Teacher Resume Example

Writing a teacher resume that impresses principals isn’t always easy. Fortunately, we’ve compiled a few easy ways you can improve your teaching resume and start landing interviews.

Here are our top tips for writing a strong resume for any teaching position:

1. Begin with a teacher resume objective

A resume objective summarizes your major work-related accomplishments, skills, and certifications in two to four sentences, and targets the specific job you’re applying for.

When you write your teacher resume objective, showcase the most impressive successes you’ve achieved as an educator and how you can apply them to the school you want to work at.

Remember, your resume objective is the first thing principals see when they open your resume, so make sure it inspires them to read on.

Back up any claims you make in your resume objective with hard numbers. For example, don’t just write that you raised average grades, but state you raised average grades by 17%.

Here’s an example of an effective general teaching resume objective:

Teacher Resume Objective Example

Bilingual public school teacher with 6+ years of teaching experience at multiple grade levels. Possess a BA in Education with a minor in Spanish, a California teaching license, and 15 Continuing Education credits. Ready to use my language expertise, cultural understanding, and proven teaching ability increasing average grades by 15% to help Williams High School students reach their academic goals.

This example is effective because it:

• mentions how much experience this applicant holds
• includes a statistic that shows how the candidate improved their students’ grades
• notes the candidate’s educational background and teaching certifications
• shows their desire to keep up to date by mentioning continuing education
• highlights their desire to work at a particular school

2. Back up your professional experience with numbers

Don’t just include hard numbers in your resume objective — also use them throughout your resume. Using numbers in your resume experience section in particular helps you better highlight the skills, abilities, and knowledge you’ve accumulated during your career.

For instance, check out this text taken directly from our teacher sample resume. In one quantified bullet point, the candidate demonstrates their greatest teaching accomplishment, and shows hiring managers the exact kind of value they can provide if given the job.

• Ensured that all students comprehended the curriculum, and supported students who required extra guidance, resulting in writing and reading comprehension test scores increasing 16% over 3 years on average

The candidate’s ability to raise test scores demonstrates that they’re a skilled teacher and a potentially valuable hire, especially given the current teaching climate in the US, which is increasingly test score-oriented.

What if you lack accomplishments?

You might be unable to add hard numbers to your resume, especially if you’re new to teaching.

However, your resume can still be quantified by giving the hiring manager an idea of the scope of your skills and abilities.

For instance, you can quantify the number of students you work with per semester:

• Assess and look after 150+ students’ progress throughout the term and work closely with other staff to efficiently plan and coordinate work

Or quantify the size of the school you work in:

• …with curriculum objectives and assist students to prepare for examinations in a 4700+ student school

3. Showcase your teacher resume skills

Your teaching skills need to be kept up to date on your education resume because teaching methods often change due to new research and Board of Education policy shifts.

Here are some of the most in-demand job skills to include on a teaching resume (according to anonymous data we’ve gathered from our resume builder):

Additionally, showcase a balance of soft and hard skills throughout your resume, as well as in your teacher resume skills section to prove you have both the personality and technical know-how to manage a classroom.

Hard skills are abilities you’ve taken the time to learn and get certified for. Here are some hard teacher skills to include on your resume:

• Curriculum planning
• Certificate in Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL)
• SMART boards
• Cardiopulmonary resuscitation/automatic external defibrillator (CPR/AED)
• Blackboard

Soft skills relate to your personality and ability to work with others. Soft skills are also critical skills for teachers because they help them empathize with students and find creative ways to teach a variety of learners. Here are some soft skills for a teacher resume:

• Communication skills
• Interpersonal skills
• Leadership skills
• Time management skills
• People skills

To fully showcase your teacher skills, resumes for teachers of IT, science, and technology should include a technical skills section in addition to their main skills section. In this technical skills section, describe any special equipment and software you can use, such as:

• Bunsen burners
• Soldering
• JavaScript
• Circuit boards
• Adobe Photoshop

Additionally, all teachers will probably need to list some of the following classroom management software skills on their resumes:

• Pearson ECollege
• Moodle 
• Sakai
• Lore
• MyEdu
• Instructure Canvas

Last, there are some software-specific teacher skills you’ll need to use both inside and outside of the classroom to be fully effective in most teaching environments:

• Microsoft Office
• GIMP
• Windows Movie Maker
• iMovie

4. Use a resume template

A good resume template saves you time by giving you a well-formatted resume that you can immediately start filling in.

Additionally, resume templates are specifically created to get past applicant tracking systems (ATS), which can’t read some popular formatting options (such as infographics, images, and other page elements) that users pick. ATS software filters out resumes that include these options because it can’t read them.

ATS software also looks for resume keywords. A good resume template uses plain text so that the ATS can find your resume keywords. Resume keywords can be found in the job ad, so make sure you replicate the key terms used in the ad such as skills.

5. Add your teaching certifications

List all of your teaching certifications on your resume. If you haven’t received them yet, you can include your the date you expect to receive the certification. You can add your certifications to a certifications section or your skills section.

Certifications differ greatly between states, so make sure you know how they’re listed in the state you’re applying for teaching work. In our teacher resume sample, the candidate is from Florida, where a middle school English teacher certification is called “Certification in Middle Grades English.”

Teach.com’s Where Can I Teach? map contains the details you need to find out which certifications to include on your resume.