Boarding schools provide students not merely with full-time academic instruction, but with meals and full-time living quarters, as well. The boarding school becomes a home away from home for students, and for the teachers who frequently live with them. Typically, teachers are assigned as housemasters to oversee students who reside in the school's houses or dormitories. Each house might feature a library, dining hall, chapel, study rooms, and bedrooms.

If you crave the unique professional opportunity to become intimately familiar with your students' individual personalities, career goals, and academic needs, a boarding-school teaching position might satisfy your requirements.

However, if you're the kind of teacher who likes to hurriedly pack up at the end of a long, stressful day and drive down to the lake for two hours of freshwater fishing, boarding school might not be your best option. Boarding schools require teachers to supervise students day and night, until lights out or bedtime. Your job comes to resemble parenting as much as teaching, as you fulfill your duties as housemaster, counselor, after-hours tutor, sports coach, chaperone, chauffeur, etc.

Therefore, do some research before making a career decision; read authoritative books, articles, and studies on the boarding school way of life and talk to representatives of boarding schools, as well as to alumni, to decide whether a boarding-school teaching position is for you.