Top 12 Special Education Teacher Skills to Put on Your Resume
Stepping into special education isn’t just a job move; it’s a promise to meet students where they are and carry them forward with care, creativity, and grit. Spotlighting your strongest special education teacher skills on your resume helps hiring teams see that you can support complex needs, champion access, and build a classroom where every learner belongs.
Special Education Teacher Skills
- IEP Development
- Behavior Management
- Differentiated Instruction
- Autism Spectrum Strategies
- Sign Language (ASL)
- Boardmaker Software
- PECS (Picture Exchange Communication System)
- SmartBoard Proficiency
- Sensory Integration
- Read&Write Software
- Collaborative Teamwork
- Crisis Intervention
1. IEP Development
IEP development means crafting an Individualized Education Program that spells out a student’s present levels, goals, services, accommodations, and how progress will be measured. It’s collaborative, legally anchored, and deeply personal to the learner.
Why It's Important
Strong IEPs ensure equitable access and meaningful progress. They align instruction with IDEA requirements, honor student voice, and connect services to real outcomes—academic, functional, and transitional.
How to Improve IEP Development Skills
Know the learner, precisely: Build a clear PLAAFP using data, observations, and family input. Strengths lead the way; needs are specific, not vague.
Write goals that actually move the needle: Specific, measurable, time-bound, and standards-aligned when appropriate. Define criteria, tools, and frequency for progress checks.
Differentiate supports: Match accommodations, modifications, and services to barriers. Keep general education access front and center.
Progress monitoring that isn’t guesswork: Select valid measures, set schedules, and graph results so teams can pivot fast.
Plan transitions early: By age 16 (earlier in some states), include goals for education, work, and independent living with actionable steps.
Co-author with the team: Students, families, general educators, related service providers—shared ownership, shared success.
Stay compliant and current: Timelines, procedural safeguards, culturally responsive practices, and accessible formats matter.
How to Display IEP Development Skills on Your Resume
2. Behavior Management
Behavior management blends prevention, teaching, and support to build pro-social skills and reduce barriers to learning. It’s not just reacting; it’s designing environments where positive behavior thrives.
Why It's Important
Safe, predictable classrooms protect learning time, lower stress, and help students build skills that outlast any single school year.
How to Improve Behavior Management Skills
Teach expectations explicitly: Model, practice, reinforce. Visuals and routines carry the load when language is heavy.
Lead with positives: High rates of specific praise, meaningful reinforcement, and authentic relationships.
Use data to decode behavior: Conduct FBAs, then write BIPs that match function—attention, escape, sensory, tangible.
Prevent before you respond: Structured schedules, choice, movement, and sensory breaks. Predictability cools chaos.
De-escalate with care: Calm tone, space, and safety-first steps. Practice scripts so they’re there when you need them.
Team up: Partner with families and specialists (OT, SLP, school psych). Consistency beats heroics.
How to Display Behavior Management Skills on Your Resume
3. Differentiated Instruction
Differentiated instruction adapts content, process, and product so every student can engage, learn, and show what they know. Universal Design for Learning sits underneath, widening the doorway instead of squeezing students through.
Why It's Important
Students arrive with wildly different profiles. Differentiation turns that reality into a design feature, not a barrier.
How to Improve Differentiated Instruction Skills
Map learner profiles: Strengths, barriers, interests, language demands, assistive tech—put it all on the table.
Flexible grouping that actually flexes: Interest-based today, skill-based tomorrow, mixed-ability when it fits.
Offer multiple pathways: Choice boards, scaffolded texts, audio supports, manipulatives, and visuals.
Design assessments with options: Projects, oral responses, visuals, demonstrations—aligned to the same target.
Check learning constantly: Quick formative probes, exit slips, and conferring. Then adjust—fast.
Build in assistive and accessible tools: Text-to-speech, captions, enlarged print, switch access when needed.
How to Display Differentiated Instruction Skills on Your Resume
4. Autism Spectrum Strategies
Autism strategies revolve around predictability, communication, sensory supports, and honoring interests. Instruction gets structured; expectations become visible; social learning is taught, not assumed.
Why It's Important
Tailored approaches lift anxiety, boost participation, and open doors for communication and independence.
How to Improve Autism Spectrum Strategies Skills
Structure the environment: Clear routines, visual schedules, defined work systems, and minimal clutter.
Lean on visuals: First–Then boards, task analyses, timers, and visual cues that cut through language load.
Teach social understanding: Social narratives, role-play, video modeling, and peer-mediated practice.
Support communication: From modeling core language to AAC systems—low-tech to high-tech—based on student need.
Honor focused interests: Use them to hook attention, deepen practice, and motivate new skills.
Plan for sensory needs: Offer regulation choices—movement, deep pressure, quiet spaces—without stigma.
Generalize deliberately: Vary people, settings, materials, and time of day so skills travel.
How to Display Autism Spectrum Strategies Skills on Your Resume
5. Sign Language (ASL)
American Sign Language is a full language with its own grammar, conveyed through hands, face, and body. In classrooms with deaf or hard-of-hearing students, it opens communication and invites belonging.
Why It's Important
ASL bridges gaps quickly. It supports instruction, access to peers, and family-school connection—without waiting on spoken words.
How to Improve Sign Language (ASL) Skills
Invest in formal learning: Courses, workshops, and coaching from skilled signers build accurate, fluent language.
Practice daily: Conversational sign, fingerspelling drills, and classifiers—short bursts add up.
Engage with Deaf culture: Learn norms, values, and etiquette. Language grows with community.
Teach through sign-rich routines: Morning meetings, transitions, and content vocabulary—embed ASL everywhere.
Mind the environment: Good lighting, clear sightlines, and visual anchors. Pair ASL with captions or notes when helpful.
