High school teachers teach students the academic lessons and skills they need for attending college and entering the job market. They plan lessons and instruct their students in their specified subject. They also assess their students' abilities and grade their school work. High school teachers create and implement classroom rules and regulations. Their job often requires that they discuss the students' progress with their parents.
The primary educational requirement for high school teachers varies by employer. Public high school teachers are required to have a bachelor's degree in a related discipline and a state license. They must also possess communication, organization, presentation, counseling, record-keeping, and lesson-planning skills.
More importantly, they must be knowledgeable in their teaching subject and have previous teaching experience. However, private high school teachers may have different requirements. Generally, they must be able to work with a diverse student body.
The average salary of a high school teacher is $50,098 per year. It varies from $33,000 to $77,000.
How to Become a High School Teacher
There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a high school teacher. For example, did you know that they make an average of $24.46 an hour? That's $50,881 a year!
Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 4% and produce 38,200 job opportunities across the U.S.
What Does a High School Teacher Do
When it comes to the most important skills required to be a high school teacher, we found that a lot of resumes listed 19.3% of high school teachers included student learning, while 13.3% of resumes included classroom management, and 9.6% of resumes included professional development. Hard skills like these are helpful to have when it comes to performing essential job responsibilities.
How To Become a High School Teacher
If you're interested in becoming a high school teacher, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 67.8% of high school teachers have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 19.7% of high school teachers have master's degrees. Even though most high school teachers have a college degree, it's possible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.
Choosing the right major is always an important step when researching how to become a high school teacher. When we researched the most common majors for a high school teacher, we found that they most commonly earn bachelor's degree degrees or master's degree degrees. Other degrees that we often see on high school teacher resumes include associate degree degrees or high school diploma degrees.
You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become a high school teacher. In fact, many high school teacher jobs require experience in a role such as teacher. Meanwhile, many high school teachers also have previous career experience in roles such as substitute teacher or internship.
High School Teacher Career Paths
In addition to switching up your job search, it might prove helpful to look at a career path for your specific job. Now, what's a career path you ask? Well, it's practically a map that shows how you might advance from one job title to another. Our career paths are especially detailed with salary changes. So, for example, if you started out with the role of instructor you might progress to a role such as adjunct professor eventually. Later on in your career, you could end up with the title assistant principal.
Average Salary for a High School Teacher
What Am I Worth?
Top Colleges for High School Teachers
1. Harvard University
Cambridge, MA • Private
2. University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA • Private
3. Northwestern University
Evanston, IL • Private
4. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, NC • Private
5. Columbia University in the City of New York
New York, NY • Private
6. Stanford University
Stanford, CA • Private
7. New York University
New York, NY • Private
8. University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA • Private
9. University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
Ann Arbor, MI • Private
10. University of California - Los Angeles
Los Angeles, CA • Private
Top Skills For a High School Teacher
The skills section on your resume can be almost as important as the experience section, so you want it to be an accurate portrayal of what you can do. Luckily, we've found all of the skills you'll need so even if you don't have these skills yet, you know what you need to work on. Out of all the resumes we looked through, 19.3% of high school teachers listed student learning on their resume, but soft skills such as communication skills and physical stamina are important as well.
Choose From 10+ Customizable High School Teacher Resume templates
Zippia allows you to choose from different easy-to-use High School Teacher templates, and provides you with expert advice. Using the templates, you can rest assured that the structure and format of your High School Teacher resume is top notch. Choose a template with the colors, fonts & text sizes that are appropriate for your industry.
High School Teacher Demographics
High School Teacher Gender Distribution
After extensive research and analysis, Zippia's data science team found that:
- Among high school teachers, 53.5% of them are women, while 46.5% are men.
- The most common race/ethnicity among high school teachers is White, which makes up 76.0% of all high school teachers.
- The most common foreign language among high school teachers is Spanish at 56.1%.
Online Courses For High School Teacher That You May Like
Includes videos and over 300 pages of quizzes/worksheets (answer keys provided!)...
Welcome to our the third course in the School Health specialization: Providing Social, Emotional, Behavioral, and Special Education Services in School. In this course, you will learn about how social-emotional skills, mental health, and learning are related. We will focus on how schools can support social-emotional learning and promote mental health for all students. We will walk through the reasons that schools should promote student mental health. Next, we'll review school wide activities to s...
Social and emotional learning, or SEL, programs have flourished in schools during the last decade. These programs vary widely but most share a concern for five individual, student competencies: self awareness; self-management; social awareness; relationship skills; and finally responsible decision making. It is important for teachers and parents to know about and understand these programs. While lots of SEL programs emphasize K-12 student social and emotional learning, only a very few programs e...
Best States For a High School Teacher
Some places are better than others when it comes to starting a career as a high school teacher. The best states for people in this position are New York, Rhode Island, Washington, and Maryland. High school teachers make the most in New York with an average salary of $82,687. Whereas in Rhode Island and Washington, they would average $80,034 and $80,026, respectively. While high school teachers would only make an average of $78,960 in Maryland, you would still make more there than in the rest of the country. We determined these as the best states based on job availability and pay. By finding the median salary, cost of living, and using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Location Quotient, we narrowed down our list of states to these four.
1. Maryland
$78,960
Avg. Salary
2. Connecticut
$74,077
Avg. Salary
3. Alaska
$77,603
Avg. Salary
How Do High School Teacher Rate Their Jobs?
Top High School Teacher Employers
Most Common Employers For High School Teacher
| Rank  | Company  | Average Salary  | Hourly Rate  | Job Openings  |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Baltimore City Public Schools | $54,878 | $26.38 | 149 |
| 2 | Chicago Public Schools | $51,160 | $24.60 | 32 |
| 3 | Savannah-Chatham County Public School System | $50,881 | $24.46 | 93 |
| 4 | Clark County School District | $50,881 | $24.46 | 14 |
| 5 | Upward Sports | $50,881 | $24.46 | 14 |
| 6 | Shelby County Board Of Education | $50,881 | $24.46 | 13 |
| 7 | San Jacinto Christian Academy | $50,881 | $24.46 | 13 |
| 8 | Fairfax County Public Schools | $50,881 | $24.46 | 13 |
| 9 | Atlanta Public Schools | $50,318 | $24.19 | 12 |
| 10 | Alhambra Unified School District | $49,855 | $23.97 | 14 |
High School Teacher Videos
