Teaching Jobs without a Degree: the Jobs and How to Get Them

Teachers don’t always need a license to teach. There are well-paying teaching jobs without a certification available to people who have recently graduated or people looking to change careers. Teachers who for one reason or another let their licenses expire can also land these jobs.

Some of these teaching jobs should only be held temporarily. Ultimately, if you want to work as a teacher for the long-term, you should do what is required to get certified. Below are some of the teaching jobs for the non-certified you can consider applying for:

1.     Internships

If you are just looking to get teaching experience and not to get paid, getting an internship would be the most effective course of action. As an intern, your responsibilities will match those of a regular teacher but you will be under the supervision of another teacher. Internships are full-time positions and you will be expected to perform as well as any other fully employed teacher. It is in your best interests to perform well as an intern even when you are not being paid for feedback from the school may affect your ability to land future jobs.

2.     Teach for America

If you are a recent graduate, Teach for America is an excellent program to consider joining. You will help educate kids in low-income communities for a couple years or so and get paid for doing it. The number of communities covered by Teach for America is constantly growing. There may be a community covered by the program near you. Teach for America will grant you all the help and support you need to successfully execute their program.

3.     Teacher’s Aide

Working as an aide is one of the ways you can break into educational work. Aides typically help other teachers with marking and grading papers, checking attendance, giving additional attention to special needs students, and various other supervisory roles. While working as a teacher’s aide, you should have a goal to advance beyond the position. With more than a million teacher’s aides employed across America, only a quarter earn more than $31,990. You can make more money as a fully-fledged teacher.

4.     Become a Private School Teacher

It is easier to get a job as a non-certified teacher in a private school than in a public school. You will still need to have a graduate education, though. Your basic duties will be similar to those of a teacher at a public school but you may be required to take on other responsibilities in programs that help students grow into well-rounded individuals. If you stay with a private school long enough, you may get an administrative role and see your income increase significantly.

How to Get Hired by a Private School

Local private schools offer you the greatest chance to get a teaching job as a non-certified teacher. You can get hired by a private school if you meet their minimum educational attainment requirements and also bring other things to the table such as experience in in-demand extra-curricular activities.

There are a lot of things you can do to increase your chances of being hired by a private school. Nonetheless, the three most impactful things you can do is writing a strong resume, networking, and showing the value you can bring to the school inside and outside the classroom.

Networking

It will be much easier to land a private school job when people who are in a position to influence new hires have met you personally and know that you are actively looking for a job. Luckily for you, important stakeholders in local private schools are easy to find as they hang out in predictable places.

For a start, you can join local teachers’ associations and social groups and begin attending the local events they organize. Once you build a relationship with some of the members, you can let them know that you are looking for a position. Many positions aren’t advertised and are filled through references or by headhunters. The connections you make can easily refer you to the hiring authorities and you may get an interview.

If you are part of a church or denomination that runs a local private school, you can also get an interview when a position opens up if you let your church leaders know that you are currently actively looking for a teaching position. Such institutions always prefer to hire people with ties to their denominations and churches. You will have a clear head start over your competition just because you have strong ties to the said denomination or local church.

Building a Strong Resume

Your resume is effectively a marketing tool. If someone is willing to hire you, you want to make the hiring decision as simple as possible for them. You also want to make sure that they have an easy time selling the idea of hiring you to their partners or superiors.

For this reason, you should build a strong resume. Private schools focus a lot on performance. Your resume should highlight your high-performance areas and how that can be translated to a school environment. If you have done some work with children before, you should highlight it as well.

Showing Value outside the Classroom

If you have a skill that can make you a valuable teacher outside the classroom, that is a big asset. Proven high-performance as a member of a club during your days in school or experience coaching any sport can make you an attractive hire for a private school. Take the time to highlight the value you will bring to the school outside of the classroom environment to the people you connect with during your networking events.

Teach English as a Second Language (ESL) Abroad

If you don’t mind working out of the country, going to a non-English speaking country such as Russia, Spain, and China to teach English can be an exciting and financially rewarding opportunity. China, for instance, has several wealthy businesspeople and professionals trying to learn English. People with English teaching jobs in China are drawn from all over the world including Africa. As a native English speaker from the first world, you will have a tremendous advantage as far as opportunities and pay is concerned.

Most people leaving the United States to go teach English in countries such as China go through placement programs that guarantee jobs, board, and orientation into the local culture. I would advise you to take the same route if you choose to go.

It is very unlikely that you will be working anywhere near 40 hours a week in your primary job. This reality presents a big opportunity for the motivated people to earn a lot of money on the side. If you are industrious, you can earn more money from your side-hustle than you earn from your primary job. Below are some of the ways you can maximize your time abroad and make a lot of money on the side:

Offer Private Tutoring

Being in a foreign non-English speaking country, you will be operating in a sellers’ market as far as English tutoring goes. Your employer doesn’t have to be your only client. Actually, the employer is just a middleman that connects you to clients – your students. Outside of your normal working hours, you can eliminate the middleman and directly reach out to people who want to learn English and offer private tutoring.

As a private tutor, you can set your own rates and negotiate friendly working hours with your students. With a good rate and a good number of students, you can make more money from your private tutoring service than you do from your regular employment.

Build an Online Business

In East Asia, there is a vibrant expat community of people from the west. These expats are mostly online entrepreneurs and they escape to these countries to take advantage of their lower standards of living. Thailand is teeming with such online entrepreneurs.

Going to a country where it is much more affordable to live as you build an online business is actually a good idea. If you go to teach English in a country such as Russia and China, you can enjoy the same geo-arbitrage benefits these expats enjoy in places such as Thailand.

If you don’t take a second job and don’t offer private tutoring, you will have a lot of free time on your hands. You can use the time to build an online business and put yourself in a far much better financial position in a couple years or so than you would have been in had you stayed and worked in the United States. There are so many online businesses the average person can start that the only limitation is imagination. I am sure you aren’t lacking in imagination. Your online venture can be a product or service business. If it’s a product business, with drop shipping and Fulfillment by Amazon, you can be anywhere in the world and still serve clients in the West.