---
title: "Special Education Teacher, Kindergarten"
description: "Teach academic, social, and life skills to kindergarten students with learning, emotional, or physical disabilities. Includes teachers who specialize and…"
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/special-education-teacher-kindergarten"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Special Education Teacher, Kindergarten

**Category:** Educational Instruction and Library · **SOC code:** 25-2055 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 25-2055.00

Teach academic, social, and life skills to kindergarten students with learning, emotional, or physical disabilities. Includes teachers who specialize and work with students who are blind or have visual impairments; students who are deaf or have hearing impairments; and students with intellectual disabilities.

Also advertised as: Deaf Teacher; Emotional Disabilities Teacher; Hearing Impaired Itinerant Teacher (HI Itinerant Teacher); K-1 SPED Teacher (Kindergarten through First Grade Special Education Teacher); Kindergarten SPED Teacher (Kindergarten Special Education Teacher); Life Skills Teacher; Special Education Inclusion Teacher; Special Education Kindergarten Teacher.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $67,170 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** Not published by BLS
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $49,230 to $105,020, with the middle half between $59,770 and $83,980
- **Total US employment:** 583,430
- **Typical entry education:** Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed
- **Preparation required:** Medium preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** -0.1% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 37,100 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 42/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 583,430 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $49,230 |
| 25th | $59,770 |
| 50th (median) | $67,170 |
| 75th | $83,980 |
| 90th | $105,020 |
| Mean (average) | $74,730 |

### Pay by state

OEWS publishes no state-level wage estimates for this occupation.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 584,100 in the 2025–2035 base year to 583,800 by the end of the cycle — a loss of 300 jobs, or -0.1%. Declining: -0.1% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 37,100 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Medium preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** None.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** None.

## What the work involves

- Instruct students with disabilities in academic subjects, using a variety of techniques, such as phonetics, multisensory learning, or repetition to reinforce learning and meet students' varying needs.
- Develop or implement strategies to meet the needs of students with a variety of disabilities.
- Confer with parents, guardians, teachers, counselors, or administrators to resolve students' behavioral or academic problems.
- Confer with parents, administrators, testing specialists, social workers, or other professionals to develop individual educational plans (IEPs) for students' educational, physical, or social development.
- Employ special educational strategies or techniques during instruction to improve the development of sensory- and perceptual-motor skills, language, cognition, or memory.
- Establish and enforce rules for behavior and procedures for maintaining order among students.
- Meet with parents or guardians to discuss their children's progress, advise them on using community resources, or teach skills for dealing with students' impairments.
- Teach socially acceptable behavior, employing techniques such as behavior modification or positive reinforcement.

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Speaking — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Instructing — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Service Orientation — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- English Language — importance 4.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Education and Training — importance 4.2 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Psychology — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administrative — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Therapy and Counseling — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Expression — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Expression — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speech Recognition — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speech Clarity — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Social (S), Investigative (I), Conventional (C).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| S — Social | 7.00 |
| I — Investigative | 3.80 |
| C — Conventional | 3.67 |
| A — Artistic | 3.65 |
| R — Realistic | 2.55 |
| E — Enterprising | 1.73 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ESFP | 65.9 |
| ISFP | 65.7 |
| INFJ | 65.6 |
| ENFP | 64.8 |
| ENFJ | 64.8 |

Best-fitting types: ESFP, ISFP, INFJ, ENFP, ENFJ, INFP.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Special Education Teacher, Elementary School](https://nuecareer.com/careers/special-education-teacher-elementary-school) — median $67,170
- [Special Education Teacher, Middle School](https://nuecareer.com/careers/special-education-teacher-middle-school) — median $66,810
- [Special Education Teacher, Preschool](https://nuecareer.com/careers/special-education-teacher-preschool) — median $64,830
- [Special Education Teacher, Secondary School](https://nuecareer.com/careers/special-education-teacher-secondary-school) — median $74,260
- [Adult Basic Education, Adult Secondary Education, and English as a Second Language Instructor](https://nuecareer.com/careers/adult-basic-education-adult-secondary-education-and-english-as-a-second-language-instructor) — median $61,540
- [Teaching Assistant, Special Education](https://nuecareer.com/careers/teaching-assistant-special-education) — median $37,010
- [Adapted Physical Education Specialist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/adapted-physical-education-specialist) — median $76,580
- [Kindergarten Teacher](https://nuecareer.com/careers/kindergarten-teacher) — median $62,680
- [Elementary School Teacher](https://nuecareer.com/careers/elementary-school-teacher) — median $63,970
- [Tutor](https://nuecareer.com/careers/tutor) — median $43,350

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

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