I work at a private school.  There are a few incorrect stigmas about private school that I’ve heard from other public school teachers.  We can be viewed inferior to public schools since we are able to “teach what we want” and not every teacher is required to have a credential.  Sometimes we are viewed as snobby and over-pretentious. 

I’m not here to change anyone’s mind about our school but I will say this about it: I love working at a private school.  It’s true, we do not have the same demands as public schools, but that doesn’t mean that we have full reign to do whatever we’d like in our classroom.  We do have the freedom to skip a chapter in a text book if we know that the students will be covering that content the following year.  We have the freedom to slow down in math if we have a good number of students who need more time to master a concept.  Our administrators support us if we don’t like our curriculum and want to switch to a new publisher, provided we have the funds to do so.  

Here are some of the bigger differences between our school and public school. We don’t give state testing and we’re not required to teach to the state standards. We do however give the students a yearly test to assess not only what our students learned, but of the quality of our curriculum and our program as a whole.  We don’t teach to the state standards, but they are still important to us.  In fact, we also look at the national standards and see how we can implement them in our classroom if our curriculum isn’t doing so.

I know a lot of you are wondering about the credentials... yes we are all state credentialed teachers.  In fact, we have other certifications that we must get on top of what the state requires.  All our teachers must receive certification from the Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI).  Also, we are an accredited school so we are held to strict standards, and must maintain those standards with each renewal.  So yes, we’re educated and we know what we’re doing.

That being said, I hope that my blog is useful for teachers at all types schools.