How Do I Become a High School History Teacher?
Many high school graduates remember most vividly their history teacher. Not only does a good high school history instructor bring the past to life for students, but she inevitably comments on the values evidenced in past events and explains to the curious how humanity arrived at this moment in time. Ideally, all high school teachers must love not only their academic specialty but the typically energetic and mercurial teen personality. Teens passionately hold to their ideals, once they attain them, and history teachers shape teenaged lives in important ways.
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Things You'll Need
- Bachelor's degree from an accredited college or university
- Teaching certification, for public schools
Instructions
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Study broadly during college freshman and sophomore years, especially those subjects that emphasize reading, writing, and public speaking. Pursue a liberal arts education. Historians need to know how to think critically and communicate effectively in speech and writing.
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Learn as much history as possible in junior and senior college years. Save all class notes and textbooks for future use. Some teacher training programs offer "student teaching" or interning at nearby schools.
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Decide to teach in a public or private high school during the junior year of college. Although each state has different requirements for its high school instructors, public school teachers need a certain number of credits in teacher training courses. On the other hand, private schools prefer teachers who took more history courses than teacher training classes.
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Take teacher certification exams if teaching in public school is the goal. Each state offers a different certification exam with various exam fees. If teaching in private high school, no certification is needed.
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Apply to city and county high schools to teach history. Most applications are now completed online, although major school systems hold regular job fairs too.
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Tips & Warnings
Pursue a master's or doctorate in history to excel as a teacher.
Most school systems require instructors to take courses periodically in their specialty areas in order to qualify for salary raises.
Be ready to teach Social Studies, which include geography, civics, government or a specific history focus such as World, American, European, African or Chinese history.
Be able to relate past events to today's headlines; make the past relevant to contemporary times.
There's a war within the discipline about whether history is a humanities discipline, meaning the historian lends his or her subjective interpretations of facts, or a social scientist who takes a broad view of society via statistics or follows broad trends and who behaves as a calculating scientist. This distinction may affect whether future historians take more humanities courses or social science courses in college.
Until 2018, the need for teachers at all levels will grow at 13 percent, the average rate for all professions.
