Top 12 High School English Teacher Skills to Put on Your Resume
Crafting an impressive resume as a high school English teacher means showing sharp command of language and the knack to spark minds. Blend pedagogy, content knowledge, and human connection. Let that trio hum through every line. Stand out by proving you plan with purpose, teach with clarity, and reach students where they are.
High School English Teacher Skills
- Curriculum Development
- Classroom Management
- Literacy Coaching
- Differentiated Instruction
- Assessment Design
- Google Classroom
- Zoom Proficiency
- Microsoft Office
- Canvas LMS
- Critical Thinking
- Student Engagement
- Parent Communication
1. Curriculum Development
Curriculum development for a high school English teacher is the deliberate design, organization, and refinement of courses and materials to meet clear learning goals and standards. You select texts, structure units, scaffold writing, and thread in strategies that strengthen reading, discussion, and composition.
Why It's Important
It keeps instruction aligned, coherent, and responsive. A strong curriculum meets standards, reflects diverse voices, builds critical literacy, and helps students grow as readers, writers, and thinkers—inside class and well beyond it.
How to Improve Curriculum Development Skills
Lean into your learners and the outcomes you want. Then iterate with evidence.
Know your students: Interests, identities, reading histories, strengths, gaps. Use quick diagnostics and surveys; revisit often.
Broaden the canon: Pair classics with contemporary texts, multiple genres, and multimodal media to widen access and perspective.
Map backward: Start with end-of-unit performances, craft rubrics, then build lessons that ladder skills toward those targets.
Embed talk and thinking: Socratic seminars, debate, quick writes, and protocols that push analysis and synthesis.
Align tightly: Link objectives, tasks, and assessments to your state or district standards and to school-wide priorities.
Iterate with data: Use formative checks, student work samples, and reflections to tweak texts, timing, and tasks.
Keep learning: Collaborate in PLCs, observe colleagues, and capture what works in living unit plans.
Do this consistently and your curriculum becomes a living, inclusive roadmap that actually moves students.
How to Display Curriculum Development Skills on Your Resume
2. Classroom Management
Classroom management means building an orderly, respectful space where students can focus, collaborate, and stretch. You set routines, cue transitions, address behavior calmly, and design lessons that keep minds busy and bodies purposeful.
Why It's Important
Without a stable environment, learning slides. With it, engagement climbs, time on task expands, and achievement follows. Order supports risk-taking. Expectations free students to think.
How to Improve Classroom Management Skills
Clarity first. Relationships always. Instruction that hooks.
Set norms together: Co-create expectations, model them, and practice procedures until they’re muscle memory.
Invest in relationships: Greet at the door, conference briefly, know names and stories. Trust changes behavior.
Plan for momentum: Tight openers, varied tasks, visible agendas, and smooth transitions reduce drift.
Reinforce the positive: Narrate what’s working, offer specific praise, and use fair, predictable consequences.
Address issues swiftly: Quiet redirection, private check-ins, and restorative conversations beat public showdowns.
Teach self-management: Reflection routines, goal setting, and roles that give students ownership.
Structure plus care. That mix steadies the room and lifts the work.
How to Display Classroom Management Skills on Your Resume
3. Literacy Coaching
Literacy coaching is targeted, collaborative support that helps teachers sharpen reading and writing instruction. It blends observation, feedback, modeling, and co-planning to meet specific classroom needs and lift student outcomes.
Why It's Important
It accelerates teacher growth and student progress. Coaching translates research into day-to-day practice and adapts strategies to real classrooms with real kids.
How to Improve Literacy Coaching Skills
Be collaborative, evidence-driven, and practical.
Build trust: Set goals together, keep feedback specific and actionable, and celebrate small wins.
Use student work: Let papers, conferences, and reading data guide next steps and interventions.
Model and co-teach: Demonstrate strategies, then co-plan and co-deliver so transfer sticks.
Center equity: Choose texts and practices that honor diverse identities and expand access to rigorous tasks.
Document impact: Track growth with short cycles, reflect, refine. Repeat.
When coaching is responsive and respectful, practice changes—and so do results.
How to Display Literacy Coaching Skills on Your Resume
4. Differentiated Instruction
Differentiated instruction tailors content, process, products, and environment so all students can access the learning and show what they know. Same goals, varied paths.
