- requirements
The employer information will supply background history on St. Paul’s school. The job description will tell you what the astronomy physics teacher is expected to teach. Lastly, the requirements section reveals what St. Paul’s desires in a teacher. In this case, the school demands that the teacher have a minimum of a Masters degree, “with significant coursework in physics and astronomy.” The teacher must also have “basic Window and Linux skills,” not to mention the fact that the school expects the individual to live and work with students. As you can see, getting a job in private school requires a lot of education and much hard work and dedication.
Private school job openings are out there for those that want to find them. If public education does not appeal to you, or you think private school benefits will be better than public school ones, it is certainly something to think about. Just remember to do your research and check out the school, the position, and clarification of the school’s expectations of you before you accept the job. The job should be a wonderful surprise for your life—not a burden you daily try to escape.