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Welcome to the Bulletin Board

The Bulletin Board is the part of the Virtual Coffee House where we share tools and resources that can help participants as they plan to become teachers, and even once they've begun their teaching careers!

Here we will post tips on choosing the right program to get your license; writing great resumes; interviewing skills; how to conduct a job search in education; and tools for teachers that can help enhance any classroom. If there is a resource that you want that isn't here, please let us know by writing to TTTvirginia@wm.edu.

We always want to know if our website can improve and we want to hear from you. Let us know how we are doing by completing this short survey or by writing to TTTvirginia@wm.edu.

The Job Search......

  • Schools in your area likely have job postings on their official website. A full list of public school divisions is available here from the Virginia Department of Education.

  • The Virginia Department of Education also maintains a job bank called “TeachVirginia.” There you can sort the job opportunities by position, grade level, distance, etc.

  • School divisions may host job fairs during the year to meet potential applicants for positions in their schools. These fairs provide an opportunity to talk to representatives from multiple schools at the same event, some of whom may have multiple positions open in their schools. School divisions’ websites often indicate when their job fairs will be held. 

 

Resumes ......

  • Microsoft Word and Google Docs offer free resume templates, with even more available online. Another great starting point is the VA‘s a free Resume Builder for service members.
  • Resumes should be limited to one page front and back. Curriculum Vitae, or CVs, which can be longer than 1-2 pages, are unusual in K-12 education, so a resume is your best bet when applying for a position in schools.
  • After a header with all of your contact information, begin your resume with your education history. List your most recent education first, then proceed through any other degrees from most recent to most distant.
  • Next, list your professional experience. Just like your education, your professional experience should be listed from most recent to most distant. Once you’ve listed all your professional experience, you may feel that this section of your resume is too long, or you find that you have exceeded your 1-to-2-page-limit. In those cases, you can remove work experiences that are less relevant to your new career in education. Also, in the interest of saving space, any professional experience prior to 2000 can be omitted, unless it is particularly relevant to education or your specific content area.
  • When you are writing descriptions for your professional experiences, tailor each description to the educational impact of your work. One way to do this is to emphasize the measurable outcomes of the work--if you conducted training, for example, specify how many trainings you led, or how many troops you trained. It is okay to estimate!
  • If you want to include a section that indicates the skills you bring to the classroom, add it after your work experience. Your skills that clearly translate to education should be listed first, then more general skills should follow.
  • If you get stuck while searching for the right words to describe your skills, check out the VA’s “Military Skills Translator.” Just enter your MOS and the program will return keywords that can help build your list of skills. If you have more than one MOS, or worked closely with another MOS, try entering others to see what additional keywords might apply to you and your skills.
  • Make an impact by including some power verbs.  Check out these power verbs for education resumes here. 
  • For even more information on resume writing, visit the College of William & Mary’s Career Center page on Resumes.

Cover Letters ......

  • Just like resumes, cover letter templates can be found on Microsoft and Google programs.
  • Unlike resumes, cover letters should always be limited to one page.
  • Your cover letter should explain why you are right for the position. You may want to research the school and the school division to determine what their mission, values, and employee expectations are. Armed with this information, you can explain which values you share. You can even give examples from your professional experience that reinforce this.
  • For more information about Cover Letters, including tips on how to format the letter, visit the College of William & Mary’s Career Center page on Cover Letters.