Why It's Important
Classes are mixed—skills, languages, interests, strengths. Differentiation opens doors for everyone and keeps expectations high for each learner.
How to Improve Differentiated Instruction Skills
Design for flexibility, then monitor and adjust.
Diagnose readiness: Quick pre-assessments reveal starting points and guide grouping.
Vary modalities: Mini-lessons, stations, choice reading, conferences, and workshops to meet different needs.
Offer choice: In texts, prompts, or final products—essays, podcasts, presentations, portfolios.
Scaffold smartly: Sentence frames, mentor texts, chunked tasks, and exemplars to lift complexity without losing students.
Rotate groups: Flexible, fluid groupings based on skill, interest, or task—always temporary, always purposeful.
Feedback that moves: Timely, specific notes and reteach moments that push the next step.
Plan for differences. Expect growth. Keep rigor intact.
How to Display Differentiated Instruction Skills on Your Resume
5. Assessment Design
Assessment design is the creation of tasks—quizzes, essays, projects, discussions—that measure understanding, skills, and growth in line with course goals and standards.
Why It's Important
Good assessment clarifies targets, informs instruction, and gives students useful feedback. It captures what matters and guides what comes next.
How to Improve Assessment Design Skills
Be intentional, balanced, and authentic.
Start with objectives: Use clear, measurable learning goals across cognitive levels (think Bloom’s) to shape tasks.
Mix formats: Formative checks and end-of-unit performances; on-demand writing and extended pieces; individual and collaborative.
Go authentic: Real audiences and purposes—op-eds, literary podcasts, book talks, curated portfolios.
Use clear rubrics: Criteria that describe quality, show progressions, and anchor feedback.
Leverage tools wisely: Digital quizzes for quick data, plagiarism checking for integrity, comment banks for efficient feedback.
Review and refine: Analyze results, look for bias or ambiguity, adjust prompts and supports.
Assessment should teach as it measures. If it doesn’t, trim and tune.
How to Display Assessment Design Skills on Your Resume
6. Google Classroom
Google Classroom streamlines posting, collecting, and grading work while keeping conversations organized. It’s a hub for assignments, resources, and feedback.
Why It's Important
Organization cuts friction. Clear workflows, quick feedback, and a shared space for materials boost participation and make learning visible.
How to Improve Google Classroom Skills
Structure the space. Keep interaction lively. Make feedback fast.
Use topics: Organize by unit, week, or skill so students can actually find things.
Prompt thinking: Post open-ended questions, enable class comments with norms, host brief office hours when needed.
Embed multimedia: Short videos, readings with prompts, and audio feedback meet different learning styles.
Speed up responses: Comment banks, rubrics, and streamlined return cycles shorten the feedback loop.
Centralize resources: Keep guides, exemplars, checklists, and grammar help in one pinned spot.
Simple structure. Consistent routines. Students stay on track.
How to Display Google Classroom Skills on Your Resume
7. Zoom Proficiency
Zoom proficiency means running smooth, engaging virtual classes—screen sharing, breakout rooms, polls, captions, the works—while managing behavior and pacing online.
Why It's Important
When learning shifts or expands beyond the room, you keep instruction steady. Access, continuity, and connection don’t have to wobble.
How to Improve Zoom Proficiency Skills
Master features and match them to pedagogy.
Set expectations: Norms for cameras, chats, and names; quick routines for entering, participating, and exiting.
Use interactive tools: Polls, reactions, and whiteboards to check understanding and spark participation.
Breakout with purpose: Clear roles, time limits, and deliverables; pop in and cold-call back to keep groups accountable.
Optimize accessibility: Live captions, readable slides, and recorded mini-lessons support all learners.
Gather feedback: Short pulse checks to refine pacing, workload, and clarity.
Technology should vanish into the background while learning takes center stage.
How to Display Zoom Proficiency Skills on Your Resume
8. Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office (Microsoft 365) provides Word for writing and feedback, PowerPoint for visuals and recorded mini-lessons, Excel for data and grade tracking, and more to streamline planning and communication.
Why It's Important
These tools tighten workflows, sharpen instruction, and keep records clear. Less scramble, more teaching.
How to Improve Microsoft Office Skills
Lean into features that save time and elevate clarity.
Word: Use styles, comments, and track changes for clean documents and efficient feedback.
PowerPoint: Build templates, layer visuals with minimal text, and record slide shows for flipped content.
