These substitute teaching resume writing tips and strategies will help you land a teaching job. If you are a brand-new educator looking for a teaching position, a standout supply teacher or substitute teacher resume is essential to landing a job interview.
Since your hands-on teaching experience may be lacking, you must focus on your instructional and classroom management skills to grab the reader’s attention.
We have assembled some resume writing tips you can implement to help ensure your substitute teacher’s resume and cover letter properly highlight your skills and experience as a potential supply teacher. If you are in the process of becoming a supply teacher, these tips and strategies will help immensely.
Below, you will find the help you need to write your substitute teacher’s resume to land more interviews.
8 Substitute Teacher Resume Writing Tips to Communicate Proficiency
1. Focus on Fundamental Teaching Skills
Your supply teacher or substitute teacher resume should highlight your excellent instructional and classroom management skills, with behavioral management being of the utmost importance. Since students are known to act up or misbehave when their regular teacher is away, discussing how you cultivate a calm, well-disciplined, and focused learning environment is a sure way to get you noticed!
Another substitute teacher resume writing tip is to utilize any relevant experience as a student teacher, tutor, camp counselor, parent volunteer, or paraprofessional in which you employ sound classroom management techniques.
The ability to establish a positive rapport with students and keep them motivated to learn goes hand-in-hand with excellent classroom management skills. How do you develop a rapport with students? What activities do you implement to keep students engaged? Highlight these topics in your introductory resume summary and areas of expertise section. Also, include the core competencies in your teaching responsibilities and accomplishments.
2. Convey Your Adaptability to Substitute Teaching
If you are applying for a position as a substitute teacher, you know pretty well that you could end up in any classroom, ranging from K-12. Therefore, you must show potential employers that you can quickly adapt to changing situations, student populations, and subject areas. Highlight your flexibility in your previous teaching roles, related positions, and any other prior jobs in your resume introduction and application letter. Adaptability is a skill that cannot be oversold in your substitute teaching resume.
3. Demonstrate Your Creativity and Innovation
As a new teacher, you should be reasonably up-to-date with innovative teaching techniques and methods for instilling creativity in others. As outlined above, adaptability is crucial when being a successful substitute teacher. By demonstrating your creativity and innovation within your substitute teacher resume, you will not only pique the reader’s interest but make your flexibility evident as well.
Communicating to the reader in your substitute teacher’s resume to facilitate all learners’ types and levels while maintaining an engaging and focused class will grab the reader’s attention.
What creative teaching methods, activities, games, or projects do you implement to engage students? Perhaps you utilize technology, jeopardy games, role-playing, learning centers, jigsaws, or other cooperative learning groups. Whatever creative and innovative activities you employ, highlight them in your substitute teacher resume and cover letter.
4. Showcase How You Integrate Technology into the Classroom
21st-century education is very technology-centred. As such, it is a critical piece that must be highlighted in your substitute teaching resume to demonstrate proficiency in the craft and knowledge of blended learning. You may want to list the devices, software, websites, apps, and platforms you regularly use in the learning environment or that you are familiar enough with to implement.
It would be best to discuss how you get students actively involved with technology, the types of related projects you incorporate, and how they enhance students’ technological skills. Showcasing your knowledge and expertise in this area will reassure potential employers that you will utilize classroom technology effectively during a regular teacher’s absence.
5. Express Interest in Professional Development and Lifelong Learning
If you can convey your commitment to strengthening your teaching skills and enhancing your content knowledge, you will be one step above the competition! Proving you are willing and eager to develop and improve is an admirable quality, regardless of the position you are applying for.
When writing your substitute teacher resume, you want to list the professional development opportunities you have attended, including workshops, in-services, post-secondary courses, conferences, etc. Also, in your cover letter, mention your commitment to professional development as an educator. This will again highlight your openness to different ideas, change, and flexibility.
6. Highlight Relevant Education Achievements
One of the best ways to demonstrate proficiency in your substitute teacher resume is by focusing on teaching accomplishments. These should be listed in bullet points under the applicable position. For instance, in paragraph form, you will first list your responsibilities under each professional position. Then, underneath that, you will bullet your accomplishments for each job you’ve had.
Your accomplishments should demonstrate a skill set or trait and be quantifiable.
If you struggle to uncover job achievements, use the CAR acronym: Challenge, Action, and Results. First, think of a particular challenge or problem you faced. Then, describe the action you took to resolve or address that problem. Finally, include the results.
Sample Substitute Teacher Resume Writing Questions to Ask Yourself:
- how you were able to help a particular learner overcome his challenges;
- how you established a well-behaved class environment;
- how you substituted in a classroom with no provided lesson plans;
- or how you improved students’ test scores.
7. Include Formal Education and Credentials
Even though this should go without saying, when you get caught up in writing your resume, it can be easy to forget the most basic but crucial items. Hiring school districts will want to see your post-secondary education, including Associate’s, Bachelor’s, and Master’s Degrees, and teaching certifications or licenses.
Do not simply write “Bachelor of Arts Degree.” What did you major in? Your degree should be written as a Bachelor of Arts in Elementary Education or a Bachelor of Science in Psychology. Also, don’t worry if some or all of your formal education doesn’t directly relate to teaching.
A background in something else can often benefit your teaching by offering your skills and knowledge in other areas. If you have the credentials you need to substitute teach, a school should be happy with them.
In addition to your degrees and licenses, remember to list relevant professional development courses, seminars, conferences, or certifications. Listing relevant professional development will demonstrate your commitment to lifelong learning and growth as an educator.
8. Incorporate an Area of Expertise Section in your Substitute Teacher Resume
As mentioned above, your supply teacher or substitute teacher resume or curriculum vitae should include a section devoted to your relevant core competencies.
The expertise summary section of your resume is dedicated solely to your teaching skills and knowledge of pedagogy. These should include hard skills such as classroom management, technology integration, differentiating instruction, assessing learning, motivating students, etc. Keywords are needed for a few reasons. One is to get past the applicant tracking system software and get your resume to a human.
This section should appear near the top of your educator’s resume and include 8-12 traits in a list or table format. You want a potential employer to notice and admire these skills immediately!
Next Step: Writing Your Substitute Teacher Resume
This blog post uses the word ‘relevant’ many times for a reason. When writing a resume for any profession, you only want to include relevant details. Many job seekers include details that aren’t essential to their target position. Don’t do this – only include the items that add value to a school community and its students.
Digging for valuable information is critical to landing a job interview for a supply or substitute teaching position. It takes time, skill, and patience to uncover significant accomplishments from past experiences and showcase them visually appealingly.
If you need help creating your substitute teacher resume, library media specialist resume, or any other job search document, please get in touch with us. Writing substitute teacher resumes and other job search documents to advance our clients’ careers has been our specialty for 16+ years.
You can view our services here.
You can also contact Candace Alstad-Davies directly by email: candoco@telus.net or toll-free: 1-877-738-8052
