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Use Teacher Shortages to Your Advantage
One of the best ways to increase your chances of landing a great teaching job in California is to help alleviate the teacher shortage in certain areas and subjects.
While every California school district is different, in general, most have an ongoing, pressing need for science and math teachers. Specialized areas such as bilingual education and special education also are often short of qualified teachers. Rural and urban school districts usually have a harder time finding teachers, too.
These shortages can be good news for aspiring teachers. You’ll not only have an easier time finding a teaching job if you’re willing to teach in these underserved areas, but you can usually command a higher salary and more lucrative benefits, too.
To promote teaching in California, the state’s Department of Education (CDE) created the website TEACH California (www.teachcalifornia.org) to recruit more teachers to high-needs teaching areas. The site explains the teacher preparation process, assists prospective teachers in becoming credentialed, and offers links to educational resources.
A good way to find out which areas of California have the most available
teaching jobs is to search DataQuest (http://dq.cde.ca.gov/dataquest/dataquest.asp). Created by the CDE, this searchable database contains figures for projected teacher hires in school districts around the state. Finding out which districts expect to need the most teachers in your subject can help you target your job search and increase your chances of landing a great teaching job.