No matter how much you might have loved your teaching stint within a certain subject, sometimes it’s time to switch things up! You might be looking to teach a different age group, or you might be interested in teaching new subject matter. Either way, you know your abilities to document, plan, grade, engage, and teach will carry over nicely.
But how do you present that on your resume? How do you show that your skills transfer and make you an excellent candidate?
Luckily, we’ve spent years helping teachers like you find classrooms to thrive in. Take a look at these three resume templates and advice to get started!
Related resume examples
What Matters Most: Your Skills & Professional Experience
Your skills section might seem a bit confusing at first if you’re switching careers—do you list skills from your old subject, or the new one? Well, it’s a bit of both! You want to prove that you’ve mastered the general essentials of teaching as they apply to the subject you’re switching to.
Recruiters want to see skills that relate directly to the teaching role you’re applying for, so avoid including subject-specific points from your previous role unless they overlap with both. If you’re aiming to teach software, list software-related skills!
And ensure that you’re as specific as possible, especially with your soft skills and software tools. Name your favorite programs, and spell out exactly how you’re good at interacting with others.
9 most popular Teacher Career Change skills
- Problem-solving
- Lesson Planning
- Lesson Presentation
- Python
- SQL
- MS Excel/PowerPoint
- MongoDB
- Java
- Linux
Sample Teacher Career Change work experience bullet points
Now that you’ve told recruiters how you assist students and what you can teach them, it’s time to cite examples of the times you’ve fostered a successful classroom environment in the past! Think of ways your past accomplishments can suggest future ones.
If you use to teach history and are pursuing a career change to become an art teacher, think of experience examples that include the arts throughout history. Or think of things more technically and share stories about how you helped students overcome obstacles.
No matter what you’ve taught or helped your students achieve, you’ll need to give recruiters some solid metrics for your success! Use quantifiable data to back your claims.
Here are some good examples:
- Created and taught a refresher course for standardized testing to 28 students, 92% of which passed
- Established an after-school club with honors students to develop apps using Python to enhance students’ learning experience and provide tutoring that resulted in an 11% increase in engagement
- Worked with physics instructor to develop lesson plans, curriculum, and assignments for a first-year program for 31 students, resulting in a grade average of B+
- Created tests, quizzes, homework packets, and in-class activities to teach objectives, re-teaching lessons to ensure that a student passing rate of 94% or more
Top 5 Tips for Your Teacher Career Change resume
- Seek out a good balance
- Remember: Just because your focus should be on the subject matter you’re aiming for doesn’t mean you can’t include great points from your previous classes! Things that carry over well across subjects include student grade or test score increases, student engagement percentages, and feedback ratings.
- Use a super-organized template
- Any of our templates will help you make your individual qualifications look good, but pick whichever one makes them look downright great! Ensure that each section is clear and has a good hierarchy in your resume layout so that recruiters have an easy time skimming.
- Weigh your objective
- A career switch is a great time to utilize a handy resume objective. Just make sure your objective statement is concise and packed with new, valuable information. Don’t list anything that you’re planning to repeat in bullet points later.
- Show off your tech skills
- Even if many of your experience points are bound to relate to your previous area of expertise, your skills section can speak more to your qualification for the new role. Showcase any instances when you utilized those skills behind-the-scenes in your previous job, too!
- Use compelling metrics
- Switch up your metrics to keep things interesting and show how well-rounded your abilities are. Whenever possible, tie them in with the teaching role you’re applying for through context or relevant backstory, like tutoring classes you led or group projects that involved specific software.
Letters of recommendation would absolutely be helpful in your situation! A few professional reference letters can help bridge the gap between where you were and where you’re going by testifying to your teaching abilities.
You should stick with one page and one page only! Anything on page two is unlikely to get through anyway—recruiters really prefer short resumes that are quick to read through.
You want your resume to look modern, clean, and professional. If you want to use a little bit of color as a highlight here and there, go for it, but avoid anything that distracts from your information. Use minimalistic fonts, too!
