School-age teacher job description template (duties, qualifications, schedule)

Every section of a school-age teacher posting does one job: help a candidate who has run an after-school room recognize the seat, and help one who has not screen themselves out.

Three sections carry most of that weight — the duties, the qualifications, and the physical demands and schedule — and the template further down assembles them into a posting you can publish.

Two decisions shape all of them: whether the seat is a lead or an assistant seat, and what happens to the hours when school is out.

Key duties and responsibilities

Write the duties the way the school-age day actually runs, from the moment the bus unloads to the pickup handoff: arrival and sign-in with a headcount you can stand behind, snack, homework or quiet time, active play and group games indoors and out, and the closing handoff to families.

Then add the calendar lines a preschool posting never needs: which school breaks and summer weeks convert the seat to full days, and whether the hire is school-year or year-round.

A candidate can then set your day against programs they have already run — and your split-shift reality against jobs that hide it.

Say what makes the seat different from the rooms below it: group management for elementary ages — children who can tell you what happened, test the boundaries of a big room, and move between activities on a schedule the school bell sets — delivered through games, projects and homework support rather than a preschool curriculum.

Name the structure your program actually runs (a homework block, themed activity weeks, free-play stations), so candidates who have run that structure can say so in their application.

Then the parts of the role that sit beyond the activity plan: active supervision in every space the group uses, positive guidance consistent with your behavior policy, family communication at pickup, and — where you staff one — directing an assistant, counselor or floater through the transitions.

If the seat owns the program plan and the family conversations, that is a lead seat; if it supports someone who does, post the seat you actually have.

The duties list is where the difference becomes visible, long before the first day.

Minimum and preferred qualifications

Start the minimums from your state's rule, not from a template.

Where your state child care licensing agency sets qualification requirements for the school-age teacher seat — education, experience, minimum age, pre-service or orientation training, the background check — it enforces them against your license, and what it sets differs from state to state.

Phrase the line the way the rule works: "meets [State]'s child care licensing requirements for [school-age teacher / after-school teacher]".

That wording stays correct wherever your center operates, and it points candidates at the same rule you checked.

List the background check and any required training as conditions of employment, with the timing left to your state's process: "completion of [State]'s required background checks" and "[State]'s required pre-service or orientation training, completed on your state's timeline." Confirm before you post: the qualifications, training and background-check steps your state sets for the title and age band you are hiring are enforced by your state child care licensing agency, and they change — confirm them with the agency before the requirements go into a posting.

Keep the preferred list honestly preferred.

Experience with school-age groups — in a center program, a camp, a youth organization — belongs under "preferred" unless your state's rule for the title actually requires documented experience.

Requiring a credential or experience hours your state does not require cuts every candidate who qualifies under the rule you are licensed against.

The same honesty applies to the heading: "lead" belongs on a seat that owns the program plan and directs an assistant, not on one that does not.

Physical requirements and schedule

Describe the physical work as the job's own essential functions: supervising active playground and field play, setting up and putting away equipment, working down at the children's level, and staying on your feet and engaged through a shift that peaks at arrival and pickup.

Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, physical requirements in a job description should describe those essential functions, and the EEOC requires accommodation for applicants with disabilities unless it causes the employer significant difficulty or expense.

One line to leave out: a lifting weight written as a legal threshold.

No federal rule sets a lifting weight for childcare jobs, and no national licensing standard does either — a "must lift 40 pounds" figure is an employer's own practice, so if you state a number, present it as what the job itself demands rather than as a rule.

A second accommodation law reaches the same line: employers with 15 or more employees are covered by the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act — effective June 27, 2023, with the EEOC's regulation effective June 18, 2024 — which requires reasonable accommodation of known limitations related to pregnancy, childbirth or related conditions.

The schedule section is where school-age offers come apart, because the program day and the pay period are not the same shape.

State the shift windows and days, whether the seat carries a guaranteed weekly hours floor, how school breaks and summer change the hours, and whether employment is school-year or year-round.

The more precisely the posted schedule matches the one you run, the fewer offers come apart on it later.

How to write the pay and benefits line

Write a range, not a shrug. "Competitive salary" and "depends on experience" hand the decision back to the candidate with nothing to decide on; a range with a real floor and a real top lets them tell in seconds whether the job fits — the more so when the schedule is a split shift, where the hourly rate is only half the answer.

State the basis — the benchmarks in the next paragraph are hourly — and what moves a teacher up the range: experience with school-age groups, taking the lead seat over an assistant, or a year-round guarantee instead of a school-year term.

Benchmark the range before you write it, and label the benchmark.

Our sources carry no school-age-teacher occupation; the nearest published line — the one our salary data maps this role to — is recreation workers (SOC 39-9032), the category that covers many before- and after-school and camp staff along with the rest of the recreation workforce.

In BLS's Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) survey for May 2025, recreation workers earned a U.S. median of $17.58 per hour ($36,560 per year), with the 10th percentile at $13.27 and the 90th at $24.24.

The nearest childcare occupation: childcare workers (SOC 39-9011) earned a U.S. median of $16.82 per hour ($34,980 per year).

