The youngest a teacher can be in the United States is 21 or 22 years old. This is true for elementary school, middle school/junioir high, and high school teachers. Someone that completes 4 years of college immediately after high school and aquires a teaching certificate can start teaching right away. This means they compete high school at 17-18 years of age and then complete teaching requirements 4 years later at the age of 21-22.
If you finish college and complete student teaching then you are able to start applying for a teaching job and get started.
I surveyed 329 K-12 teachers on the TeachingResources SubReddit and A to Z Teacher Stuff and put the results into the table below.
| Age Started Teaching | Amount |
|---|---|
| 21-22 years old | 81 |
| 23-24 years old | 80 |
| 25-26 years old | 62 |
| 27-28 years old | 38 |
| 29 years or older | 68 |
As you can see most teachers started teaching at a young age, between 21 and 24 years old.
It may be a little odd to be teaching high school seniors when you are only four or five years older than them but eventually you’ll get comfortable.
If you are going to be teaching elementary school or middle school/junior high then you don’t have to worry about the age difference because these students are much younger than you.
Take a look at this article I recently wrote detailing how to teach middle school.
How Old Are Teachers Really?
I did some research and found out the following information about teacher age.
By the way the site that I found this data on is the National Center for Education Statistics.
It is a little old though, from 2011-2012, but I can’t imagine the changes to present day are drastic.
- The average age of teachers was 42.4 years.
- 15.3% of teachers were less than 30 years of age.
- 54% of teachers were 30-49 years of age.
- 11.9% of teachers were 50-54 years of age
- 18.8% of teachers were 55 years of age or more.
Allen is an 8th grade teacher for a public school system in a western suburb of Chicago. He has taught grades 6, 7 and 8.