Frequently Asked Questions

If you want to teach students in preschool to grade 12, you have many options, including becoming a principal, school counselor, curriculum coach, music educator, physical education coach, superintendent, or science, math, social studies, English, French, or Spanish teacher.

We have a degree, certificate program, or path for you. We're even currently working on a birth-to-five-year-old pathway. Use our Be a Teacher page as a resource to help you realize your passion.

Teaching allows you to have time with your family and for pursuing other passions. Working approximately nine to 10 months each year leaves room for travel and hobbies.

For an average career of 13 years, with an average class size of 26 students, you have the potential to positively impact 338 lives. If you teach for 25 years, that number jumps to 650 lives. Not a bad day job.

There's always going to be jobs for educators. With the current teacher shortage, you can work in any state or country—especially if you get a degree in special education or wish to teach math, science, or technology.

Furthermore, many of LSU’s students are offered full-time positions before they graduate. If they accept an offer as a second semester senior, they frequently have the summer to prep a classroom and go straight into the fall. Teaching is one of the few professions you can enter immediately after receiving your undergraduate degree that offers good salary and benefits. 

Did we mention the university's annual School Professionals’ Networking Day? This annual event hosts hundreds of schools and districts from K-12 education systems around the country for LSU students and alumni to network and interview for positions as teachers, counselors, school librarians and media specialists, school psychologists, speech pathologists/therapists, audiologists, school leaders/administrators, social workers, and other school-based professional roles.

Although it takes a little more time to complete the degree, you can learn how to teach in a traditional classroom and how to work with children with mild- to moderate-disabilities. Those skills can be applied whether you’re a teacher who comes into the classroom to work with individual students or whether you have your own classroom.

We do have a special education minor.  The only difference is you don’t get the classroom experience of the dual certification. If you are sure you want to teach special education, dual certification is the way to go. 

As a freshman, you can live at Cypress Hall/Evangeline Hall/North Hall, our residential colleges on campus.
Freshman year is usually the hardest year. But, instead of coming to LSU and possibly feeling lost among 30,000+ students, you can have an instant community of 290 people in your residential college who have the same majors and classes. Some classes even take place in your building. You also have the benefits of being at a large state school: the opportunity to meet new people, join organizations (such as A+PEL), and enjoy cultural and the sporting events. It’s the best of both worlds. Plus, Cypress, Evangeline, North, and other residential hall students tend to have higher GPAs and retention rates than the general student population.

You can study abroad. LSU has global teaching opportunities. In the past, our elementary education pre-k through third grade pre-teachers went to Italy to study the Reggio-Emilio education philosophy and observe its principles in action at our LSU Early Childhood Education Laboratory Preschool. Dual certification and music education students have also had the experience of teaching in Chile.

You will be part of a small class. Our teacher prep programs have 20 to 25 students in each class. You get the benefits of being at a large university and being in a very close-knit cohort and getting that personal experience with our professors.

You will make lifelong friends and colleagues. Once you get to the junior year, you move through the curriculum with the same classmates. You grow together as individuals and future teachers. After graduation, you’ve got a set of colleagues working in various schools that you can call upon beyond your time at LSU.

You will participate in classroom observation and student teaching experiences for a range of grades to better understand the educational continuum.  In some programs, once a student decides what grade he/she wants to teach, they never see other grades. For example, if you want to teach third grade, you may never see first and fifth. At LSU, if you want to teach Pre-K, you have experiences with Pre-K, kindergarten, first, and second. We try to get you in every rotation.

You are likely to be paired with a teaching mentor in the parish you’re from or where you’d like to work. These days, teachers have many roles to fill in the classroom from educator to mentor to nurse. Classroom management is an essential skill. As a student, it’s invaluable to have a mentor teacher show you the best practices for establishing strong routines, preventing and resolving conflict, and other interpersonal situations that must exist before learning may even begin. Many students maintain that relationship with their mentor teacher well after graduation.

You will get research experience. The state is now requiring teachers to gather research data. Since LSU is a Research 1 institution, we encourage students not only to collaborate on ongoing research but to devise their own research projects. If you have an idea for research, the professor will work with you to cultivate it. Many of our students graduate with prestigious projects and publications and become recognized as distinguished undergraduate research scholars.

You have the opportunity to complete a five-year master’s program. Usually a master’s program in education takes an additional two to three years after graduation. However, with LSU’s Master of Art in Teaching, you can receive an advanced degree in one additional year. This cost-effective program gives you more job opportunities and the ability to move up to administration after teaching for a few years.

The results speak for themselves. Because of their extensive academic and classroom experiences, our graduates say they come out teaching more like a second- or third-year teacher versus a first-year teacher.