With so many requirements to fulfill, I respect your choice to become a teacher. Getting a degree is difficult enough—but you also need to complete a student teaching program. These can feel like a breeze or a landmine, depending on the school and the cooperating teachers you work with. An impressive student teacher resume has the power to get you the best placements in your area, and I’ll explain how to craft one.
Top Insights:
Soft skills are essential on a student teacher resume.
Your strengths must appear on the top half of your resume for student teaching jobs.
Our expert Mariusz advises using classic, simple fonts to make your student teaching resume easy to read.
I had an interview yesterday and the first thing they said on the phone was: “Wow! I love your resume.” Patrick
I love the variety of templates. Good job guys, keep up the good work! Dylan
My previous resume was really weak and I used to spend hours adjusting it in Word. Now, I can introduce any changes within minutes. Absolutely wonderful! George
Student Teaching Resume Example for Experienced Applicants
What makes it work:
This student teacher resume is perfect for an applicant who has some teaching experience as a teacher’s assistant or tutor.
It features a captivating introduction that sums up the applicant’s skills and features relevant buzzwords.
This resume confirms that the applicant fulfilled all requirements for student teaching in their state.
Student Teacher Resume Example for Beginners
What makes it work:
This student teaching resume belongs to an applicant with no relevant work experience, so they placed the education section right after core competencies.
The resume highlights soft skills important for teaching.
The additional sections—volunteer experience and personal interests—include activities that show this applicant’s interest in teaching.
Student Teaching Resume Example for Career Changers
What makes it work:
This applicant seeks to slightly change their career so the work experience section shows only relevant achievement statements and action words.
The resume objective focuses on professional skills as well as states what this person can do for the organization.
All the information featured in this student teaching resume is picked to confirm that the applicant is qualified and well-prepared to teach.
How to Write a Captivating Student Teacher Resume
Each year, nearly 200,000 student teachers test their professional skills in a real classroom. Experts agree that this experience is invaluable—but they also point out that 90% of traditional teacher preparation programs don’t screen mentor teachers.
You might be lucky and land a cooperating teacher who will support you and provide real mentorship. Or have bad luck and get paired with a cranky, unhelpful, burned-out co-op teacher. That’s why your student-teacher resume must impress the placement committee and school principals.
Let’s see how one successful student-teacher created their resume. This is Tamara’s bio:
My name’s Tamara Gonzalez, and I’m an aspiring K-8 student teacher with a strong foundation in collaborative teaching, classroom management, and lesson planning. My experience includes implementing literacy skills in multicultural classrooms, supporting students with exceptional needs, and improving their standardized test performance by 21% at River Park Elementary. I organized recreational activities and facilitated creativity as a summer camp counselor. I’m pursuing a B.S. in Elementary Education from the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee, and I currently have a GPA of 3.76. I’m skilled in one-on-one tutoring, learning needs assessment, and multilingual instruction. Proficient in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. I’m certified in First Aid, CPR, AED, and I received a ParaPro Assessment score of 480.
When Tamara tried to write her student teaching resume, the first draft wasn’t great. That was the introduction:
Sadly, the work experience descriptions were also rather unimpressive:
That would not get Tamara far. Thankfully, she stumbled upon our resume builder and some great advice that helped her write a student teaching resume worth an A+. Here are the tips she used—and you should try them, too!
1. Start With Essential Information
Let’s get the easiest things out of the way so you can focus on more complex parts of your resume. In your freshly created document, create a resume header where you’ll put all the contact information: full name, degree or professional title, phone number, and email address. Optionally, you may also provide the address of your LinkedIn profile, teaching portfolio website, or teaching-related social media.
Tamara Gonzalez
K–8 Student Teacher
(111) 222–3333
tamara.gonzalez@mail.com
linkedin.com/in/tamara.gonzalez
There’s no space for creativity here, but if you want to make your header more unique, you can use small resume icons or symbols next to your contact information. Just remember to be subtle.
2. Advertise Your Best Teaching Qualities in the Resume Profile
It's time to show your assets. A great student teacher resume starts with an introduction that lays out relevant qualifications, teaching experience, and professional knowledge in just a few sentences.
The best format? Resume objective. Use it to combine the information about your professional background with a goal you aim to achieve at a given school. Check Tamara’s profile which was improved by our builder:
It mentions Tamara’s strengths related to teaching.
It includes a goal she wants to achieve while helping the school and its students.
It expresses her passion and professional interests.
You can use a similar approach, no matter what subjects you’re going to teach.
3. Put Your Core Student Teacher Competencies Above the Fold
It’s true that you’re still in the process of learning to teach—but that doesn’t mean you don’t have professional skills that you can be proud of. Your past teaching or tutoring experiences definitely taught you a thing or two, and studying for your degree has given you foundational knowledge about education. Now, it’s time to turn these into your core competencies.
It gives a quick overview of the applicant’s strengths.
This section must appear right under the introduction of your student teaching resume. No exceptions, and here’s why: studies show that it’s natural for readers to focus attention on the upper half of a document. The lower the gaze goes, the less focused they are.
Expert Hint
Remember to mention soft skills in your resume. Research has shown that teamwork, communication skills, problem-solving, critical thinking, leadership skills, and lifelong learning are essential for educators. They’re also becoming invaluable in the workplace, so nurturing them is one of the top education trends at the moment. You don’t have to list them all as your Core Competencies, but it’s a good idea to incorporate soft skills in various sections of your student-teacher resume.
