How To Become A Teacher: The Important Steps | Bright Classroom Ideas

In the 2019–2020 school year, there were 3.2 million teachers that taught in US public schools. Do you want to join those ranks and help shape children’s minds?

Becoming a teacher can be a really rewarding career path, but the process of getting there requires specific steps.

Are you wondering how to become a teacher? If so, keep reading as we give you step-by-step instructions!

Earn a Bachelor’s Degree

No matter which state you’re in, you’ll need a bachelor’s degree to start becoming a teacher. You have two main options, which include:

• Getting a degree in the subject you want to teach
• Getting a degree specifically in education/teaching

You may want to pick the first option if you’re still not totally sure that you want to be a teacher and it would be nice to have some “backup” options. The second option is for people that are totally sure teaching is the path for them.

Complete Student Teaching

Student teaching is a great way to get hands-on experience with students during your studies. If your program doesn’t require this for any reason, you still should seek it out during college or immediately after to ensure that you’re entering a field you actually enjoy.

A lot of states will require that you have a specific number of hours in student teaching before you can graduate from your program.

Take Your State’s Certification Exams

You cannot get hired or teach if you don’t have a state certification because this ensures that you have all of the knowledge and skills needed to get a teacher.

After completing the bachelor’s degree, you’ll need to pass the teacher certification exams for your state. This could be one exam or multiple exams.

Before you can get certified, you’ll need to complete the next step to receive your finalized certification to use in your state.

Get Fingerprinted

Since you’ll be working with children in a school, the state has to ensure they can…