by Transplant2AK » Sun Mar 20, 2016 3:18 am
The short answer is that many districts in Alaska are in need of people who are willing and able to teach multiple subjects, due to staffing logistics. I am a social studies teacher by trade with several years of high school teaching experience. Throughout the hiring season, I have been offered quite a few different jobs, but none of them were actually social studies. Most were Secondary Generalist positions, meaning I would have taught multiple subjects at the high school level. In some cases that might mean SS/LA or MA/SCI, in others it means you teach all four. It all depends on the size of the school in question; some schools are simply too small to have specialists like you see in the lower 48. Ultimately, I took a job as a Middle School Generalist, so I will be teaching every core subject at the 8th grade level next year. In order to qualify for that position, I only needed to be certified in one middle school subject, which I am. I'm going to guess it works in a similar way at the high school level. My guess is that "Science - Multiple Subjects" means that your primary responsibility would be to teach science, but that you would be a generalist of some kind.
If you want to break into a rural school district, being flexible seems to be an important quality.