These are national medians across every industry that employs these workers, not an offer for your market; the school-age teacher salary tables price the labelled proxy for your state.

In eight states, the pay line is not optional for covered employers. Our research verified pay-disclosure laws in eight states, each attached to the job posting itself and set in the state's own law:

• California — employers with 15 or more employees must include the pay scale for a position in any job posting (Labor Code 432.3).
• Colorado — the Equal Pay for Equal Work Act requires employers to disclose compensation in all job postings and notices, internal and public, including benefits information.
• New York — Labor Law 194-b requires businesses with four or more employees to list compensation ranges in postings for jobs, promotions and transfers.
• Washington — employers with 15 or more employees must disclose the wage scale or salary range and a general description of benefits in each job posting (RCW 49.58.110).
• Illinois — employers with 15 or more employees must include the pay scale and benefits in any specific job posting; a hyperlink to a public page with that information satisfies the rule (820 ILCS 112/10(b-25)).
• Minnesota — employers with 30 or more employees in Minnesota must include a good-faith salary range in job postings (Minn. Stat. 181.173).
• Massachusetts — since October 29, 2025, employers with 25 or more employees must disclose wage ranges in job postings.
• Vermont — employers with five or more employees must include the compensation or range of compensation in any advertisement of a Vermont job opening.

Secondary trackers report more states adding posting rules, including some with 2026 and 2027 effective dates; our research did not confirm those against the state sources, so treat any state outside the eight above as unconfirmed and check before you post without a range.

Some of the eight also reach the benefits line — Washington asks for a general description of benefits, Illinois for pay scale and benefits, and Colorado's disclosure covers benefits information — so write the benefits section of your template before you post, not after. Confirm before you post: pay-disclosure laws carry their own definitions and employer-size thresholds — Colorado's applies regardless of size — and they change, so check the current rule with the state agency that administers it before the posting goes up.

Mistakes that shrink your applicant pool

The template can be airtight and the wording around it can still cost you candidates.

Check each of these before the posting goes live.

• Wording that signals a protected-trait preference. Under the laws the EEOC enforces, a job ad that shows a preference based on a protected trait is illegal — the EEOC's own examples are an ad seeking "females" or "recent college graduates," which may discourage men and people over 40 from applying. After-school postings that reach for "young, energetic college students" or an all-female room are exactly that pattern. Describe the job — the room, the duties, the schedule — and leave age, sex and every other protected trait out of the ad.
• No pay line. In California, Colorado, New York, Washington, Illinois, Minnesota, Massachusetts and Vermont, the law makes pay disclosure — and, in Washington, Illinois and Colorado at least, the benefits description — part of what a covered employer's posting must carry; every state but Colorado covers only employers at or above its own size threshold. Elsewhere, and below those thresholds, an empty pay line asks candidates to apply blind, while the posting next to yours that states one lets them self-sort on the spot.
• A lifting threshold written as a legal rule. No federal rule or national licensing standard sets a lifting weight for childcare jobs; a number in your posting is your center's own practice. State the job's actual demands instead, and keep the ADA's accommodation obligation in view — and the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act's, for employers with 15 or more employees.
• A schedule that hides the split shift. For the before- and after-school seat this template describes, two short shifts either side of the school day are the shape of the job, and a posting that buries it collects applicants who quit when they see the calendar. Post the shift windows, the guaranteed-hours floor if you have one, and what happens to the hours on breaks and in summer.
• Another state's requirements. Qualification minimums are set state by state, so a school-age teacher job description copied from another state's template can misstate your own. Keep the "[State]'s licensing requirements for [title]" placeholder until you have filled it in from your licensing agency's rule.
• Credential and experience inflation. Requiring a credential, a degree or documented experience hours your state does not require for the title removes candidates who qualify under the rule you are actually licensed against. Put it under "preferred" unless your program genuinely requires it.
• Vague duties. "Must love kids" describes every applicant in the pool. The duties list — bus arrival to pickup handoff, in the school-age day's own order — is what lets a candidate tell whether they have already done this job.
• Titles nobody types. Post the seat under the words candidates search — "school-age teacher" or "after-school teacher" — not an internal level name or a branding invention. The setting (center, before- and after-school program, camp-style summer) belongs in the body, where it reads as information rather than doing the title's job.

After you post, run the posting like a live process.

Answer every application, including the declines — a posting that goes quiet teaches candidates to skip your next one — and refresh or re-post when a listing ages.

Read your own ad from the other side before it goes up: browse school-age teacher jobs to see how it reads next to the postings around it, and compare your wording against childcare job ad examples that already pull applicants.

From there the work is screening and interviewing, and the full process — the seat, the qualifications, the pay, the recruiting and the terms that keep a school-age teacher — is our guide to how to hire a school-age teacher.

This page is employer information, not licensing or legal advice. Job-ad and accommodation rules come from the EEOC, pay-disclosure rules from the state agencies that administer them, and staff qualification rules from your state child care licensing agency — confirm the current rules with each before you post.