Creating a resume that highlights your skills and abilities is the best way to make a lasting impression with school administrators and hiring representatives. It will also reflect the skills and talents that will make you an effective teacher and will help hiring representatives understand why you will be a good fit for their school. The Staffing Success Team will also share your resume with principals and hiring representatives to support you in your job search.
Success Criteria for a Teaching Resume:
- Contains only pertinent and relevant information
- This must include your certification subject area, grade levels, and status.
- Demonstrates effective and succinct writing
- Maintains consistent and accessible formatting
- Saving your resume as a .pdf ensures that all hiring representatives are able to view it with the intended formatting on any platform.
- Is proofread and error-free (make sure to have at least two people proofread your resume)
Determining the Content of Your Teaching Resume
A good way to generate a quality teaching resume is to reflect on your past experiences with the specific objective of obtaining a teaching position. As you reflect on the skills you gained from previous positions and experiences, determine which strengths feel the most applicable to a teaching career. Be sure to also highlight any previous teaching, tutoring, work with children and/or examples of leadership. Consider your experience with these questions in mind:
- Have I worked with youth? If so, what age groups? What was the capacity of my work and how many kids did I work with?
- Have I ever worked with people with special needs (either personally or professionally)?
- Have I taught, trained, tutored, managed, or mentored anyone, even if informally, and did it lead to specific positive outcomes?
- What unique skills or interests do I have that could either enrich a classroom or apply to teaching, such as experience working with data or in the arts?
- What kind of collaborative and leadership experiences do I have? When have I worked successfully within a team? Have I been selected for special projects, committees, or task forces? If so, did it lead to any noteworthy accomplishments or changes? Were these recognized?
- What kind of leadership experiences do I have? When have I successfully managed a team? Did it lead to specific outcomes?
- Am I proficient in any languages other than English? Even as a monolingual or non-ENL teacher, your experience working with English Language Learners or speaking another language is a skill many principals seek.
Presenting Resume Content Effectively to Principals
When writing your resume, it is important to be concise and highlight your most relevant accomplishments. Your resume should not exceed one page - unless you have extensive experience, in which case it should be a maximum of two pages (and printed double-sided when you are sharing it as a hard copy).
Contact Information
- Be sure that your name and contact information are bolded at the top of your resume.
- Use a professional email address and voicemail message.
Related Experience
Because it is your most current experience and directly relevant to principals, your first entry should be the NYC Teaching Collaborative program. Define what underserved populations you will be working with that are specific to your Teaching Academy, such as students with disabilities, students reading below grade level, and English Language Learners.
You resume should include the following:
Professional Experience
- List additional work experience in reverse chronological order and include specific accomplishments, and where applicable, measurable achievements for each position.
- Describe the skills used in previous positions that are most transferable to teaching: training and mentoring, leadership, data analysis, and experience related to your content area. Emphasize management experience - it is useful for classroom management, school leadership, and school culture building.
- Detail any community outreach you have conducted in previous positions, as that is an integral part of your role as an educator.
Education
- List the university and degree program that you are enrolled in for the Collaborative program along with your expected graduation date.
- List graduate and undergraduate institutions in reverse-chronological order followed by non-degree programs and additional coursework (such as semesters abroad or work-related certification programs).
- Include academic honors where applicable.
- Only list undergraduate college clubs or activities if you are a recent graduate and they emphasize experience with children, leadership roles, or relate to your subject area.
Additional Tips:
- Keep your resume simple and straightforward. You should not use the first person “I” or include narratives with your experiences. Bulleted lists to demonstrate skills and achievements are the clearest and most concise way to include information about each position.
- Include any skills that relate to data analysis, training, and leadership. Do not include an objective. Principals know that your objective is to obtain a teaching position.
- Organize your resume using clear section headings, and be consistent in your formatting.
- Have at least two people proofread your resume. This is a great time to network with other PTs to give each other feedback.
- Use a font that is easy to read and clear, such as Arial, Calibri, or Segoe UI.
- Export or “print” your final resume version as a PDF file. Sending your resume as a PDF ensures that it can be read clearly on any digital platform.
Please remember to upload your resume to the New Teacher Finder once you have access so that it can be shared with principal and hiring representatives who are looking to fill vacancies.