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How Do I Become A Teacher?

 

edprep-icon.gifOhio has many different types of teachers! If you want to teach multiple subjects, you may enjoy teaching students in elementary or middle school. If you would prefer to teach a specific subject you may enjoy teaching older students. Below is an entire list of Ohio’s first teaching licenses organized by age ranges.

Click on each license type for a brief description including the teaching fields available within each license.

  1. Early Childhood Licensure  
  2. Early Childhood Intervention Specialist Licensure  
  3. Middle Childhood Licensure  
  4. Adolescence to Young Adult (AYA) Licensure  
  5. Intervention Specialist Licensure  
  6. Multi-Age Licensure  
  7. Career Technical Licensure  
  8. Associate Licensure

Have a better idea of what type of teacher you are interested in becoming? Once you know the types of licenses and teaching fields you are interested in, you may use the Educator Licensure Program Finder! The Educator Licensure Program Finder will give you a list of institutions that have been state approved to offer a program that leads to an Ohio license. By clicking on an institution you can visit that institutions College of Education website to learn more about the program.  

Interested in switching careers and becoming a teacher? Not certain where to begin? Read more about the options available to you here in Ohio.

Educator licensure programs in Ohio must include all of the components required by Ohio law for the program to be approved by the Ohio Board of Regents. To be recommended for the resident educator license (a four-year license issued to a first-time teacher by the Ohio Department of Education) at the end of your teacher licensure program, you must also pass the state licensure test(s) required for the teaching license you are pursuing. The Five-Year Associate license currently are not included in the resident educator program.

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  1. Early Childhood Licensure
    This license requires a bachelor’s degree (or higher) and allows you to teach grades Pre-Kindergarten through 3rd grade. The Early Childhood license is not broken apart into separate teaching fields.
    *Ohio also offers a Pre-kindergarten license at the associate degree level which allows you to teach just Pre-kindergarten (see license type eight).
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  2. Early Childhood Intervention Specialist Licensure
    This license requires a bachelor’s degree (or higher) and allows you to teach students in grades Pre-Kindergarten to 3rd grade with specific needs.
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  3. Middle Childhood Licensure
    This license requires a bachelor’s degree (or higher) andallows you to teach grades 4 through 9 in two of the following teaching fields:
    • Language Arts and Reading
    • Mathematics
    • Science
    • Social Studies

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  4. Adolescence to Young Adult (AYA) Licensure 
    This license requires a bachelor’s degree (or higher) and allows you to teach in one specific teaching field in grades 7 through 12. Specific teaching fields include the following:
    • Integrated Language Arts
    • Integrated Mathematics
    • Integrated Social Studies

      There are 11 science fields in the AYA license. Some licenses would allow you to teach just one specific area in science, while others would allow you to teach multiple areas of science:

    • Earth Sciences
    • Earth Sciences/Chemistry
    • Earth Sciences/ Physics
    • Integrated Science
    • Life Sciences (aka Biology)
    • Life Sciences/Chemistry
    • Life Sciences/Earth Sciences
    • Life Sciences/Physics
    • Physical Sciences: Chemistry
    • Physical Sciences: Physics
    • Physical Sciences (Chemistry and Physics) 

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  5. Intervention Specialist Licensure 
    This license requires a bachelor’s degree (or higher) and allows you to teach students with specific needs in the following teaching fields:
    • Gifted (K-12)
    • Mild/Moderate Educational Needs  (K-12)
    • Moderate/Intensive Educational Needs (K-12)
    • Visually Impaired (PK-12)
    • Hearing Impaired (PK-12)

    *Ohio also offers an Interpreter for Hearing Impaired license at the associate degree level (see license type eight) and an Early Childhood Intervention Specialist license (see license type two).
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  6. Multi-Age Licensure 
    This license requires a bachelor’s degree (or higher) and allows you to teach a specific elective content area in grades Pre-Kindergarten through 12th grade in the following teaching fields:
    • American Sign Language
    • Computer Information Science
    • Dance
    • Drama/Theater
    • Health
    • Library/Media
    • Music
    • Physical Education
    • TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages)
    • Visual Arts

      There are also multiple Multi-Age Foreign Language teaching programs in Ohio including:

    • Arabic
    • Chinese
    • French
    • German
    • Greek
    • Hebrew
    • Italian
    • Japanese
    • Latin
    • Russian
    • Spanish
    • Swahili
  7. Career Technical Licensure
    This license allows you to teach grades 4 through 12 in areas related to agriculture, health careers, business, family and consumer sciences, marketing, and trade and industry.
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  8. Associate Licensure 
    This license requires an associate’s degree (or higher) and includes the following fields:
    • Pre-Kindergarten
    • Educational Paraprofessional
    • Interpreter for Hearing Impaired

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