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When preparing a CV for teaching jobs, it’s important to showcase your key skills to demonstrate your proficiency as a teacher. But which skills are most important for teachers?
We’ve created this in-depth guide to show you which skills are most important for teachers and how to demonstrate them on your teacher CV. This guide covers the top skills for all teachers, from high school teachers and primary school teachers to university lecturers and professors.
As teachers engage with students and audiences on a regular basis, it’s important that they’re able to communicate effectively in order to help students achieve their learning goals.
As such, your teacher CV should highlight your communication skills.
Recruiters can gauge your communication skills by the way your CV is written. CVs that use professional language, proper grammar and engaging content suggest that the candidate has a good degree of communication acumen.
View our comprehensive guide to writing a teacher CV, which includes 3 teacher CV templates, to see how communication skills can be demonstrated on teacher CVs.
Teachers work with students of all abilities, many of whom may require additional support and attention when it comes to teaching. To ensure they provide a good learning experience for all students, teachers should have a great deal of patience.
Teachers also often encounter unruly students who cause disruption to classes. Some students may refuse to complete homework or distract other students during lessons. Dealing with these types of situations in the most effective way demands patience.
A great way to illustrate your patience on your CV is to highlight your conflict management skills and your ability to defuse heated situations.
As indicated in ITTT’s article of teacher confidence, teachers with more confidence have a tendency to get better results. This is largely because they’re more likely to engage with students, rather than simply dispensing information.
ITTT’s article references a research study titled ‘The Impact of Teacher Self-Efficacy on the Students’. The study states that teachers with a high degree of self confidence ‘tend to be more organized, display greater skills of instruction, questioning, explaining and providing feedback to students having difficulties and maintaining students on task’.
Confidence also plays a key role in classroom management. Students can sense a lack of confidence in teachers and they may take advantage. Confidence helps teachers manage their classrooms effectively and remain in control.
Conflict is a common theme in classrooms. It will always exist, but there are methods teachers can use to manage and channel it suitably. Teachers who can effectively manage and generate constructive solutions to conflict will be able to improve students’ learning experience.
Failure to effectively manage conflict in the classroom can result in a negative learning environment. It can also damage relationships.
To show your conflict management skills on your CV, demonstrate your experience defusing conflict and highlight the methods you use to do so.
Here is an example:
Utilised the SOAR approach (Stop, Observe, Assess, React) to defuse conflict, and used classroom conflict as moments for learning and healthy disagreement
Creativity in the classroom improves learning outcomes. It also enhances students’ cognitive attributes; teachers who inspire creativity in the classroom build students’ critical thinking and problem solving skills, as well as their motivation levels.
As revealed in Gallup’s research report, titled ‘Creativity in Learning’, 87% percent of teachers and 77% of parents believe that creative teaching has a bigger payoff for students.
Using a creative approach to teaching doesn’t need to – and often shouldn’t – involve artistic creativity. Creativity for teachers is less about bright colours and displays, and more about developing novel ideas and new ways of working to achieve goals.
Enthusiasm rubs off on students. Teachers who are clearly enthusiastic about teaching create passionate cultures in which students are eager to learn.
Think back to lessons you participated in at school with teachers who lacked enthusiasm. You may have been uninspired and indifferent. Such lacklustre classroom environments can lead to poor student performance.
As such, it’s important to demonstrate your enthusiasm for teaching on your CV (if you are enthusiastic about teaching, of course).
Teachers are the leaders of their classrooms. Whether or not they have managerial responsibilities within the school, they’ll need strong leadership skills to get the best out of students and ensure the smooth-running of lessons.
The best way to illustrate your leadership qualities on your CV is to show your results as a teacher. This is because leadership is fundamentally about improving performance and getting results.
Take a look at our list of 8 key skills that great leaders possess.
Teachers juggle many tasks alongside lessons, such as marking, lesson planning and administrative tasks associated with teaching.
In order to maintain productivity in the classroom and make the most of their time, teachers should develop sound organisation skills.
To show your organisation skills on your CV, touch on positive outcomes you achieved by using your organisation qualities.
Here is an example:
Implemented a new filing system to enable the efficient management of classroom tests, communications and documentation
Teachers are often required to adapt their teaching styles to meet the needs of different groups and individuals.
Adaptable teachers are capable of assessing the progress of students and the effectiveness of teaching strategies, before deciding whether change is necessary. This ensures an optimal learning experience for all students.
Robust teacher-student relationships are the foundation of good academic performance. Strong relationships lead to more engaged learning and cooperative behaviour.
Engaging with students on a personal level and learning about their strengths and weaknesses is a great way of building positive relationships with students.
If you’re an effective relationship builder, bolster your CV by touching on your ability to build relationships with students.
The skills section of your CV is where you highlight a number of your core competencies to show recruiters how you can add value as a teacher.
Use bullet points to draw attention to your skills, focusing only on a small number of your key competencies. Listing too many will dilute the section and take attention away from your most important skills.
Here is an example of a teacher CV's skills section:
When writing your CV, it’s often better to show how you’ve utilised your skills, rather than simply stating that you possess the skills.
The best place to do this on your CV is in the work experience section. While describing your duties and achievements, you have the chance to show how you used your skills successfully.
Here is an example:
Formulated new individual, tailored learning plans for struggling students, which contributed to 61% of students exceeding their predicted GCSE grades
Note how this accomplishment demonstrates the teacher’s creativity in response to problems, as well as her determination. This provides much more value to the teacher’s CV than simply stating that she is creative and determined would.
Of course, it’s still important to list your skills in your CV’s skills section as this offers the reader a quick snapshot of your skillset.
But you should also try to back these skills up by offering tangible evidence of your ability to use the skills to achieve positive outcomes.
It’s also important to illustrate your key skills in your cover letter.
When writing your cover letter, you can go into more detail to demonstrate your skills. For example, you may want to consider using the STAR methodology – a technique used to showcase your capabilities by describing how you achieved positive outcomes in challenging situations. STAR stands for Situation, Task, Action, Result.
When using the STAR method, you describe the situation you were faced with, the task at hand, the action you took and the end result. This technique enables you to show how you have utilised your skills to great effect.
Take a look at our in-depth guide that covers how to write a job-winning teacher cover letter and includes three teacher cover letter examples.
Interested in checking out more of our free teacher resources? Take a look at our teacher CV examples and teacher cover letter examples, which you can use now to improve your search for jobs in teaching.
3 Teacher CV Samples and CV Writing Guide
