Before You Take A Student Teaching Position Next Year, Ask Yourself This

by Joshua Gibbs

Slow down.

Before you take a position as a “student teacher” next year, you should ask yourself whether you'd be better off just getting a job as an actual teacher. If you can get a position as a student teacher, you can probably get a job as an actual teacher. Granted, the actual teaching job you can get might only pay $30k per year and involve a mishmash schedule of fourth grade Latin, eighth grade biology, and senior thesis—but it will still pay more than a student teacher gig.  

That student teaching gig is probably going to pay somewhere between $0 and $6000, which means that you’ll have to work another job in the meantime or else live on credit cards—and if you’re getting into classical Christian education, you’ll have plenty of time to live on credit cards later. There’s no rush! 

Still, a student teaching position might be worth it, but before you sign on the dotted line, here’s a few questions to ask the people pitching the position to you: 

“How many hours every week will I actually be teaching?” Beware of answers that are too low, too high, or too vague. If no one can give you a definite answer to this question, pass. The student teaching program isn’t developed enough and hasn’t been carefully thought through. If “student teaching” is more about you “getting to observe veteran teachers,” pass. You can do that with your planning periods when you’re an actual teacher.  

“Who would I be working with?” If you’re going to spend the next year working with one or two veteran teachers, find out who and watch them teach a couple classes first. Unless they’re pretty impressive, pass. Also, find out what the veteran teachers you’d be working with have been tasked to do. Are they supposed to teach you something? Are they supposed to critique your lesson plans? How much time are these veteran teachers supposed to give you every week? And will they be paid for their time? 

If the veteran teachers you’ll be working with have been saddled with the task of teaching you how to teach, they should be paid for their time. If they aren’t being paid for their time, pass. It’s a sham. Underpaid veteran teachers aren’t going to give away more of their time just so the school can have a student teaching program.   

“Can I talk to someone who has completed your student teaching program?” If the answer is “No,” pass. If you’re going to spend the coming year as a nearly-unpaid intern, the program better have some rave reviews.  

All that said, if a student teaching program involved 6 to 8 hours a week at the front of the classroom, tutelage under veteran teachers who were being paid for their time, and the testimonials from past participants were glowing, it might be a better use of your time than just getting a job as an actual teacher.  

But if not, remember that teaching jobs at classical Christian schools are not hard to come by. By April, many classical Christian schools are making desperation hires. By May, any school that is still hiring for full-time positions will take any warm body. If you’re willing to take thirty-grand to teach next year, then congratulations, mon frère! You are “what the Lord provided.” Don’t believe me? Look at the jobs boards in June and see how many unfilled positions there are. Granted, those probably aren’t long-term positions, but neither is a student teaching position.  

I got my start as a teacher in a very-very-part-time position at a school where classes only met one day every week. I had no degree, I was paid almost nothing, and there were only around sixty students in the school. It was a somewhat low-stakes environment. I got most of my rookie mistakes out of the way before moving to a full-time position at a bigger, more developed school elsewhere.  

In retrospect, that very-very-part-time position was a little like a student teacher position. However, I also had complete control of the classroom. I could do what I wanted. No one was looking over my shoulder, no one was “showing me the ropes.” The same was true when I took the full-time position, as well. I experimented, I tested a bunch of ideas, I saw what worked and what didn’t, and I learned a lot on my own. I could have learned far more if a really wise veteran teacher had been in my classroom every week to critique my work—but so what? Very few schools are set up to offer that kind of critique. 

There’s a growing number of student teaching programs out there and I’ve only looked closely at a couple of them, but thus far I think the burden of proof is on the student teaching program to show that it’s a better option than a real teaching job. If you’re thinking of becoming a student teacher but you’re too scared to ask the fellow behind the desk, “Why is this a better option than a real teaching job for five times as much money?” then you probably don’t have the stomach for the classroom.  

Be bold.