Be a Special Ed Teacher

According to recent reports, there are nearly 12,000 special education teaching positions that remain unfilled nationwide.

Though the job of a special educator is consistently challenging, its potential for reward is equally great.  Special educators have the opportunity to work every day with students who need teachers to push them to higher levels of academic achievement and to serve as their educational advocates.  We encourage you to consider teaching special education through the Philadelphia Teaching Fellows program.

What is Special Education?
Special education is a federal and state mandated program that delivers instruction to students with emotional, learning, and/or physical disabilities. The student population served by special education represents a wide spectrum of abilities and disabilities—from mild learning disabilities to severe mental and physical disabilities that require full-time attention and medical services.  In the School District of Philadelphia, we educate over 25,000 students identified with specific disabilities that make them eligible for special education programs and services.

On the school and classroom levels, special education is delivered as either targeted pull-out resource room programs, inclusion classes with special education and general education students together, or self-contained classrooms.  In pull-out programs, special education teachers work with specific students on targeted skill areas, but those students usually spend the rest of their day in mainstream classrooms.  In inclusion classes, a general education and special education teacher work as a team to serve all students.  In self-contained classes, a special education teacher serves a whole class of students who spend the majority of their academic day in one classroom covering a wide range of subject areas.

Learning Support Classrooms
Special education Teaching Fellows are most often placed in Learning Support classrooms unless they have previous experience working with children with more advanced mental or physical disabilities.  Students in Learning Support have specific learning disabilities that are disorders of one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in the understanding or usage of language which may manifest in problems with listening, thinking, reading, writing, spelling, or performing mathematical calculations. 

Training for Special Educators
Special education Teaching Fellows go through our training institute that is heavily grounded in research-based strategies proven to be effective in impacting students with special needs. Fellows will be taught by an experienced special educator who will serve as their Fellow Advisor throughout the training institute. Special educators will learn invaluable skills including the creation and monitoring of individualized education plans (IEPs) and providing modifications and accommodations to ensure their students' academic needs are being met.

Another important component of the training of special education Fellows and their ongoing professional development is continuous enrollment through a university partner certification program. Fellows will become dual certified in special education and elementary education.

Praxis Testing Requirements for Special Educators
Candidates for the Philadelphia Teaching Fellows interested in special education will need to take and pass the Praxis I and the necessary Praxis II exams before the start of our training institute. Special education candidates are required to take the Praxis II: Education of Exceptional Students test as well as the Praxis II: Fundamental Subjects exam. Since special education Teaching Fellows will be instructing middle or high school students, candidates will also need to take a third Praxis II exam to demonstrate proficiency in one of the core content areas-- math, science, or English. Although the secondary exam is preferable, candidates can also opt to take the middle years exam in one of these core content areas. Please visit the Testing Requirements section of our website for more information.

Special Education & The Philadelphia Teaching Fellows Program
The Fellows program is committed to hiring outstanding special education teachers to ensure that each student in Philadelphia has access to a high-quality education.  Individuals from a wide variety of academic and professional backgrounds can qualify to teach special education if interested.  Special education is consistently one of the School District of Philadelphia’s most critical high-need subject areas.  Special education Teaching Fellows will teach at the middle or high school level and will specialize in one of the core content areas-- math, science, English, or social studies. The need for math and science special educators is especially acute. Please be sure to mark your preference for teaching special education while completing your online application for our program.

If you have a question specifically related to teaching special education in Philadelphia, please email SPED@philadelphiateachingfellows.org.