As usual, the answer to any US question always has to be prefaced by "it varies from state to state."
In my state, you can get a provisional certification with a BA, including six months of student teaching, but a permanent teaching certificate requires a set numbers of classroom professional improvement hours every year leading to an MEd within five additional years (I think). Professional improvement means either education in a subject area, or education in pedagogical practice and educational psychology, or a mixture of the two, and the laws have changed since I looked into that so take it with a grain of salt.
"Sports Teachers" is a term without a close US equivalent. There are Physical Education teachers, whose academic training can be in recreation or physical education, depending on the degree granting institution, and then there are coaches. Coaches may or may not have specific educational credentials in PE or Rec but more often are teachers with experience in playing a specific sport at the high school and college (rarely professional) level. The legal requirement for coaching in most schools is a current Firs Aid certificate and a clear criminal record. PE classes, intramural and league sports are often supervized by a single district-level administrator, and there are often district or sports league requirements for additional training for coaches.
All of this is complicated by the fact that people can be hired as substitute teachers and have no academic training in the classes they're required to teach, and that certified teachers in some areas are so hard to find that anyone with a BA or life experience may end up teaching on a provisional contract.
So, yeah, confusing. The simple answer is that most people start teaching with at least four years of experience, and continue taking classes for at least the first five years of their career. And that over-all the situation is confusing enough that you can get away with practically anything, in real life or fiction.
Julia, or, like my cousin JD, you can have two masters degrees and still be working as a substitute because there's no budget for music teachers
no subject
In my state, you can get a provisional certification with a BA, including six months of student teaching, but a permanent teaching certificate requires a set numbers of classroom professional improvement hours every year leading to an MEd within five additional years (I think). Professional improvement means either education in a subject area, or education in pedagogical practice and educational psychology, or a mixture of the two, and the laws have changed since I looked into that so take it with a grain of salt.
"Sports Teachers" is a term without a close US equivalent. There are Physical Education teachers, whose academic training can be in recreation or physical education, depending on the degree granting institution, and then there are coaches. Coaches may or may not have specific educational credentials in PE or Rec but more often are teachers with experience in playing a specific sport at the high school and college (rarely professional) level. The legal requirement for coaching in most schools is a current Firs Aid certificate and a clear criminal record. PE classes, intramural and league sports are often supervized by a single district-level administrator, and there are often district or sports league requirements for additional training for coaches.
All of this is complicated by the fact that people can be hired as substitute teachers and have no academic training in the classes they're required to teach, and that certified teachers in some areas are so hard to find that anyone with a BA or life experience may end up teaching on a provisional contract.
So, yeah, confusing. The simple answer is that most people start teaching with at least four years of experience, and continue taking classes for at least the first five years of their career. And that over-all the situation is confusing enough that you can get away with practically anything, in real life or fiction.
Julia, or, like my cousin JD, you can have two masters degrees and still be working as a substitute because there's no budget for music teachers