Aide Resume Examples

Before you tackle the challenge of writing a resume for a teacher’s aide position, have a look at a few aide resume samples to see how to best highlight your skills and experience. You’ll find examples of resumes for elementary, middle, and high school level teacher’s aides; for those who work in preschools and childcare centers; and for professionals in both private and public education. Your resume research will help you decide how to best represent your past work experience, as well as how to present yourself as the candidate described in the job posting.

You’ll also find researching samples sheds some light on resume format and structure and provides advice on mistakes to avoid. As you read further in this article, there will be guidance and suggestions to help your resume stand out and to increase your chances of getting an interview.

Since what you should include in a resume depends largely on the position you’re applying for, you should be prepared to tailor your resume to each job you’d like to land. You may have experience with preschool-aged children, middle school, and high school, but if you’re applying for a high school teacher’s aide job, the potential employer isn’t necessarily interested in your preschool experience.

Luckily, there are teacher’s aide resume samples specific to each age group and academic setting that can help you write a focused resume that includes the right information.

There are two basic resume formats to choose from. The most common is the chronological resume, which lists your work history with the most recent job first. In this format, you would include 3-6 bullet points that highlight your accomplishments at each job. The chronological resume is best for those with no employment gaps, and it’s the most familiar resume type to hiring managers. The main sections in a chronological format are:

• Contact Information
• Resume Summary
• Work Experience
• Skills
• Education.

The other option is the functional resume, which is less common but well suited to those with gaps in employment or who are attempting to make a career change. The main sections of a functional resume are slightly different, with a new ?Accomplishments? category added. The sections would be:

• Contact Information
• Resume Summary
• Accomplishments (new section)
• Work Experience
• Skills
• Education

A chronological resume would have more detail in the work experience section, while the functional would focus more on the accomplishments section. Help writing both types will be addressed further on, but you can find examples of each in your search for aide resume samples.

Your resume summary is the first thing a potential employer reads. It’s your opportunity to introduce yourself as a stand-out candidate and someone they’ll want to know more about.

As you review aid resume samples, pay attention to how the summaries are written. They’re usually 3-5 concise sentences or bullet points, each focusing on a particular skill and how it brought value to the employer. If the position you’re applying for is in an elementary school setting, focus on your accomplishments in that area, even if you have experience in other areas, like preschool. You can mention those additional skills later in your resume, but your summary should be targeted at the specific job you’re applying for and should mirror the requirements.

Following are two examples of well-written resume summaries:

• Elementary school teacher?s aid with experience supervising and controlling students during brief teacher absences and during lunch time. Maintains front line observation of potential developmental issues and reports findings to lead teacher. Handles daily chores like attendance, distributing bulletins, grading tests, and checking workbooks and homework to allow lead teacher the time to actually teach.
• Experienced special education teacher?s aide who?s knowledgeable about how to adapt information to an individuals learning style and comfortable working with students with severe disabilities. Helped students with basic needs, like personal hygiene, and have helped young adult students learn the necessary skills to work or live independently.

The education section should be a simply formatted list of educational accomplishments with the most recent listed first. Identify the school attended, the degree obtained, and the location of the school. While the format options for this resume section are fairly basic, take a look at aide resume samples for the format that seems right to you.

If you have a bachelor’s degree from a college or university, you most certainly should list that degree first, and you can leave out your high school education. If you don’t, don’t worry. The educational requirements for a teacher’s aide position may only require a high school diploma or an associate’s degree in an education-related field.

Certifications and course studies in human development, children’s literature, child behaviors, child care techniques, and others will enhance your resume and should be listed. If you have more than two of these under your belt, consider devoting a separate section to them.

Depending on the state where you live and your level of education, you may need to pass a state exam known as a paraprofessional test to comply with ESEA requirements. Needless to say, if you’ve taken and passed the exam, list it on your resume.

The work experience section of your resume will differ depending on whether you’re going with the chronological or functional style. Revisit the teacher’s aide resume samples for formatting options. In both resume styles, the job headings should include four pieces of information: the name of the company, the city and state where the company is located, the period of employment, and your job title.

In the chronological resume, you should list 3-6 bullet points under each job heading that focus on your accomplishments rather than your duties. Use action verbs and avoid the temptation to introduce the bullet points with the statement ?Duties included.? Again, by referring to the job description, you’ll know what experience is important to the employer, and if you can focus their attention on the fact that you’ve done for others what they’re hoping someone can do for them, you’ll increase your chances of getting an interview.