4. Show Your Student Teacher's Educational Background and Qualifications
For the majority of aspiring teachers, this resume section is the most important one. And there’s so much information it can encompass! Let’s start with the basics: every student teacher's resume must include the name of the degree, university name, and years of study or expected graduation year. But there’s more you can add, such as:
Your GPA
Relevant coursework
Extracurricular activities
Student associations
It’s worth mentioning these pieces of info, especially if you haven’t had any teaching-related experience yet. Plus, if you’ve never taught or tutored before, I encourage you to place the education section right after your core competencies—this way, the placement committee will focus on your academic performance.
This example is great for several reasons:
It features the essentials straight away, so they’re easy to spot.
It mentions coursework related to education.
It lists an extra activity that’s teaching-related.
Expert Hint
Make sure to check the local requirements for student teachers. They vary from state to state. If you completed an undergraduate degree in one state but want to do your clinical practice in another, it’s best if you check local teacher preparation programs for detailed information about the requirements.
5. Include Relevant Teaching Experience
Yes, you aren’t qualified to teach full-time yet. But there’s a chance that you have some teaching-related experience like tutoring, working as a teaching assistant, being a camp counselor, ESL teaching abroad, or volunteering. You can include all of these activities in your work experience section.
But how? In your student teacher resume descriptions, mention the job title, name of the school or organization, and work period. Follow with descriptions of your teaching-related duties. Try to include one or a few achievements. If you have several relevant experiences, list them in reverse chronological order.
Here’s what Tamara included in her work experience section:
What makes it great?
Bullet points help to organize the information.
Each line starts with an action verb to highlight relevant duties.
The key achievement features numbers that catch attention.
Several descriptions feature soft skills that are highly desirable in teachers.
6. Pick Additional Sections for a Student Teacher Resume
You’re not done yet! Using additional sections will help convince the placement committee that you’re eligible to student teach and that you’re also on the right track to become a dedicated teacher. If there’s any certification that’s required from student-teaching candidates, start with that. Then, follow with additional hard and soft skills that didn’t make it into the core competencies part. If you have some space left on your student teacher resume, you can also add sections such as language proficiency, volunteer experience, personal interests, or research and publications.
This is what Tamara included:
What makes this example great?
Essential certifications are listed first.
The additional skills section mentions computer skills that are useful for educational purposes.
Being an advanced Spanish speaker can help when working in multicultural environments.
The interests listed are also relevant for a teacher.
Remember to be selective. When filling out the contents of your student teaching experience on a resume, start with the essential information. Afterward, if you have some space left, mention additional sections. It’s much more important to mention your academic background than your interests.
Now, you may dig deeper into writing the contents of a resume with these guides:
Alternatively, move on to learn about the visual elements of a professional resume.
The ResumeLab builder is more than looks. Get specific content to boost your chances of getting the job. Add job descriptions, bullet points, and skills. Easy. Improve your resume in our resume builder now.
Nail it all with a splash of color, choose a clean font, and highlight your skills in just a few clicks. You're the perfect candidate, and we'll prove it. Use our resume builder now.
Structure Your Student Teaching Resume Template Well
Research has shown that lookism influences hiring decisions. Everyone has aesthetic preferences, and they’re developed very early in life. When formatting your student teacher resume, you must try to match the placement committee preferences for document layouts.
Now, what do you think: would they prefer an experimental approach to resume visuals or rather expect a traditional, well-organized structure that’s easy to follow?
Ensure your resume is clean, professional, and easy to read. Use a simple font like Arial or Times New Roman, with consistent formatting for headings and bullet points. Highlight your teaching experiences and skills clearly. Proofread meticulously to avoid any errors.
At this point, you can save time and effort by picking a pre-made, simple resume template and just filling it out. If you prefer to have full control over your application, follow the instructions to create a template in Word or Google Docs:
Start with organizing the layout: Your student teacher resume can follow a classic, one-column layout or feature a narrow sidebar where you’ll put contact information. Pick the fonts for your resume, set the spacing, and don’t forget about resume margins.
Keep the length of your resume reasonable: Unless you have a lot of relevant experience, limit yourself to one page.
Make your student teaching resume distinct: Try to stand out by using one or two colors for headings, adding a simple logo with your initials to the header area, or featuring minimalist resume icons. Just remember to keep it classy.
Optimize for ATS systems: Even if the placement committee doesn’t use applicant tracking software, it’s good practice to make the resume ATS-friendly. The sooner you learn how to do it, the better for you!
Would you like to learn more about resume formatting? See these helpful guides:
Want to try a different look? There's 21 more. A single click will give your document a total makeover. Pick a cover letter template here.
There are no mysteries left for you when it comes to creating a professional student-teacher resume. How about trying out our resume builder to write your resume quickly? Good luck!
About ResumeLab’s Editorial Process
At ResumeLab, quality is at the crux of our values, supporting our commitment to delivering top-notch career resources. The editorial team of career experts carefully reviews every article in accordance with editorial guidelines, ensuring the high quality and reliability of our content. We actively conduct original research, shedding light on the job market's intricacies and earning recognition from numerous influential news outlets. Our dedication to delivering expert career advice attracts millions of readers to our blog each year.
Roma is a Certified Professional Résumé Writer and career expert with international work experience and a background in education and humanities. She has spent considerable time assisting individuals in advancing their careers by helping them improve their communication skills in diverse cultural and professional settings. She has written over 50 articles on effective approaches to resume writing and career advice.