Basics

Here you'll find valuable information on finding jobs within the private school sector. Get the basics on everything from job searches to salary and contract negotiations. Explore the dos and don’ts of private school employment and learn your marketability quotient.

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Your Job Search Is Taking Forever

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Your Job Search Is Taking Forever
A search for a teaching job in the midst of a severe recession takes much longer than it does in good economic times. Here's how to handle this situation.
It can be very frustrating and demoralizing to search endlessly for a job and not find one. That's the reality, unfortunately, of this post-recession job market. Common sense would tell you that well-qualified, credentialled, experienced teachers should be able to find a teaching job in fairly short order, say 90-120 days, right? Wrong. That's the sad truth about the current economic conditions. Here's why.

Many school districts have cut teaching positions.

It has been hard to avoid hearing reports in both national and local media about cutbacks in public school district teaching staffs. Public school districts depend on real estate taxes for most of their revenues. They also expect their state legislatures to contribute additional funding. However, these traditional sources of revenue have been shrinking at an alarming rate. Even with the usual kind of accounting maneuvers, such as delaying expenditures for maintenance projects and upgrades of systems and infrastructure, school districts still find themselves in the uncomfortable and extremely unpopular position of having to cut teaching positions. Increasing class size is another outcome of these financially hard times.

As a result, thousands of teachers are actively looking for jobs. TMarket conditions have intensified the competition for the limited number of jobs available in both the public and private school sectors.

Colleges and universities have reduced their teaching staffs.

A quick scan of Inside Higher Ed will reveal the tough employment environment in higher education. If you are tenured faculty, hopefully, you still have a job. But many colleges

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Conducting a Job Search Via Social Media

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Conducting a Job Search Via Social Media
Social media such as Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs and Facebook offer special opportunities for the private school job-seeker.

Finding a private school job was fairly simple years ago. You kept your resume and curriculum vitae up to date, did a bit of networking, attended a couple of professional conferences and that was pretty much it. News of job openings would come your way. You followed up with your application, were interviewed and, hopefully, won the appointment. It doesn't work that way any more.

As a result many teachers and administrators used to doing things the old way will look askance at the idea of using online sites and online tools to conduct their private school job search. I would suggest that you might want to think twice before you cast aspersions on these new ways of finding a job. You just might be on your way to becoming a digital dinosaur. Now, you wouldn't want to be a digital dinosaur, would you?

First of all, understand that online tools are simply that - tools. A chisel in the hands of a novice makes clumsy cuts and produces amateurish results. The same is true of most online tools and social media. You need to learn how to use them effectively to land the job you really want. Each of these tools and applications is effective when used by itself. But for the best results I recommend that you use all of them. Using these new tools effectively takes practice and patience. You cannot realistically expect results within hours of your first posts. Give it time.

Let's focus

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Job Search Resources

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Job Search Resources
This guide is designed to provide teachers and administrators seeking employment in private schools a road map for the job search process.

This guide is designed to provide teachers and administrators seeking employment in private schools a road map for the job search process. It is written for teachers as well as admissions and business office professionals and those seeking positions as dean of students and head of school.You will find plenty of practical advice about applying, networking, using job boards and much more.

What About Teaching Overseas?

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What About Teaching Overseas?
With the job market looking bleak, teaching is an option many recent college graduates are considering. Teaching overseas has all kinds of attractive features. We look at private school teaching jobs and explain what is involved in finding one, applying and more.

If you are graduating this year, you probably have a game plan for finding a job in place. Naturally I wish you good luck with that and sincerely hope it works out. On the other hand should things not pan out the way you planned, why not consider teaching? We need teachers. We need talented teachers. In both public and private sectors. At home and abroad. I have several articles on finding , applying for and interviewing for private school jobs. So for the purposes of this article, we are going to look at teaching overseas.

Overseas? Yes, there are plenty of teaching jobs overseas. Hundreds of private schools in Europe, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean are always looking for qualified teachers. Of course, you probably have already seen dozens of emails from ESL schools in Taiwan. Are those jobs real? Yes, they most certainly are. But, caveat emptor. Do your research carefully. There are some lemons in the bunch. besides teaching English as a Second Language isn't all you are capable of doing, is it? Laura Light, Director of Educational Staffing for International Schools Services, explains what it is like to work in an overseas school.

We are not talking about only ESL teaching jobs. How about teaching in a country like Argentina? For example, let's say you are a Spanish speaking graduate with a degree in American language and literature from Brown

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Timeline for Finding a Private School Job

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Timeline for Finding a Private School Job
Finding a private school job takes time. Lots of time. This time line will focus your efforts on what has to be done and when it ideally should be done.

Finding a job in a private school is a process that takes many months, sometimes much longer, to accomplish. The following timeline assumes that you will be flexible and open-minded. Finding your dream job is not always possible. It is much more realistic to try to find a position that has most of what you are looking for now as well as the potential to turn into that dream job you are seeking.

Winter

  • Make arrangements to meet employers and be interviewed at the NAIS Annual Conference which takes place in February/March. Check the NAIS site for time and venue.
  • Review openings listed on Klingenstein Job Bank.
  • Review openings posted on various state, regional, and national association websites.
  • Attend interviews.
  • Negotiate job offers.
  • Request official copies of your transcripts, certifications, and degrees.
  • Notify your network as soon as you accept a job.
  • Send handwritten thank-you notes.

This video explains how to get your college transcript.

Without a doubt, the advantage which job seekers in the 21st century have over previous generations is being able to do it online. You can learn about any job opening the minute it is posted online. The same applies to niche employment such as teaching and administrative positions in private schools. At the very least, most schools will have an employment link on their sites. There may not be many listings depending on the time of the year. However, bookmark the

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