Applying for your first teaching job and need some resume writing help? While there is no one exact and sure way to write a resume, there are a wide range of possibilities. These guidelines are based on experience, but in the end, you know what is best to put on your teaching resume. It is advisable to get 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.
For starters, a resume should include the core sample sections, which are elaborated below highlighted with a few examples.
Professional Summary
Highlight key skills and experiences relevant to a particular field or position. This may be referred to as a Career Profile, Career Summary or other terminology. This section could be a bulleted list, but no more than 6 sentences.
Professional Experience
Develop the core section of your resume using skill clusters that directly support your career goal. The core section may be called Professional Experience or Related Experience. If your career goal is a teacher's aide, add relevant teaching experience. This may be in lieu of employment, if you do not have directed teaching experience.
Skills, Activities, Affiliations
A core section should also include a number of other relevant sections:
- 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.
Resume Writing Format
- Keep to a standard font such as Arial or Times New Roman; font size 11 or 12 point
- Margins: 1.5 margins
- Bulleted format works well for easy skimming and reading
- Formatting: Use boldface, italics and underlining for highlighting important pieces of information.
Other Resume Writing Tips
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.
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
Resume writing for teachers follows the same format for general principles of resume writing. It differs with 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.
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