Middle School Teacher Job Description

Series Summary

Teachers play an integral role in the development and education of children. Working in schools, academies or a community setting, a teacher's job focuses on facilitating student learning through lessons and demonstrations. Middle school teachers, in particular, play an important role in child development as students begin to move from the sheltered structure of elementary school to the freedom of high school. All teachers, middle school teachers included, face the difficult job of keeping students engaged and excited about learning. While education careers are quite difficult, for most teachers the benefit of shaping young minds far outweighs the challenges. In this free career information video series, an experienced special education middle school teacher explains how to become a middle school teacher.Weigh the pros and cons of middle school teaching and get tips on salary and qualifications. Discover the benefits of a career as a middle school teacher and learn about the tools a teacher can expect to use in the classroom. Finally, get general career information on secondary education jobs and hear about the funniest and most difficult moments a middle school teacher may face.

Video Transcript

"O.k. on page 45 if you'll open up what do you see there? You see a picture of... A middle school teacher differs a little bit from an Elementary school teacher; in Elementary the kids stay in one particular class room for most of the day and in middle school the kids move from class to class somewhat like high school. As a middle school teacher my job is to help these kids show self confidence and more responsibility in being able to get the job accomplished to prepare them for high school. In our particular school we have a group of students that start with us in the 7th grade and we call it an advisory class; my job is to get to know these students daily and how I can help them adjust to middle school life, and then make the transition to high school. I meet with them daily; we also do fun things like our assemblies with them and then they go from their day to day schedules from different periods where they, they change classes. A middle school teacher usually shows up fairly early; they usually start earlier than the Elementary schools and maybe a little bit later than the high schools, during that time we teach our academic subjects and then during our conference period we have time to meet and obviously sit down and collaborate with the other teachers. And how the students are doing in their classroom and especially in the special education field, this is really important to see how are students are; are functioning in the other classrooms and to collaborate with these teachers. As a middle school special Ed teacher my job is probably different than a regular middle school teacher because my responsibilities include tracking the special Ed student and making sure they're successful in all their outside classes. I also try to monitor and make sure that their IEP goals are focused on and that they are making progress toward them."