High School Teacher Job Description
Intro Paragraph: Your job description should begin with a concise overview of the open position and what you seek in an ideal candidate. Writing this position summary will help you focus on the most critical qualities you desire in your next faculty member.
You might phrase it as follows: We are looking for a dedicated, achievement-focused high school teacher with a gift for mentoring, challenging, and fostering curiosity in their students as well as how to create a nurturing classroom setting that supports student growth and critical thinking. The ideal candidate is a discipline expert with a talent for creating inspiring curricula, lesson plans, and assessments.
About Our Organization: Teachers tend to be mission-driven, so this is the perfect place to summarize your organizational mission and values and explain what makes your school unique. Do you work at a large regional public high school or a small, private academy? Do you emphasize a STEAM curriculum, a hands-on learning paradigm, academic achievement and college prep, or a student-led individualized curricula and social justice? Is your management structure classically hierarchical or collaborative? Do you emphasize academic freedom and teacher-led instruction more, or do you encourage collaborative interdisciplinary teaching communities?
The more clearly you can communicate the elements that make your school setting unique for your students and your faculty members, the more likely you are to attract applicants that will be a good fit. You might even want to consider having your existing faculty craft their summations of what makes working for your school unique.
High School Teacher Responsibilities: The following list of day-to-day job responsibilities may differ significantly, depending on whether your school is private or public, a magnet or vocational high school, or if you serve a specific population.
- Create a curriculum to advance student learning and attain learning objectives based on individual capabilities and state or school standards.
- Provide adequate support to help students maximize their academic potential and achieve learning goals.
- Support students as they transition from a secondary school to post-secondary settings, such as college, apprenticeships, vocational training, or the workplace.
- Provide coaching, guidance, and mentorship as students embark on individualized study, research, skill-building, and hands-on projects designed to increase subject mastery and individual potential.
- Assign group work and lead classroom discussions that deepen subject understanding and mastery while fostering teambuilding skills, interpersonal relationships, and respect between students and faculty.
- Select readings and assign coursework that sparks curiosity, deepens understanding of key disciplinary concepts, and builds critical thinking skills.
- Engage in teaching best practices designed to empower students across various learning styles.
- Collaborate with administrators, faculty, and other educational professionals, including school psychologists and college counselors, to improve curriculum and help students reach their potential.
- Utilize research-guided classroom management strategies to maximize paraprofessional resources to support student learning and ensure a safe and supportive classroom setting.
- Interface with parents to keep them updated on student performance.
- Devise assessments, prepare students for required mandatory testing, grade assignments, track performance, and provide feedback to improve students’ skills and knowledge acquisition.
- Engage in continuing education to keep current with educational best practices, subject knowledge, and needed credentials and professional development as required by district or accreditation guidelines.
Work Hours and Benefits: Next, you’ll want to include the required hours, salary range, and benefits that come with this position. To determine a fair offer for your city or town, you can use a salary tool like Monster’s, which allows you to input job titles and locations and calculate estimates for low, median, and high salary offers.
One of the best ways to use this section is to emphasize benefits and perks that are most likely to appeal to the most highly motivated educators: sabbaticals, tuition reimbursement, and bonus pay for leadership roles, such as serving on the coaching staff for an athletic team or as an advisor for a student club.
High School Teacher Skills/Qualifications: Some candidates are less likely to apply for positions if they don’t think they have every listed qualification. Exhaustive lists of required skills and experiences can be especially detrimental if you want to strengthen your diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and attract women applicants or candidates from underrepresented groups. For this reason, you may want to limit the required skills and requirements or divide your needs between “required” and “optional” qualifications.
- Teaching and classroom management skills
- Experience writing lesson plans and assignments and creating and grading assessments
- Highly effective presentation and written and spoken communication skills
- Coaching and mentoring skills
- Interpersonal relationship, teambuilding, and leadership skills
- Familiarity with local, state, and federal policies and standards guiding educational practices and curriculum
- Knowledge of technology-assisted learning and instruction
- Facility with multiple instructional modalities designed to reach learners across a range of learning styles
- Knowledge of current teaching research and best practices
- Subject area expertise
- An infectious passion for your subject area and lifelong learning
- Familiarity with learning management platforms a plus
Education, Experience, and Licensing Requirements:
- Teaching license and state certification in secondary education and subject area
- Bachelor’s or master’s degree in education or subject area
- Prior experience as a high school educator a plus
Call to Action: End your high school teacher job description with a “call to action” encouraging qualified applicants to “apply now” by completing an online application.
Deploy Your High School Teacher Job Description to Attract Top Performers
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