Recent graduates and working educators can always benefit from helpful teaching resume tips. Many states are still cutting education budgets to deal with deficit spending and tax issues, so all teachers need to be prepared to deal with a tough job market that is more competitive than ever. The best way to make your first teaching resume to stand out is through highlighting the right experiences and demonstrating real-world skills learned in the classroom.
Create a Professional Profile
A professional profile, or extended job objective, is located at the top of the resume. It consists of a few short sentences that succinctly summarize the candidate’s licensure, certification, strengths and special qualifications.
Most new job seekers make the mistake of saying something generically boring for their job objective, such as: elementary school teacher seeking position to help children learn. Instead, a descriptive professional profile will look something like this: fully-certified elementary teacher with experience in intensive reading intervention programming seeks position.
Because employers and HR professionals tend to scan resumes and stop at the top, the professional profile is extremely important.
Highlight Experiences
Work experience is the most important section of the resume. Recent graduates may have limited employment experience, so they can substitute academic and related job experiences. One of the best teaching resume tips is to include tutoring, internship and student teaching experiences. The first thing that school administrators want to know is whether the prospective hire can successfully teach students. They look for hands-on experience managing assessments, student behavior and classroom pacing. Student teaching and tutoring positions stand out on a new teacher’s resume and shows that a candidate knows how to transform theory into practice. These academic positions are also great ways to secure letters of recommendations from experienced professors, which can be submitted with the resume.
Awards and Recognitions
No list for teaching resume tips can be complete without mentioning awards and recognitions. These provide solid evidence that a teacher values student engagement and supports academic enrichment. Colleges and universities reward these values through the dean’s list, leadership awards and honors that recognize students for demonstrated professionalism in the classroom. Most colleges and universities give out awards to the best student teacher in individual subjects. Therefore, teacher-students should participate in on-campus educational organizations and leadership groups. Each of these achievements show employers that the candidate is ready to take initiative and succeed.
Use Keywords and Buzzwords
Certain keywords and buzzwords will appeal to school administrators when used moderately. These words will help to showcase experiences and demonstrate action and initiative. Transferable skills are those that can be highlighted through task-based verbs. For example, clerical competency is illustrated through words like collecting, computing and classifying. Communication skills are shown through verbs like editing, explaining and influencing. Additional skill areas include creativity, finance, training, research, management and human relations. Popular buzz words include team teaching, guided reading, multi-cultural instruction, differentiated instruction and interdisciplinary learning.
Construct Achievement Statements
Every work position listed on the resume should include listed accomplishment statements. These should work duties, how they were accomplished and the results of the actions. Skills gained from teaching related experiences should be represented through these formulaic accomplishment statements. This formula is an action verb, an example and a result action verb. For example: tutored a high school student in algebra or volunteered at a community center with special needs children. Use these statements to explain the experience associated with terms like response to intervention (RTI) and Individual Education Plan (IEP).
Crafting a resume that focuses on experience, recognition and modern educational concepts will help new teachers get hired. To learn more teaching resume tips, visit here.
