School Nurse and Teaching Responsibilities

Windchaser22 · May 22, 2015

In NJ school nurses must be certified. One cert is for non-instructional, the other is instructional. Most have instructional certification. In both cases school nurses are considered faculty and are on the same pay scale. With that said, if the nurse has an instructional cert it depends on the hiring district and the grades taught. The nurse in my district for grades 4-5 teaches family life, aka sex ed. One of the middle school nurses used to teach a full health curriculum to the student body in addition to her regular duties. I tend to teach at the class level from time to time. From what I am seeing the PE teachers are taking over much of the responsibility, sadly. Personally I feel we do a better job given our expertise. Also we are responsible for teaching blood borne pathogen, epi, glucagon, and AED to staff delegates along with chronic illness care, like diabetes and seizures.

Good luck! The teaching is the fun part.

LMTCBnurse · May 23, 2015

I used to work in an Elementary school where 5th graders took a health class. It was a program set up by the district, all I had to do was help the teachers review it. So it wasn't that difficult. You just need to be available for students to ask personal questions in private and to provide basic answers. Always remember a teacher can't teach someone calculus until the student understands basic math, and health class is the same basic idea. The first class the students learn basic body information, each year they learn more.

Now I work in a Kindergarten school and use the County Health Department to help me educate the students, proper hand washing, sneezing and coughing procedures, and wild animal behavior.

JenTheSchoolRN, BSN, RN · May 26, 2015

Depends on the district. I teach sex education and continue to develop the health curriculum at my school (grades 7-12). I LOVE teaching. I thought teaching sex ed would be terrifying, but I do a lot of theater and have perfected my game face over the years and it certainly served me well there. After the first couple of classes, I found my grove and correcting myths is awesome. I co-taught this year with the PE teacher, and students told me horror stories of previous PE teachers attempting to teach sex ed and that they were so grateful I was teaching the subject. That made my year to hear that.

Now, I know plenty of other school nurses that don't teach health as well. Again, depends on the school.

NewenglandMSNRNBC, ADN, BSN, MSN, RN · May 26, 2015

I work for a private high school and teach the whole health curriculum. We are a small school so I only have two classes a quarter. I get to plan out what to teach and when. We have certain standards that we have to go by for state requirements (safety/injury prevention, sex ed, etc.). I also teach an anatomy/physiology elective for interested students as well. This is my first quarter teaching the elective and was amazed by how many kids signed up. I didn't think I would like the teaching aspect as much as I do and it gives me a break from office visits.

100kids, BSN, RN · May 26, 2015

Teaching Health has never been a part of the School nurse's job ay my school UNTIL me. In NY you need special certification as a School Nurse Teacher to be able to teach Health without being supervised by a classroom teacher. I wanted to do it and our Health teacher was retiring so I went for it and it is now my absolute favorite part of my job. I teach 1 class per week for each grade (K-6) and have to come up with the curriculum and lessons. I really love it!