If you love art and want to pass on the joy of creating art to others, consider the role of an art teacher. An art teacher helps students learn about the history of art and provides opportunities for students to bring out their inner artist by exploring their artistic creativity.
An art teacher works primarily to bring knowledge of artistic and creative concepts, including color, shape, and texture, to students in elementary, secondary, or postsecondary learning environments. They also plan lessons and monitor inventory and sourcing of art supplies and tools. They may teach students how to paint, draw, create sculptures, ceramics, or learn photography. They work regular school hours, but they may need to put in additional hours to plan projects, prepare lessons, or attend staff meetings.
If you aspire to be an art teacher, you will need a bachelor's degree in fine art with a teaching qualification. Prior teaching experience may help boost your job prospects. To be successful, you must encourage and inspire students to practice art skills, art techniques and explore different mediums. Generally, art teachers work in public or private schools, but they may work privately at art centers or artist workshops. As with any teaching job, the rewards associated with being an art teacher are incredible.
Art Teacher Overview
Art Teacher Careers
There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being an art teacher. For example, did you know that they make an average of $23.91 an hour? That's $49,736 a year!
Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 3% and produce 53,100 job opportunities across the U.S.
What Does an Art Teacher Do
There are certain skills that many art teachers have in order to accomplish their responsibilities. By taking a look through resumes, we were able to narrow down the most common skills for a person in this position. We discovered that a lot of resumes listed physical stamina, interpersonal skills and speaking skills.
When it comes to the most important skills required to be an art teacher, we found that a lot of resumes listed 22.7% of art teachers included classroom management, while 8.0% of resumes included student learning, and 6.0% of resumes included language arts. Hard skills like these are helpful to have when it comes to performing essential job responsibilities.
When it comes to searching for a job, many search for a key term or phrase. Instead, it might be more helpful to search by industry, as you might be missing jobs that you never thought about in industries that you didn't even think offered positions related to the art teacher job title. But what industry to start with? Most art teachers actually find jobs in the education and non profits industries.
How To Become an Art Teacher
If you're interested in becoming an art teacher, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 52.7% of art teachers have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 29.6% of art teachers have master's degrees. Even though most art teachers have a college degree, it's possible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.
Choosing the right major is always an important step when researching how to become an art teacher. When we researched the most common majors for an art teacher, we found that they most commonly earn bachelor's degree degrees or master's degree degrees. Other degrees that we often see on art teacher resumes include associate degree degrees or high school diploma degrees.
You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become an art teacher. In fact, many art teacher jobs require experience in a role such as teacher. Meanwhile, many art teachers also have previous career experience in roles such as substitute teacher or student teacher.
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Art Teacher Career Paths
In addition to switching up your job search, it might prove helpful to look at a career path for your specific job. Now, what's a career path you ask? Well, it's practically a map that shows how you might advance from one job title to another. Our career paths are especially detailed with salary changes. So, for example, if you started out with the role of artist you might progress to a role such as manager eventually. Later on in your career, you could end up with the title education director.
What is the right job for my career path?
Tell us your goals and we'll match you with the rights job to get there.
Average Salary for an Art Teacher
Best Paying Cities
Recently Added Salaries
Job TitleCompany  | Company | Start Date | Salary |
|---|---|---|---|
Dysart Unified School District SY Teacher Art (Arms) SY Teacher Art (Arms) | Dysart Unified School District Dysart Unified School District | 03/28/2021 03/28/2021 | $40,87303/28/2021 $40,873 |
Salem-Keizer School District HS Video Production/MS Digital Arts Teacher-Edge HS Video Production/MS Digital Arts Teacher-Edge | Salem-Keizer School District Salem-Keizer School District | 03/24/2021 03/24/2021 | $42,23403/24/2021 $42,234 |
Dcsdk12 Teacher-Art-High Teacher-Art-High | Dcsdk12 Dcsdk12 | 03/10/2021 03/10/2021 | $39,00003/10/2021 $39,000 |
Garfield School District Re-2 Art Teacher Art Teacher | Garfield School District Re-2 Garfield School District Re-2 | 03/10/2021 03/10/2021 | $36,89603/10/2021 $36,896 |
Academies of Math and Science K-8 Art Teacher Fall 2021 K-8 Art Teacher Fall 2021 | Academies of Math and Science Academies of Math and Science | 02/23/2021 02/23/2021 | $38,00002/23/2021 $38,000 |
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Art Teacher Resumes
Designing and figuring out what to include on your resume can be tough, not to mention time-consuming. That's why we put together a guide that is designed to help you craft the perfect resume for becoming an Art Teacher. If you're needing extra inspiration, take a look through our selection of templates that are specific to your job.
Learn How To Write an Art Teacher Resume
At Zippia, we went through countless Art Teacher resumes and compiled some information about how best to optimize them. Here are some suggestions based on what we found, divided by the individual sections of the resume itself.
View Detailed InformationTop Colleges for Art Teachers
1. University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA • Private
2. Harvard University
Cambridge, MA • Private
3. Northwestern University
Evanston, IL • Private
4. Stanford University
Stanford, CA • Private
5. New York University
New York, NY • Private
6. Boston University
Boston, MA • Private
7. University of Washington
Seattle, WA • Public
8. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, NC • Public
9. SUNY at Buffalo
Buffalo, NY • Public
10. San Diego State University
San Diego, CA • Public
Top Skills For an Art Teacher
The skills section on your resume can be almost as important as the experience section, so you want it to be an accurate portrayal of what you can do. Luckily, we've found all of the skills you'll need so even if you don't have these skills yet, you know what you need to work on. Out of all the resumes we looked through, 22.7% of art teachers listed classroom management on their resume, but soft skills such as physical stamina and interpersonal skills are important as well.
- Classroom Management, 22.7%
- Student Learning, 8.0%
- Language Arts, 6.0%
- Special Education, 5.7%
- Professional Development, 5.1%
- Other Skills, 52.5% See All Art Teacher Skills
Best States For an Art Teacher
Some places are better than others when it comes to starting a career as an art teacher. The best states for people in this position are Connecticut, New York, Maryland, and Alaska. Art teachers make the most in Connecticut with an average salary of $68,836. Whereas in New York and Maryland, they would average $62,115 and $60,118, respectively. While art teachers would only make an average of $58,985 in Alaska, you would still make more there than in the rest of the country. We determined these as the best states based on job availability and pay. By finding the median salary, cost of living, and using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Location Quotient, we narrowed down our list of states to these four.
1. Connecticut
$68,836
Avg. Salary
2. Maryland
$60,118
Avg. Salary
3. New York
$62,115
Avg. Salary
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