Teachers are very important professionals in our society. Without them, our world wouldn’t be as it is today. Think about it. World leaders and people with influence shaped our global community. But if their teachers didn’t instill the right mindset and knowledge on to them, it would’ve been a different story. That’s how significant their impact is. So, as a hiring manager in a preschool, elementary school, high school, or college institution, you should hire the best teachers that you can find. Offer them a solid contract for employment using these teacher contract examples!
A teacher contract is a specific type of employment contract. As its name implies, it’s a legally-binding document that obligates a newly-hired teacher to officially perform his or her teaching and classroom management duties on campus. Essentially, it prompts them to stay in line with their job description.
Offering a teacher contract is the final step in onboarding a new teacher under your school’s employment. Without it, a teacher will not be an official member of the school faculty. As mentioned earlier, a teacher contract obligates him or her to perform. That said, it ensures that a new teacher will carry out his or her responsibilities, helping your school in serving its purpose to its students.
Teacher contracts protect your school from educators who might commit unethical actions. They have clauses that can give school employers the authority to terminate them. Causes for termination are likely incompetence, neglecting duties, and student harassment. However, such incidents wouldn’t occur if you screen teacher candidates well before hiring them. In that case, those contract clauses will be more like precautions.
Teacher contracts aren’t only for the school’s benefit and protection, but teachers as well. By offering them such legal contracts, your school is implying that its administration will fulfill their duties as the teachers’ employer. These duties include paying their monthly salary, providing benefits, and supporting their classroom needs. With those said, teacher contracts ensure that the employee-employer relationship of the school admin and faculty staff is a win-win deal.
As your school’s hiring manager, it’s your responsibility to write employee contracts to new teachers. Your job isn’t just hiring, but also ensuring that the faculty will abide by the school’s policy and perform their duties. It also your job to assure new teachers that they’ll have secure employment on campus. You do those duties by writing contracts. So, now we’ll teach you the basic process of creating teacher contracts.
A teacher contract form is useless if it doesn’t convey who are the parties involved in it. So, as the first step, make sure to specify the teacher’s complete name and your school’s official name. They’re the entities involved in a teacher contract. Also include the teacher’s other information, such as contact number and email address. And don’t forget to specify his or her specific teaching job, be it an online teacher job, a Math teacher, an English teacher, etc.
Most employment contracts, be it a full-time or part-time employment contract, have a start date and end date. And teacher contracts are no exception. With that in mind, you have to emphasize when the new teacher will start teaching, as well as his or her last day. The start date and end date indicates when the contract will take full effect and when it’ll be null and void.
The contract obligates the teacher to do his or her duties between the start and end date. But he or she may leave the school before the contract expires, and that can affect the school’s workforce. For that reason, you should include a bond agreement for teachers in the contract. A bond is a contract clause that forces an employee to pay the company if he or she leaves before finishing the contract. Its purpose is to discourage employees from leaving their employers before the expiration of their contracts.
Moreover, when a teacher contract expires, you can renew it, especially if the teacher performed well and received positive faculty evaluation from the students.
Regardless if you’re writing a part-time teacher contract sample, a private school teacher contract sample, a preschool teacher contract sample, or any kind of teacher contract, info about salary and benefits must be present. A newly-hired teacher has a right to feel assured that he or she will receive enough salary and benefits from the school’s payroll. The only thing that can give the teacher that assurance is a contract.
Teachers salaries range between $31,000 to $60,000 per year, with a $43,000 average, according to Glassdoor. You can set a new teacher’s salary based on that. Make sure that it matches with his or her experience and skill level. In that way, your school will avoid underpaying or overpaying a teacher.
A teacher contract must highlight the teacher’s duties and responsibilities in the school. So, make sure to make it so when you write one. This step establishes the teacher’s area of jurisdiction on campus. Writing this part of the contract shouldn’t be difficult. You’ll just be referring to existing teaching job descriptions.
You have to cut ties from teachers who commit very unacceptable actions. That’s why you must include terms for immediate termination. You can’t have teachers who could jeopardize the student’s education and your school’s reputation. As mentioned earlier, teacher contracts protect your school from educators who might commit unethical actions. So give your school admin the authority to issue an immediate termination letter to such teachers.
It depends on the degree of his or her violation. For example, frequent tardiness and absences are glaring, but it’s not a case of immediate termination. Calling the teacher’s attention or suspending him or her is a viable sanction for that. But during the second or third offense, the school admins could have the right to fire the teacher. However, for grave offenses such as student harassment and stealing school property and private data, those can be grounds for immediate termination. On top of that, the school can also file a case against the teacher.
The best time of the year to hire new teachers is during summer break. That’s because there are no classes, and it’s a time when most unemployed teachers, especially new grads, hunt for teaching jobs.
Circumstances such as a pandemic force schools to shut down temporarily. Thus, there’ll be no classes. Some schools continue paying their teachers during a shutdown. But some struggle to do so. Other schools don’t pay them at all.
It’s up to your school if the teachers will continue receiving their salary. But if they opt not to, that would undoubtedly shed a bad light on your school. In that case, your school should arrange online classes.
Out of all the formal documents in existence, contracts are among those that carry heavy importance. They could make or break a deal between two parties. So, always make sure to prepare a solid teacher contract before bringing a new teacher on board. Take advantage of a teacher contract template for that.
