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Becoming a Teacher’s Aide: Everything You Need to Know
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Working with children as a teacher’s aide is an incredibly rewarding experience. It’s a career where you have the opportunity to support the development of children during their education journey. You’ll be making a significant difference to your students as you help them through their school experience. And the teacher’s you work with will also find your support invaluable as you relieve some of their stress.
If you have the passion and dedication to light up the minds of the next generation of Australians, you’re already on your way to becoming a teacher’s aide.
Ready to discover the steps you can take to get qualified and start your career?
What is a teacher’s aide?
A teacher’s aide is a support role to a lead teacher within a school. They help teachers execute both in-class and out-of-class activities while providing support to individual students who may need extra help.
Teacher’s aides are not required to teach any of the classroom content, but rather help guide children to stay on task while helping to develop critical numeracy and literacy skills.
Furthermore, teacher’s aides help with the administrative side of teaching. This includes organising and preparing materials for a lesson, assisting with any necessary paperwork involved with lessons and reporting back to the teacher with any insights into a child’s progress.
How to become a teacher’s aide
Becoming a teacher’s aide will lead to an incredibly fulfilling career. Getting your foot in the door is a fairly straightforward process of four steps:
Decide on the type of teacher's aide you want to be
Decide on the type of role you’d like to have as a teacher’s aide, and what kind of school you’d ideally like to work at.
Get the right qualification
Get a teacher’s aide qualification that suits the role you’d like to be hired into. A qualification is absolutely essential in order to enter this field.
Gain practical work experience
Undertake work experience as a teacher’s aide to gain practical experience and on-the-job training under supervision. These vocational placements will be performed during your qualification.
Apply for teacher's aide jobs
Apply for a teacher’s aide role. Don’t be afraid to aim high, because your qualification, work experience and passion will make you stand out as a candidate.
1. Types of teacher’s aides you could become
There are different types of teacher’s aides that vary slightly in their focus or specialisation.
General teacher’s aide
This type of education support worker is generally hired by schools to help assist school teachers with the day-to-day running of a classroom. Often, they find themselves assigned to classes with children who have trouble concentrating, need extra help due to physical or intellectual special needs, or who have English as a second language.
As a general teacher’s aide, you can work with a range of ages from Prep to high school-aged. Those who prefer to work with older children may also look into youth work, as this career path provides support to children in a more informal education setting.
Integration aides
Integration aides are very similar to general teacher’s aides but have a more significant focus on children with special needs, such as those who may have any intellectual, social or physical issues.
Integration aides can work with a wide range of children from those who have Autism Spectrum Disorder, Down’s Syndrome or those who have unpredictable behavioural patterns. Depending on a school’s funding, these types of aides are required on a ‘needs basis’ for special education support.
Early childhood teacher’s aides
These types of teaching assistants work specifically with preschool aged children (generally five years and under), so enjoying working with young children is a must!
Preschool teacher’s aides assist with classroom activities such as story-time and art projects to ensure the lead teacher has time to complete any necessary paperwork and just generally have a break.
Preschool years are essential to a child’s educational and social development. Teacher’s aides play an important role in helping to uncover any children who may struggle with these things.
2. Teacher’s aide qualifications to get you a job
Choosing a qualification can be tricky, because there are a few education pathways available to become a teacher’s aide and each will qualify you to provide different levels of care. At a minimum you’ll need a Certificate III in Education Support to get your foot in the door, but there are a couple of other qualifications that can lead you down even more rewarding avenues.
Certificate III in Education Support
This is a great entry-level course where you’ll discover the basics of classroom-learning and how to work under the direct supervision of a teacher. Your learnings and skills development in this qualification will be centred around working effectively in a mainstream classroom.
This is a good qualification if you’re keen to start your career in a mainstream classroom as a general teacher’s aide.
Certificate IV in Education Support
In this qualification you’ll learn all the basics covered in the Cert III, with the addition of skills development for working with special needs students. This includes students with autism, physical disabilities, learning disorders and significant behavioural issues. This qualification is definitely favoured by schools, as most of the work teacher’s aides do is centred around helping students with special needs.
You’ll find this qualification will open a lot more doors for you. You’ll be able to work as an integration aide or a general teacher’s aide in a much wider range of schools, including special education schools.
Diploma of Early Childhood Education and Care
This qualification prepares you to work in a vast range of early childcare roles, including kindergarten assistant. You’ll learn the skills required to care for and support preschool-aged children (zero to six years old), and how to deliver education programs for children.
This qualification is crucial if your goal is to become an early childhood educator or assistant. You’ll be able to work in early childcare centres, like kindergartens.
When browsing courses, make sure you choose one that will qualify you in the state you want to work in.
