Educational careers require teachers to commit to continuing education. This usually takes the form of mandatory trainings held at various points throughout the year. Through these sessions, educators who haven’t been inside a college classroom in twenty years can learn about new curricula, teaching theories, or even technologies like artificial intelligence.
This is not to say that educators are required to go to graduate school. However, doing so can often be beneficial. In this article, we take a look at how graduate degrees help educators adapt to changing learning environments.
The Case for Graduate School
Let’s start by identifying what you can do with a graduate degree in education. To work as a teacher, you need only an undergraduate degree and a teaching license.
Technically, your degree does not even need to be in education as long as you are able to obtain a legally valid license from another source.
However, if you want an administrative job, you will almost always need a graduate degree. Why is that beneficial? There are a few reasons:
- Higher Salary: Administrators can make six-figure salaries, whereas teachers, as you won’t be surprised to learn, very rarely do.
- Bigger Impact: Administrators also touch more lives than teachers do, even if their interactions are indirect. An overworked teacher might see thirty students a year, while an administrator will make choices that impact hundreds of students.
All of this speaks to what graduate school can do for you as a professional. But it doesn’t quite make a convincing argument for why someone who intends to stay in a classroom might consider it. There are a few more points to keep in mind.
For one thing, graduate school for teachers is often free or reduced in price thanks to district-sponsored tuition assistance. This means you can satisfy your continuing learning requirements, improve your skills, and add an accomplishment to your name at a significantly reduced cost compared to most people.
A graduate degree will also increase your salary, though to a more modest extent than would be the case if you were considering a career in administrative work. More importantly, it will help make you better at your job.
And how, you would like to know, does it manage that?
Graduate School Helps Teachers Prepare for Change
One of the things that graduate school emphasizes more than undergraduate studies is the importance of research.
Graduate students of education are taught at a higher level how to understand theory and even contribute to it. Simply by putting a higher emphasis on the elasticity of pedagogy, graduate school teaches educators the importance of being open to constant improvement.
There is also an obvious emphasis on what’s happening now. What is the most current emphasis in the world of education? While teachers who are not considering a graduate degree will learn about this, it’s an entirely different thing to focus on the most up-to-date pedagogical knowledge in a classroom environment.
Networking
Maybe just as importantly, teachers enrolled in graduate programs develop a social network of similarly minded professionals that can absolutely be utilized outside the classroom.
Networking in education isn’t quite the same as it is in the world of business. Since most teachers aren’t leveraging their connections to stack cash, they might use them as a way of troubleshooting a problem or even connecting with a position at a new school better aligned with their personal philosophy toward education.
It’s important to understand that while education theories do change all the time, that’s not the same as saying every school will accept the same philosophy.
Standardized curriculum requirements ensure that a student in one school district will graduate knowing at least the same basic facts as a student in a neighboring district, but how they get there can vary dramatically. An educator might gravitate more toward one approach than another.
Graduate programs and the community they provide can be an excellent way for teachers to find their tribe and possibly form connections that change their professional life forever.
How Necessary is It?
How does medium necessary sound? Here’s what’s true: About half of the school teachers working in 2020 held a graduate degree. For context, less than 15% of the general population can claim that particular distinction.
Going to graduate school is a common next step for educators who want to deepen their understanding of the craft. It’s not a requirement.
Teachers gravitate towards graduate school, maybe for the natural reason that they are predisposed toward higher learning. Who, after all, is more likely than they to see the value in learning at the highest level?
That said, if you don’t feel like graduate school is right for you, that’s ok. It’s difficult to balance professional life with continuous learning.
Most graduate schools do optimize their programs to conform to a teacher’s schedule, but that doesn’t necessarily leave time for other important things. Like family. Or sleep. You can be very serious about your career and still maintain a strict boundary concerning which side of the teacher’s desk you sit behind.
As long as you maintain a curious mind and embrace the spirit of continuous learning, graduate school is not necessary.
Conclusion
Graduate school isn’t the only way for teachers to prepare themselves for an ever-evolving professional environment. It is, however, a very good way. Of course, an inescapable fact is that no matter how well graduate school might prepare a student for handling change, at least some of the information they acquire in the program will age like milk.
The need for continuous learning doesn’t end the day you get your graduate degree, nor would any teacher be expected to continue enrolling in master’s programs indefinitely. Even if you do go to graduate school, you’ll need to remain equally committed to continuing education requirements for the rest of your career. That’s just the life of a teacher—they can’t seem to stay out of school.
