If you are applying for a Teaching post after completing your teacher training you will of course be thinking about applying for your first position as a Teacher. In order to stand a chance against hundreds of competitors for the position you will need to put together a really good application. In this article we will look to guide you through this process and enable you to present yourself to the best of your ability.
As a teacher you need to be well organized with a strong character and it is important that these personality traits shine through in your resume. The first port of call for any resume should be your full name and address and a number of contact details which should include your telephone number, your postal address and you e mail address. Your resume should be formatted so that this information is at the top of your first page in larger text than the rest of the document. This is so that a prospective employer can pick up the document and see immediately who the resume belongs to.
In the main body of your resume you should have an objective statement. This is generally an outline of what sort of position you see yourself undertaking. It is vitally important that you have done some research into the school of your choice and you have read fully the job description before completing this section. Make sure that your objective is in line with the ethos and guidelines of the school and try to make sure that your statement is punchy and succinct.
You should follow your objective with a section focused purely on your education. This should start with your most recent qualifications – most likely your post graduate teacher training course. You need to go into some detail here about your different areas of study, the areas in which you excelled, and the areas you enjoyed the most. Again, you need to make sure that what you say here reflects the post for which you are applying. It’s no use explaining that you excelled in geography when you are applying for a post as a mathematics teacher.
The next section of your Teachers resume should be firmly focused on your Work Experience. You may not have undertaken a teaching post at this stage of your career and if this is the case you should use this section to discuss your work placements whilst you were studying. This can be a little difficult to categorize and quite tricky to present this information in a way which shows whether or not you were successful in your post. Don’t let this worry you and instead talk about what you believe you got out of the post in terms of experience. If you had any particular successes whilst on placement then make sure they are documented in your resume.
You can complete your resume with some personal information. This can be anything which you are involved with outside of your working life. Schools like you to be involved in the wider community and if you can show your commitment to such ventures through your memberships of local sports teams and the likes. This will be good background information worth including in your resume.