Showcase your teaching skills and strengths throughout your resume and cover letter to market yourself to a prospective school district effectively.
For this reason, you need to show what value you can bring to the students and the community by including relevant accomplishments and a corresponding skill set.
Ask yourself: What benefits will the school principal or superintendent get by hiring you for a particular position? How will you optimize the students’ academic and social achievement?
When piecing together your teaching resume, make sure you are comfortable with every point you make. Check and recheck what you have written. Make sure that each statement is original and communicates the value you can bring.
Use Relevant Words and Keywords
Use action verbs to describe the accomplishments you made at your previous jobs. Uncovering and communicating your past teaching achievements will let your prospective employer know that positive things happened because you were there. Tastefully, let your potential school principal know that you are a leader and collaborator and add value to the school community.
Recommended Reading: 8 Teacher Resume Writing Tips You Need to Incorporate
Instead of creating a long list of your qualities and strengths, try to connect them with real-life and work experiences, whether they are in the teaching field or the business world, by qualifying your strengths and qualities through examples of past experiences. Success stories should provide proof that you indeed possess these teaching skills and qualities. Otherwise, it will appear that you are just trying to inflate your skills in your teaching resume.
Writing Success Stories
Don’t merely state the teaching skills principals are looking for; you need to back them up with evidence. Core competencies are critical, but you will grab the reader’s attention when you can provide success stories to prove them. If you manage to explain how your skills will benefit a school and each student’s success and can connect them to tangible results, you will significantly improve your chances.
Lastly, avoid detailed responsibility lists for your job descriptions. School district hiring representatives will often already assume that your past teaching positions encompassed these responsibilities. Listing your teaching responsibilities is also dull to read and will not sufficiently sell you to future employers. It is best to describe your professional achievements and explain your role as a teacher through your accomplishments.
Utilize the space under each former job position to the fullest, showing the accomplishments you made by having the skills. Take the time to describe innovative and effective teaching methods you have used and highlight relevant accomplishments or extracurricular/additional duties. Use bullet points to showcase essential information that you want to stand out the most.
The prospective school principal wants to know what is in it for them. Accomplishments and areas of expertise are what the reader will look for when reviewing your resume. School districts are looking for effective problem solvers and candidate that take the initiative.
Questions to Create Accomplishments for Your Teacher Resume and Cover Letter
Represent yourself accordingly by providing answers to the following questions in your resume to target a teaching position.
- How did your former employer benefit from your problem-solving?
- What types of problems did you solve at your previous job?
- What makes you better at your job than the next person?
- Did you create a new program or system, maybe something implemented school-wide or district-wide? If so, what were the results?
- What achievements were you proud of at your last job?
- How did you make a difference at your teaching job?
- Where test scores improved? If so, by how much?
- Did you increase student achievement?
- What accomplishments were you formally recognize by your supervisor?
Don’t underestimate the importance of a skills-based resume on marketing what you can bring to a school community as a teacher. Many job seekers throw their resume together; failing to understand it can make the difference between picking up the phone and someone discarding your document.
By following these simple resume writing guidelines, you are sure to stand out above the rest and earn your education resume a closer read.
Review our resume and cover letter samples to get an idea of what an educational resume and cover letter should include and how it should look.
If you need our help, like so many educators do, to write the perfect resume and cover letter package, it’s easy to get started.
