English Teacher
Resume Example

When you apply for an English teaching job, your resume needs to emphasize your passion for tutoring. Previous experience in the education field will also be a plus point for recruiters/principals to hire you. However, if you are a newbie trying to land your first teaching job, this might be a challenge.

The ABCs of English Teaching

Before moving forward, let’s go through the responsibilities of a typical English teacher. This will be useful especially if you have no experience in English teaching

1.

Preparing lesson plans.

2.

Tutoring students.

3.

Giving homework and in class assignments

4.

Grading homework and assignments.

5.

Preparing test papers and grading them.

6.

Helping in school events. E.g: Supporting students with their speeches at the annual prize giving.

7.

Communicating with parents at meetings about students’ progress.

Clearly, to become a successful English teacher, both hard skills and soft skills are important. Hard skills are academic skills like grammar, writing, speaking and reading. Soft skills are leadership, planning and relationship building just to name a few.

So remember: although you are a highly qualified academic, you need to possess soft skills too.

Steps to write a good English teacher resume

Excellent handwriting, descriptive essays, smooth grammar and flawless spellings are some favourites of an English teacher! 

When it comes to resume writing, you need to impress your recruiter/ principal within a maximum of 7 seconds. Just imagine a school principal flooded with hundreds of resumes… For you to be the number one candidate, your resume must be A+.

Now let’s jump to the steps of writing an impressive English teacher resume.

01. Select the best  format for your English teacher resume

Think of the last time you wrote or went through an essay. How easy was it to read? The main concern regarding readability is its structure: the head, body and end.

Your English teacher resume too should be structured to be readable. A school principal won’t have the time to go through a lengthy resume..

So, here are some tips for keeping your English teacher resume simple and professional:

• Break your resume into sections: These are described in the next topics.

• Use attractive colors. (Not too many)

• Use simple fonts: Using Times New Roman, Arial and Calibri is totally fine. But better if you can go for other fonts like Verdana, Gill Sans or Cambria.

• Pay attention to font sizes: Keep the fonts in the body section at maximum 12pt and use maximum 14pt for headings.

• Use bold and italic when needed: If you wanna highlight important things, use these features rather than changing the font size.

• Limit your English teacher resume to a maximum of 2 pages: Present your intro, skills and experience in a short and sweet manner. Remember that your hiring manager does not have time for narrative essays.

• Save your English teacher resume as a PDF: Yeah.. PDF is much better than Word.

02. Create a resume header for your English Teacher resume

The best way to kickstart your English teacher resume is to write a brief intro. Be simple enough to mention your name, contact info and current job position(if you have one).

This will help the school principal to get an idea about you at a glance

Tip: When using colors, be careful to use black, white and another color like blue or green.

If you don’t have a job currently, you may include your highest educational qualification next to your name.

E.g: Elisha Jones, Undergraduate -Name of college

Related: How to create a professional resume header

03. Professional Profile

This is where you summarize your goals, strengths, skills and experience as an English teacher. This  is no longer called the “Objective”  section. 

The purpose of your resume is to highlight your  personal brand. Make use of the professional profile to brand yourself.

Little tip: Use statistics whenever possible to express your commitment. They are proof of what you have done!

For example you can show the sizes of classes you have conducted. Also, the number of years of experience.

High school ESL teacher with 3 years of experience in teaching classes of minimum 30 students. Ability to facilitate interactive sessions using a variety of in-class activities that improve reading, writing, speaking, and listening abilities. In 2020, trained two new teachers at ABC school.

In the above sample, there are numbers to show capabilities,soft skills and also hard skills. 

What if you don’t have experience to highlight here? You can show how you are planning to develop through learning while contributing to the betterment of the school applied.

Fresh graduate from EFG college of Language and Literature. Passionate for teaching English as a second language. Able to learn and adapt to changes in a fast moving school environment. Hope to learn through mistakes while being committed to the betterment of ABC high school

Related: How to write a resume summary

04. Educational background section of your English Teacher resume

This is one of the main areas your school principal is gonna look at because it reveals how qualified you are for the position applied. 

Make this section ordered in a reverse chronological manner: Put the latest qualifications first and the others underneath.

Tip: Mention any teaching certifications, recognitions etc in this section.

Related: Complete guide to write education on resumes

05. Work experience

If you are an experienced English teacher, go ahead and add your previous experience here! Don’t rush! Add only the most recent experience. If you feel like certain experiences might add more weight to your profile, then go ahead and add them.

For example, if you have worked as a lecturer in a university 10 years ago, you can add that to make your profile stand out. 

The reverse chronological order works for this section as well. But, if you are a fresher, avoid it! Focus on emphasizing what you’ve done as a student or volunteer.

To make your work experience count, show evidence using numbers! Talk about the results you have produced, the number of students you have taught, the number of workshops organized by you etc.

06. Skills to add in your English Teacher resume

Last but not the least, you must add your relevant skills. When adding them, try to first review the job description and find the required set of skills for the job and add them into your resume.

You may use a scale to rate yourself in each skill. Order your skills in the descending order of ability. Adding some other languages you can speak will serve as a plus point here.

So, here are some examples of skills that are in high demand for English teacher resumes.

And the list goes on.. 

Here too, include the most relevant skills and focus on the skills requested by the vacancy.

Winding up

After adding everything, you are ready to mail your resume. You can even try attaching a cover letter and make an offer to your employer. 

Last but not the least, try to limit your resume to a maximum of 2 pages and focus on the top half. If the top half looks good, you have a high chance of being selected for the interview. 

Good luck!