Health teachers educate their students about detailed information regarding nutrition, dietary science and healthy lifestyle habits. In addition to dietary knowledge, health teachers also help their students understand more about the disease prevalence and preventative measures.
In an age where there is an abundance of misinformation to potentially misguide children looking to learn more about nutrition, health teachers have a more important role than ever to make sure that they can give their students the benefit of credible facts.
Education, Skills and Certification Requirements
It is necessary for anybody who wants to be a health teacher to have a bachelors degree, and naturally, the degree should be in a relevant field such as education or health science. Following the acquisition of their degree, teachers will also have to receive official licensure from their state’s Department of Education in order to become fully-fledged educators and legally conduct classroom sessions at an accredited educational institution. Before starting their career as a teacher, prospective educators will generally need to earn about one or two years of experience in managing classroom settings by undergoing supervised student teaching sessions.
Because the role of a teacher requires constant engagement and feedback collection from the students, it is ideal for a health teacher to have strong communication skills. In addition to their own credentials, a health teacher should also be able to exercise patience in instructing students who may not be as adept at quickly absorbing new information as their more gifted peers.
Aside from their basic academic prowess, some students may also have difficult personalities and behavioral habits requiring patience to handle, which means it’s important for teachers to be capable of calmly keeping their composure to command respect as an authority figure.
Roles and Responsibilities
The exact content of a health teacher’s lesson plans will generally be designed at an age-appropriate level for the students that they are teaching. While younger students may have their education majorly tailored around basic nutrition information regarding macronutrients and exercise, older students might be given the opportunity to learn about more mature matters such as the dangers of substance abuse.
A health teacher will have to personally develop a cohesive lesson plan to help their students progress through the material at a rate that lets them digest it naturally. In addition to teaching students the lessons in a conventional manner, health teachers also commonly take time to counsel the students one on one. By counseling students personally and directly, health teachers can ensure that any areas of information that certain students find more challenging than others can be clarified.
To make sure that their lesson plan is fully efficient at helping students reach a satisfactory level of understanding, health teachers will periodically take time to reassess and rework their lesson plan for better classroom management; through this, the efficiency of the teacher as an educator can ideally increase in tandem with the knowledge of their students over the course of the semester.
Summary and Job Outlook
A health teacher can educate students at both primary and secondary level. Ideally, educating students about the fine details of health and disease prevention can ingrain in them a positive roadmap for more health-conducive lifestyle habits moving forward.
Related Resource: What is a Director of Instruction in Education?
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the annual median pay for health teachers is around $40,000, and job outlook is projected to be about 13% by the year 2024.
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