It’s also a good idea to jump into some free online teacher’s aide courses to bulk up your resume and give yourself a wide berth of expertise. While you likely won’t get support in these free short courses like you will in a Certificate III or IV, they’re a great way to keep learning while you’re job hunting (even once you’re in the job).
It’s important to note that all education qualifications require a minimum amount of hours of Work Placement.
Work placement is hands-on practical experience at a formally recognised education provider. It’s essential everyone receives this experience because it allows you to put your theoretical knowledge into practice in a safe environment.
3. What does a teacher’s aide do? What to expect on your work placement
As a teacher’s aide, you’ll have a variety of broad, overarching responsibilities as part of your role. You’ll begin to learn about these in your teacher’s aide course, and will be able to put them into practice when you undertake your work placement.
Your responsibilities as a teacher’s aide include:
- Supporting students’ learning
- Assisting with student behaviour management
- Providing care and support to special needs students (if you have the necessary qualifications and skills)
- Helping with various admin, organisational and preparation tasks necessary for the smooth running of the classroom.
To fulfil these overarching responsibilities, you’ll likely be performing duties such as:
- Implementing teaching strategies like gamification and problem-based learning
- Building rapport with students
- Circulating the classroom to assist small groups or individual students
- Assisting students to develop social skills
- Distributing and collecting class-work
- Preparing work spaces for students (indoors and outdoors)
- Teaching students how to learn
- Developing a positive and harmonious relationship with the classroom teacher
As a teacher’s aide, it’s also important to know what not to do. While you’ll want to foster a fun, supportive learning environment, it’s crucial for your students that you avoid:
Being overly helpful
By doing everything for a student, always ‘rescuing’ them or giving them constant direct support, they’ll never have an opportunity to problem solve and make mistakes on their own. These are key parts of learning how to learn, and all students need to have these experiences to grow.
Over-correcting
It’s important for students to feel comfortable answering questions, whether they’re right or wrong.
Getting frustrated by poor behaviour
Whether you realise or not, there is always a reason behind poor behaviour. Try to read and understand it to help them overcome the issue causing them to act out.
Important teacher’s aide skills to hone
Personal qualities:
- Patience
- Creativity
- Encouraging demeanour
- Enjoy working with children
- Friendly and warm
Key skills:
- Technical knowledge of teaching strategies
- Decision-making
- Computer and technology skills
- Ability to simplify complex information
- Conflict mediation
4. Applying for jobs in this booming field
The future industry growth for education aides is projected to be very strong, with an estimated 17,000 job openings per year until 2023.
This is incredibly strong job growth, which is great news for when you start applying for jobs. You can be quite confident that the demand for teacher’s aides means it won’t be too hard to get accepted for job interviews. And once you’re in the interview, the only thing you need to focus on is impressing your prospective employer.
Some ways to prepare for the interview are by:
Researching the school you’ve applied to work at
What are their values, and how do you exemplify those in your personal and professional life? Try to memorise information about the school’s history to show your interviewer that you’ve done your research. Your research should also help you answer the common question: “Why do you want to work at this school?”
Talk up your strengths
You need to sell yourself as an employee, so prepare some examples of things you excel at as a teacher’s aide, and how you’ve demonstrated them in your work experience placement.
Be prepared for specific teacher’s aide questions
These could be anything from technical teaching theory, to what you would do in a difficult situation with students.
Some schools may also require you to perform a teaching demonstration as part of your application. While it might get your nerves going, take this opportunity to really demonstrate the strengths you spoke about in your interview. This is your best chance to leave a lasting impression on your interviewer.
An overview of the industry
Demand for education aides is highest in Queensland (27.3%), Victoria (22.2%) and New South Wales (21.7%).
A teacher’s aide often works part-time due to most schools hiring extra help on an ‘as needed-basis.’ Hence, many receive an hourly wage rather than a salary. The average hourly rate for a teacher’s aide is $29.97.
This industry is female-dominated with 90% of current workers being female.
JOB OPENINGS P/A
17,000
UNTIL 2023
TEACHER'S AIDES AVERAGE
$29.97
HOURLY PAY
This career path is an excellent choice for those who are looking to return to the workforce or change career paths, as the majority of workers fall into the 45-54 years age bracket (34.1%), with a close 25.6% falling in the 35-44 age bracket.
34.3% of teaching assistants acquire a Certificate III or IV in Education, while another 15.9% will progress to complete a Diploma or Advanced Diploma. Only 11.6% of teacher’s aides hold Bachelor’s Degrees.
Many aides who proceed to complete a Bachelor’s degree tend to specialise in working with children with disabilities or wish to become a fully qualified teacher.
Teacher’s aides are critical to the Australian education system. It’s these individuals who support our teachers and children who may need extra attention throughout their education journey.
If you’re good with kids, have excellent social skills and are patient, becoming a teaching assistant is the right career move for you!
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