If you’ve decided on the functional resume style, you’ll put most of your experience detail in the accomplishments section. Because of this, your actual work experience section will be much less detailed and more like a list of previous positions.

Then, in the actual accomplishments section you can go into detail about specific achievements and their positive impact on the classroom, the lead teacher, or the parent-teacher-school relationship. Keep in mind that you want to mirror the employer’s requirements as much as possible. If you’re hoping to cross over into a different age group or school setting, this is the time to highlight your transferable skills.

The use of action verbs in describing you work experience will show you as a person of action, and using industry-related verbs will resonate with a potential employer. Remember to use past tense with previous jobs and present tense for your current position. Here are some action verbs to consider:

• Reinforce
• Calculate
• Help
• Supervise
• Grade
• Check
• Tutor
• Specialize
• Assist
• Monitor
• Enable
• Develop
• Prepare
• Review
• Organize
• Observe
• Implement
• Accompany
• Support

A quick review of aide resume samples should provide additional action verbs related to the activities of a teacher’s aide.

Before you begin your list of skills, go back to teacher’s aide resume samples to review format options, and check the job description for the skills and requirements the employer is asking for. As you prepare your list of skills, do your best to match your list to their list of requirements in the same order of importance, and try to use similar wording so the school administrator or potential employer will be able to visualize you as part of their team.

Once you’ve mirrored the employer’s requirements to match your skills, you can add any additional skills you can bring to the position. Depending on your actual experience, you might consider including skills similar to the following:

• Curriculum planning, design, and implementation
• Lesson development research
• Student records maintenance
• Observation of students for developmental or behavioral issues

Soft skills, like relationship-building and strong communication skills, are also important to all parties involved in the education of children, from the school administration to the lead teacher to the parents. These should be listed as skills that you deem as important as a potential employer does.

As a rule, it’s best not to include your references in your resume, and you’ve probably noticed there are no references on the teacher’s aide resume samples you’ve been referencing. They just take up valuable resume space that could be put to better use. Simply stating that you can provide references upon request is the best way to handle references for the reasons listed below:

• If an employer requests your references, you’ll know for sure you’re in the running for the position.
• You’ll be able to contact your references to prepare them for an imminent call from a potential employer.
• You’ll have the opportunity to ask your references to let you know after they’ve received the call and what kind of questions they were asked.

If you’re still putting together a list of references, keep it professional. That means 1-2 previous supervisors (either a teacher or principal), a co-worker with whom you had a good relationship, or a school administrator.

• Save the first-person voice for your cover letter and keep your resume more formal. Avoid first-person pronouns like ?I,? ?me,? and ?we.?
• The importance of proofreading can’t be overstated, and if you can, ask someone else to proofread your final version. When you read your own work, you tend to see what you think you wrote, but typos tend to leap off the page when a potential employer is reading it.
• Don’t speak poorly of previous employers or blame them for your lack of advancement. You’ll be pegged as a complainer and your resume will end up in the reject pile.
• Long resumes aren’t read all the way through. They’re often just scanned briefly, but if you carefully craft your resume, you should be able to keep it to one page, two at the most. Ask yourself how many multi-page teacher’s aide resume samples have you seen.
• You don’t have to list every job you ever had, especially if it might trigger age discrimination that you’d never be aware of.
• Just because you can use a variety of fonts in different sizes with a few graphics thrown in, doesn’t mean you should. Potential employers are probably resume-weary. They’re looking for information that’s stated clearly and in an easy-to-read format.

• Because enrollment in public and private elementary and secondary schools is expected to increase, so is the employment of teacher’s aides, with a projected growth of about 9 percent in the period from 2012 to 2022. There will also be increases in childcare and preschool enrollment and an ongoing demand for special education services. Increases in enrollment in these settings will result in increased demand for teacher’s assistants/aides.

• Attrition will be responsible for numerous job openings as assistants leave and need to be replaced. Many workers transfer to other occupations after obtaining further education.

Opportunities will likely be better in the South and West because of anticipated rapid increases in enrollment, and bilingual applicants will have increased prospects. Job openings in urban schools will remain fairly constant because of the difficulty recruiting and retaining teacher’s aides.