Excel: Create simple dashboards, conditional formatting, and filters to monitor progress quickly.
Forms: Quick quizzes, exit tickets, and surveys to collect data you can act on.
OneNote and Teams: Organize unit plans, share resources, and collaborate with students and colleagues.
Add-ins and shortcuts: Grammar tools, stock images, and keyboard shortcuts that trim minutes, daily.
Master a few high-impact moves and your prep time breathes.
How to Display Microsoft Office Skills on Your Resume
9. Canvas LMS
Canvas is a learning management system for building modules, posting content, creating assignments, discussions, and quizzes, and giving feedback in one connected space.
Why It's Important
It centralizes the course. Clarity, communication, and grading tighten up, which helps students manage workload and progress.
How to Improve Canvas LMS Skills
Design with the student journey in mind.
Clean homepage: Clear navigation, weekly updates, and a simple welcome message reduce confusion.
Module flow: Organize by unit or week with prerequisites, pages, and checkpoints that guide students step by step.
Rich content: Short videos, annotated readings, and exemplars embedded where students need them.
Discussions that matter: Prompts that demand evidence, peer replies with criteria, and teacher presence that nudges thinking.
SpeedGrader + rubrics: Consistent, fast, targeted feedback—rubrics attached to every major task.
Calendar and announcements: Dates that auto-populate and regular nudges to keep everyone aligned.
Structure + visibility = fewer emails, better outcomes.
How to Display Canvas LMS Skills on Your Resume
10. Critical Thinking
Critical thinking is analyzing, evaluating, and synthesizing information to form sound judgments. In English class, it means close reading, evidence-based claims, and curiosity that pokes at assumptions.
Why It's Important
It powers real literacy. Students read deeper, write sharper, and engage with complex ideas—skills they’ll need everywhere.
How to Improve Critical Thinking Skills
Prompt, press, and make thinking visible.
Ask better questions: Move beyond recall—why, how, what if, to what extent—and give wait time.
Structure discourse: Debates, Socratic seminars, and fishbowls that require evidence and respectful counterclaims.
Teach argument: Claims, warrants, reasoning, and counterarguments with mentor texts that model the moves.
Use thinking routines: See-Think-Wonder, claim-support-question, and reflections that track shifts in understanding.
Write to learn: Frequent low-stakes writing to process ideas before high-stakes pieces.
Make thinking the habit, not the exception.
How to Display Critical Thinking Skills on Your Resume
11. Student Engagement
Student engagement is the curiosity, attention, and persistence students bring to learning. In English, it looks like lively discussions, pages turning, drafts evolving, and students taking ideas personally—in the best way.
Why It's Important
Engagement lifts comprehension, attendance, and achievement. It also builds a durable love of language and literature.
How to Improve Student Engagement Skills
Design for relevance, agency, and interaction.
Choice and voice: Menus for reading and products; opportunities to pursue questions that matter to students.
Real-world connections: Current events, community issues, and authentic audiences to ground the work.
Active structures: Turn-and-talks, jigsaws, quick writes, galleries, and small-group workshops.
Smart tech: Polls, collaborative documents, audio/video reflections—only when they deepen learning.
Fast feedback: Micro-conferences, margin notes, and exemplars that show the next move.
Belonging: Warm routines, visible student work, and norms that invite risk-taking.
When students feel seen and challenged, they lean in.
How to Display Student Engagement Skills on Your Resume
12. Parent Communication
Parent communication is the ongoing exchange of updates about progress, behavior, celebrations, and needs. It builds a bridge between classroom and home so students get consistent support.
Why It's Important
Partnerships boost attendance, motivation, and achievement. Families feel informed; teachers gain insight; students benefit.
How to Improve Parent Communication Skills
Be clear, consistent, and kind.
Set routines: Predictable newsletters or updates with key dates, major assignments, and ways to help at home.
Use multiple channels: Email, district-approved messaging apps, and phone calls—choose what families can access.
Make it two-way: Invite questions and feedback; offer conference slots at varied times, in person or virtual.
Lead with positives: Share strengths early and often so tough conversations start from trust.
Be accessible: Clear language, translations when needed, and resources that demystify expectations.
Show student work: Portfolios and reflections that let families see growth, not just grades.
Steady, respectful communication turns families into allies.
How to Display Parent Communication Skills on Your Resume
