A teacher’s aide is one of the noblest jobs, yet is vastly underrepresented in classrooms all across America. Teacher’s aides work alongside teachers to help with the most vulnerable and underserved children such as those who are hard of hearing, have emotional issues, or suffer from Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD), Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), or other types of disabilities. They also help teachers in several other basic classroom tasks. We can help you boost your career as a teacher’s aide by providing tips to help you build your resume and find your desired position. Here are the three standard resume formats to start with:
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Job Duties of Teacher’s Aides
The teacher’s aide helps the teacher instruct a diverse group of students in a kind atmosphere filled with respect. They encourage active inquiry, facilitate learning and development, and foster individual growth.
Key roles and responsibilities:
Work with students who have physical, emotional or psychological developmental issues.
Assist the teacher in planning and creating an educational program that adheres to the school’s philosophy, objectives and culture.
Supporting the teacher in preparing lesson plans.
Ensuring the readiness of the classroom which may include cleaning up, making teaching tools available, or preparing technologies like laptops.
Learning how to use developmental tools such as braille reading materials and ASL sign language.
Monitoring students in and outside the classroom.
Actively listening to students’ issues and becoming their advocate in difficult situations, if needed.
Guiding students in preparing and presenting assignments.
Supporting the teacher in evaluating assignments.
Helping the teacher in measuring students’ performance.
Informing parents about student progress.
Teacher’s Aides Median Salaries
The median salary of a teacher’s aide in the U.S, is $27,920 a year as of 2019. There are approximately 1.4 million teacher’s aides in the United States.
Top Skills for Teacher’s Aides
As a teacher’s aide, your primary task is to support the teacher in performing their roles and responsibilities most efficiently. To do so, you need to make yourself a valuable source inside the classroom. Listed below are the top skills that are prerequisites of a good teacher’s aide.
- Effective planning and organizing: You should be able to plan your tasks in the most efficient way possible. Being organized helps in day-to-day tasks like organizing classes, evaluating papers, and determining group assignments.
- Excellent communication: Communicating with teachers, administrators and children all require different levels of ability but all have one thing in common: You must be able to explain what is happening in the classroom, why, and how it benefits the overall education of the children.
- Communication: Although engineering project managers don’t manage people, they do coordinate workers, create and manage schedules, and interact with multiple teams regularly.
- Child supervision techniques: Guiding young minds requires active supervision. To keep children engrossed, you need to possess functional supervision skills and a fair amount of patience. You should also be able to channel their budding energy in productive ways.
- Sociability: A teacher’s aide needs to greet everyone with respect and politeness.
- Team-oriented: You should be able to work with school staff collaboratively and respectfully.
- Tech savvy: Teacher’s aides should be updated on the latest technological advancements in the classroom, especially all the tech required to use with kids with special learning needs.
Educational Requirements for Teacher’s Aides
Degrees:
You are not required to but most teacher’s aides attain at least an associate degree in education. Some private and community-type schools accept job candidates with only a high school degree (about 30% of aides only have a high school degree.) But to expand your career prospects, you should possess a bachelor’s degree, preferably in education, from an accredited university or college.Certifications:
Receiving a certification is required in many states. Title I schools, for example, say that if a teacher’s aide does not have an associate degree, they have to have a Paraprofessional Certificate. You are eligible for this certificate if you attend a college or university for 48 semester hours, and must take and pass the related ParaPro Assessment test from the Educational Testing Service.
Many for-profit educational companies also offer short-term certification courses, like the Teacher’s Aide – USA Course from the International Career Institute (ICI). But be careful, your state or district may not accept this type of certification. A better idea might be to look for certifications from local city colleges, such as this one available in Berkeley, Calif.
A First Aid certificate is also necessary to be able to handle the safety and security of students.
Other certified courses, especially in technology, business, management, or any of the tasks required to work with children of developmental disabilities are great pluses.Licensure:
Teacher’s aides often have to get an internship or two throughout their educational programs. During internships, which vary on hours needed depending on the school district or state, you will be asked to, for example maintain a daily portfolio that is reviewed every day and includes your mission statement, a list of school resources personnel, test scores for students in your classes, your teaching assignment schedule, and your specific course syllabus. At the end, if you’ve passed, you get to take a test to get your teacher’s aide license. Only after receiving this license can you apply for a teacher’s aide job. Licensure varies from state to state.
Teacher’s Aides Resume-Writing Tips
A resume is the first point of contact between you and the interviewer. So your chances of getting shortlisted depend on the quality of your resume. Below are specific tips to build a resume that will leave a strong impression with the hiring manager:
- Engaging professional synopsis: Lots of interviewers tend to skip the objective statement or professional summary portion of the resume. But that’s a mistake. If you write it well, it can be a powerful statement about what you are capable of as a teacher’s aide and why you care about this type of job. Remember that this job requires a special person who is kind and thoughtful, and these qualities can be conveyed in an objective statement.
- Use bulleted points wherever possible: The interviewer has many resumes to read, and long paragraphs tend to annoy most of them. Keep your writing short and straightforward and explain yourself with the minimum number of words possible.
- Optimize your resume: Most interviewers and job agencies use keywords as the first level of candidate filtration. Insert keywords that match the job description, such as “MS Office,” “Excel,” “child management,” “child supervision skills,” “organizational skills,” and “certified.” This will enable you to pass the applicant tracking system (ATS) easily.
- Highlight your unique skills: A teacher’s aide should possess a robust set of soft skills and hard skills. This is the way you add in these skills inside your resume:
- Read the job description carefully and note which skills are specifically mentioned as most important.
- Match your skills against those in the job requirement. Include the skills you are the best at first, followed by others, in the skills sections of the resume.
FAQ
What is a teacher’s aide?
A teacher’s aide, also known as a teacher’s assistant, education assistant, assistant teacher or team teacher, supports the teacher by simplifying, planning, and organizing the classroom and materials. They arrange classrooms and laboratories. They help the teacher prepare the curriculum and collect feedback from parents. A teacher’s aide’s job includes both clerical and very important face-to-face duties helping children with difficult backgrounds and developmental issues.
What kind of skills are required for this position?
You should possess a robust set of skills for a job like a teacher’s aide. Young minds tend to have mental fluctuations and deviations and you should have the patience to deal with kids strategically and kindly. Having a good educational background, technical course certificates, and strategic skills to handle kids, especially those with issues such as ADD, is a must for this job.
Is the job satisfaction level high or low in this career?
This is actually one of the most sought-after jobs in the education industry. It is widely used as an entry point into teaching.