Teaching can be a very rewarding career with a lot of opportunities for progression for teachers who want to move up the ranks. And, teaching comes with a wide range of career opportunities to get into outside of being a teacher from educational psychologists to social work and school counseling. If you are passionate about helping your students learn and improve their knowledge, are a supportive and caring person with a genuine desire to make a difference, you will go far in this profession. But before you can take advantage of many of the opportunities available in this field, it’s often necessary to obtain a graduate degree in education or an education-related subject.
Choosing the Right Field for Your Career:
You can get a general master’s degree in education or you can choose to focus on a more specialized subject. To figure out which is the best option for you, it’s important to consider your career goals and what you enjoy doing the most in your work. If you’d like to keep your options open, a general master’s degree in education will open up many different doors. But if you’re sure of a specialty that you are passionate about, it makes sense to take a more focused program, like a master’s in early education, moderate disabilities, or English as a second language. Check out the list of programs available from https://online.merrimack.edu/ to find one that’s best aligned with you.
What Do You Enjoy Most About Your Work?
With a variety of different options available for those who want to get a master’s degree in education, narrowing your choices down can be difficult if you don’t have a clear goal for your career. Consider the parts of your job that you enjoy the most. If you know that you want to continue teaching, you might want to consider a master’s degree that focuses on teaching a certain age group such as early years or middle school. Or, if you enjoy coming up with new learning materials and lesson planning, a master’s in curriculum and instruction might be your ideal fit.
What About Other Related Career Options?
Perhaps you would like to continue working in a school with children but want to pivot your career away from teaching. The good news is that with teaching experience, you are in a good position to move into several different school-based careers, like educational psychology or school guidance counseling. If your favorite part of the job is helping students through problems and you are a good listener, a master’s degree that allows you to shift your career from classroom teaching to a role where you can offer more one-on-one support to students who need it might be the right pathway for you.
With various options to move in different directions or climb the career ladder in teaching, it’s no surprise that you might be stuck when choosing the right master’s degree for you. The first step is to define your future career goals by considering what you enjoy most about your work and whether you want to continue teaching or step into a different side of education.
