If you are pursuing a teaching job in today’s educational climate, a master’s degree in education is one of your best assets. While many school districts don’t have a problem with hiring teachers who only have bachelor’s degrees, the vast majority are looking to have a highly effective staff. That means they are attempting to hire teachers who come with the strongest academic weapons possible – master’s degrees. Obtaining a master’s degree typically only takes one to two years, and the investment of time and money can help your chances of landing a teaching job in a couple of ways.
More Education Equals a Better Teacher
A master’s in education takes your teaching skills to a whole other level. Master’s programs offer courses designed to strengthen your understanding of the latest teaching methodologies, provide you with some or additional student-teaching experience, offer coursework designed to fill in any gaps left from your bachelor’s degree, and help with lesson and curriculum planning. These programs tell administrators the a candidate with a master’s degree is one well-prepared to be a teacher.
Competition Works in Your Favor
If you were an administrator and you were looking at two candidates for a teaching position, both were strong but one of them went the extra mile and got their master’s degree, who would you choose? With the Common Core at the forefront of the educational platform, and test scores hanging in the balance, you’d probably choose the candidate with the most experience, knowledge, and education on ways to prepare their students for those tests. The candidate with the master’s degree is the one you’d want. When all things are equal, you want the candidate with the best credentials and the most training.
Bachelor’s Degrees Have Their Limits
When you think about a person who has gotten their bachelor’s degree in education or majored in their subject matter and minored in education, you need to consider how much time in their four year career that student has dedicated to the study of education. The first couple of years of any bachelor’s degree are spent fulfilling general education requirements. Most colleges want their students to be well-rounded and experience coursework in all of the disciplines. So the last, roughly, two years of college are spent leveraging in the mandated major/minor courses. Somewhere in there, student teaching may or may not be a part of that. In a four year degree, the time spent focusing on either the education or the subject matter component is going to suffer. With a master’s degree, an opportunity is presented to make sure that teacher training is solidified.
While it is possible to obtain a teaching job without a master’s degree in education, having one increases your chances of getting that job over the competition. A master’s degree offers you more credibility, experience, and confidence. School districts are looking for highly effective teachers, and the way to get those is to hire the ones with the most education behind them to teach their students effectively.
