How to Become a Private School Teacher (With or Without a Teaching Certificate)

Two different sets of rules decide who a private school can hire: the qualifications the school itself asks for, and whatever your state requires of schools in that category.

Confusing the two lists is an easy mistake to make at the start.

On the school's side, the expectations are practical.

Carney Sandoe & Associates, a national independent-school placement firm, tells new-graduate candidates that its client schools look for a degree in the subject they wish to teach — minors or concentrations may be acceptable — plus experience working with children.

The same firm's guidance says a teaching certificate or an education degree is not required at those schools.

That is one firm's description of the independent schools it works with, not a rule: it is not a statement about your state, and not about every kind of private school.

The workforce looks like that description.

In 2020–21, 49.8% of private school teachers held a master's degree or higher, and 5.0% did not hold a bachelor's degree at all (NCES, National Teacher and Principal Survey).

Requirements can also be the school's own rather than the state's.

Read each posting's full requirements list: whatever a school adds beyond a degree and experience with children — a faith expectation, a particular pedagogy credential, anything else — is that school's requirement, not a state certificate.

Before you commit to the route, the private school teacher career guide covers the work itself, the school types and what the day to day looks like.

"Private school" covers a wide set of workplaces, and the school you pick shapes the qualifications, the interview and the job itself.

In 2021–22, the Private School Universe Survey counted 29,727 private K–12 schools; 66.0% had a religious orientation and 34.0% were nonsectarian.

Religious schools employed 68.1% of private full-time-equivalent teachers in 2021–22 — the Catholic, Christian, Jewish day and other faith-tradition schools this guide covers sit in that group.

Nonsectarian schools, 34.0% of private schools, make up the rest of the sector, and the steps below apply across school types: Montessori, classical, Waldorf, boarding, online and special education settings included.

Scale matters when you choose.

In 2021–22, 84.9% of private schools enrolled fewer than 300 students and 40.0% enrolled fewer than 50 (NCES, Private School Universe Survey).

In a school that size, your department can be a department of one, and the role can reach past your own classroom into advising and school life.

Know what the work asks of you as well: regular full-time private school teachers reported working 51.8 hours in a typical full week in 2020–21 (NCES, National Teacher and Principal Survey).

Fit also includes your own constraints: the age group you want to teach, the faith environment you would be comfortable working within, the pedagogy you believe in, and the schedule you can take.

Part-time work is a real part of this sector: in 2021–22, 8.4% of private school teachers worked half time to under three-quarter time, and 6.4% worked under half time.

The academic qualification the placement firm names most specifically is a degree in the subject you will teach.

If your degree is already in that subject, you have the main academic piece on its list; if it is adjacent, minors and concentrations may still be acceptable to the schools it works with.

Experience with children is the other half of the ask.

There is more than one way to build it.

• Substitute teaching, which puts you in front of real classes and lets you see different school cultures — check whether your state issues substitute permits and whether the schools you target ask for one before you count on those hours.
• Tutoring, which builds subject-teaching hours one student at a time.
• Coaching, residential life or other youth work, which is more of the experience working with children that the schools on the firm's list ask for.
• Independent school teaching fellowships, which are school jobs that suit newer teachers: Penn GSE's Independent School Teaching Residency suits people with less than two years of teaching experience. Pingree School's fellowship, for early-career educators from groups underrepresented in independent schools, has fellows teach, coach and advise with mentorship and weekly seminars. Start with our guide to independent school teaching fellowships.

A short résumé can still land here: in 2020–21, 17.4% of private school teachers had three years of teaching experience or less, according to the National Teacher and Principal Survey.

The steps below are the same whether teaching is your first career or your second.

This is the step that is easiest to skip, and it is the one that decides where you are eligible to teach.

Whether a private school job requires a state teaching certificate is a state question, answered school category by school category.

States set their own requirements for private school teachers.

The U.S. Department of Education's Office of Non-Public Education publishes a state-by-state comparison chart covering teacher certification requirements — but its summary is based on information states provided before September 30, 2016, so treat it as a starting point, not the current rule.

Three things can change the answer for a specific school.

One is the school's category under state law, such as accredited or approved.

Another is whether it participates in a voucher or scholarship program that carries its own staff rules.

Private schools taking students through the District of Columbia's federal Opportunity Scholarship Program, for one, must ensure core subjects are taught by teachers with a bachelor's or equivalent degree — a degree rule, not a certificate.

A third is special education.

When a public agency places or refers a child with a disability to a private school, the state education agency must ensure the child receives an education meeting the standards that apply to public education.

Any certification requirement for those placements comes from state law, not from the federal rule itself.

Do the check in two directions.

Ask each school you are serious about which category it operates under and whether certification is part of its hiring checklist, and confirm the state's current rule with your state education agency rather than with a job posting.

If the school you want sits in a category where the state does require certification, the route runs through your state's own certification process, and the agency that issues certificates defines its steps.

Our guide to certification requirements for private school teachers explains how these rules work across the states.

Your application has three core documents, and each one works hardest when it is built for this sector rather than recycled from somewhere else.

Resume.

Lead with your subject.

Put your degree, your teaching experience and your work with young people — coaching, tutoring, subbing, fellowships — at the top, and translate career-changer experience into classroom terms: a lab scientist becomes someone who has spent a decade teaching technical material to beginners.

Teaching philosophy statement.

Have a short one written before you need it: a page on how you teach, why you teach that way, and what you expect students to be able to do.

Schools that ask for one will want your actual practice, not a paraphrase of someone else's.

References.

Line up three people who have seen you teach or lead young people: a supervising teacher or mentor from subbing or fieldwork, a coach or program director, and an academic or industry reference.

Ask them before you list them, and tell them which schools and subjects you are pursuing.

Be ready for what follows the documents too.

If a school asks you to teach a demo lesson, bring a lesson from your real subject at the right grade level — our demo lesson guide walks through what to prepare.

The independent school hiring calendar is real, and it is concentrated.

Carney Sandoe & Associates says the season begins around January and that the bulk of its work with candidates runs January through May, and it recommends that college seniors apply in the first semester of their senior year.

Three practical moves follow from that calendar:

• Assemble your documents and start applying in the fall, ahead of the season's January start, as the firm advises college seniors to do.
• Consider a placement firm: Carney Sandoe's placement services are free to candidates — the hiring schools are its clients and pay any fees.
• Look beyond postings: the firm also runs in-person hiring conferences where candidates interview with independent schools directly.

Apply wide rather than narrow, and keep your materials current through the spring so a late opening finds you ready.

When you are ready to look, private school teacher jobs on our board are open now.

No single timeline covers every route in, because three clocks run at once: the degree clock, the certificate clock and the hiring calendar.

If your degree is finished and your target schools are in categories where the state does not require a certificate, the timeline is the search itself.

That means documents and first applications in the fall, ahead of the January season, and a start the following school year.

The season's January start is exactly why the placement firm tells college seniors to apply in the first semester of senior year.

If the schools you want sit in a category where your state does require certification, the certificate clock is your state's to set: what it runs is defined by the agency that issues certificates.

Check the route and its current requirements with your state education agency, then put that time in front of the hiring season.

If you are starting without either piece finished, the degree and the experience come first, and some teaching fellowships are built for exactly that stage.

Plan backward from the season: certificate, documents and first applications in the fall, interviews through spring, a start the following school year.

Career information, not legal advice: certification requirements for private school teachers are set by state education agencies and vary by school category. Confirm the current rules with your state agency before you apply.