Writing a resume for the job of a teacher is no different from any other job. All you need is a bit of dedication and feedback not only from a professional career consultant, but also from two to three professionals in the teaching field that you know and feel comfortable with. Also, there should be keywords specific to the profession and the action verbs you use when describing your qualification in the first section and your professional experience and training in the core section.
Sections in the resume
The resume should start with your name and other contact details in clear font. Then should come your skills summary section which should highlight key skills and experiences relevant to your field or position in a bulleted format. The experience section of your resume is the core section which should give the name of the organization and your job responsibilities there is clear and concise terms. This section could also include other relevant sections like:
Include special skills to list a number of relevant items such as teacher training, foreign language skills, etc.
Activities: These may be community activities or leadership activities. Focus only on those that are relevant to your career goal.
Professional affiliations: List professional members or leadership positions and/or professional presentation.
Cover letter
It is advisable to send a cover letter where possible even when not requested. It makes you look much more professional. Always send a hard copy resume and cover letter as a follow-up to ensure receipt of the documents and for presentation.
Action words
Use action verbs wherever possible. Sample action verbs for teaching include:
achieved administered built coordinated created designed developed directed established expanded formulated headed implemented introduced managed organized planned presented structured wrote
Here are some tips for teachers on resume building by Candace Davies, owner of A+ Resumes for Teachers, who has developed hundreds of resumes for K-12 and college educators.
Passion for teaching
Your resume should emphasize and display your passion for teaching which can be highlighted through the objective section of your resume. “Showing passion for what you do is important in any field, but in education, this is doubly so,” Davies says.
“Your resume needs to communicate your commitment to student success, teaching and learning,” she says. “It needs to show that you’re in the classroom for the right reasons.”
Academic qualifications
The teachers resume should also highlight one’s academic credentials since they are in the education business. “You want your credentials, certifications and degrees on the first page under your opening resume profile,” says Davies.
Keywords
A teacher’s resume should be full of dense keywords as the importance of keywords cannot be downplayed with. Keywords, which include industry-specific terms, jargon and acronyms, are especially important in today’s high tech world, where resumes are scanned and stored in computer databases.
“We’re in an era now where most districts want you to post your resume online,” advises Davies. “And that means they’re scanning them. If you don’t have keywords in your document, your resume won’t be found in the database.”
Some of the Specific Resume Keywords for education industry are:
Teaching and learning, curriculum development, curriculum planning, curriculum design, creative lesson planning, in-service leadership, peer tutoring, peer mentoring, lead teacher, teacher-parent relations, special needs students, gifted/talented students, ESL/ESOL students, student success, testing, learner assessment, technology integration, classroom management, classroom monitoring, discipline strategies, student involvement, parental involvement, instruction, teaching across the curriculum, interdisciplinary teaching approaches, K-12, mainstream, inclusion, brain-based learning.