Collaborate: Coordinate with interpreters and DHH specialists so students get consistent input.
How to Display Sign Language (ASL) Skills on Your Resume
6. Boardmaker Software
Boardmaker helps create symbol-supported materials—visual schedules, communication boards, token charts, and adapted books—so students can access learning and express themselves.
Why It's Important
Visuals reduce language load, increase independence, and make routines stick. For many learners, pictures are power.
How to Improve Boardmaker Software Skills
Master the symbol library: Choose clear, culturally responsive symbols and label them precisely.
Start with templates, then tailor: Build consistent visuals fast; adapt for individual goals and environments.
Design for durability: Standardize sizes, print in high contrast, laminate, and organize with Velcro or rings.
Center core vocabulary: Prioritize high-frequency words alongside fringe for real-world communication.
Create functional tools: Schedules, first–then boards, choice charts, behavior trackers—aligned to IEP targets.
Optimize workflow: Batch-create symbol sets, maintain folders, and reuse elements to save time.
How to Display Boardmaker Software Skills on Your Resume
7. PECS (Picture Exchange Communication System)
PECS teaches individuals to initiate communication by exchanging pictures for what they want. It builds requesting first, then expands toward sentences, attributes, and commenting.
Why It's Important
For students with limited speech, PECS offers a direct, concrete way to communicate needs—fast—reducing frustration and opening interaction.
How to Improve PECS (Picture Exchange Communication System) Skills
Train and follow the phases: Implement Phase I–VI with fidelity and clear criteria for advancement.
Motivation drives everything: Use highly preferred items and update often; stale pictures stall progress.
Strengthen independence: Teach distance and persistence, then expand to sentence strips and attributes.
Generalize widely: Different partners, places, and times so communication doesn’t stay stuck in one corner.
Collect clean data: Track initiations, prompt levels, and accuracy; adjust instruction based on trends.
Collaborate with SLPs: Align PECS with broader communication goals and plan pathways to speech or AAC as appropriate.
How to Display PECS (Picture Exchange Communication System) Skills on Your Resume
8. SmartBoard Proficiency
SmartBoard proficiency (SMART Board) means building interactive, accessible lessons that invite touch, movement, and collaboration—then using the tech without letting it use you.
Why It's Important
Interactive boards can turn passive lessons into multisensory experiences, a gift for diverse learners who need more than talk-and-chalk.
How to Improve SmartBoard Proficiency Skills
Get fluent with core tools: Pen, shapes, infinite cloner, object locking, layering, and screen capture.
Design for interaction: Drag-and-drop sorters, reveal activities, timers, and embedded media to keep hands and minds moving.
Build in accessibility: High-contrast colors, large touch targets, captions, and alt text or verbal descriptions.
Plan for multiple inputs: Multi-touch collaboration, switch access, and remote controls when fine motor skills are tricky.
Have a backup plan: Quick pivots if tech hiccups—printed visuals, verbal walkthroughs, or paired activities.
How to Display SmartBoard Proficiency Skills on Your Resume
9. Sensory Integration
In schools, think sensory processing supports: strategies that help students take in, filter, and respond to sensory input so they can learn. Clinical sensory integration therapy is led by OTs; teachers build classroom supports aligned to those recommendations.
Why It's Important
Right-sized sensory input can steady attention, cut down overwhelm, and improve participation. The wrong load can derail a lesson in seconds.
How to Improve Sensory Integration Skills
Partner with OT: Use sensory profiles to target what helps—proprioceptive, vestibular, auditory, visual, tactile.
Create layered options: Quiet corners, noise management (headphones, soft surfaces), fidgets, adaptive seating, and movement breaks.
Teach self-regulation: Choice boards for regulation, visual scales, and routines that normalize asking for a break.
Mind timing and dose: Heavy work before demanding tasks; calming input after stimulating activities.
Track impact: Note what works with brief ABC or frequency data and refine without guesswork.
How to Display Sensory Integration Skills on Your Resume
10. Read&Write Software
Read&Write (by Texthelp) offers text-to-speech, word prediction, dictionaries, highlighting, and study tools—assistive technology that levels access for readers and writers.
Why It's Important
When print or writing gets in the way, this toolkit lowers barriers so students can show understanding and grow independence.
How to Improve Read&Write Software Skills
Customize the toolbar: Turn on only what a student needs; reduce clutter to boost use.
Tune text-to-speech: Voices, speed, and synchronized highlighting that match student preference and task.
Dial in word prediction: Adjust dictionaries, prediction strength, and phonetic support to aid accuracy.
Leverage study tools: Color-code highlights and collect them into outlines for planning and note-making.
Use voice notes and speech-to-text: Lower the barrier to getting ideas out; focus on content first, conventions later.
Support visual comfort: Screen masking and focus tools for tracking and glare reduction.
How to Display Read&Write Software Skills on Your Resume
11. Collaborative Teamwork
Collaboration brings general educators, specialists, families, and students into one orbit. Plans get sharper, supports align, and follow-through actually happens.
Why It's Important
No single professional can meet every need. Teams do what individuals can’t—sustain complex, coordinated support.
How to Improve Collaborative Teamwork Skills
Co-teach with intention: Station, parallel, alternative, or team teaching—choose models that fit the lesson, not habit.
Clarify roles: Who leads, who documents, who follows up—write it down so nothing drifts.
Make meetings useful: Short agendas, shared data, clear action items, and timelines. MTSS and IEP meetings run on purpose.
Adopt common tools: Shared planners, data sheets, and communication logs to reduce friction.
Center families: Plain language, regular updates, and genuine two-way feedback.
Reflect and recalibrate: Address conflict early, celebrate wins, and adapt systems when they squeak.
How to Display Collaborative Teamwork Skills on Your Resume
12. Crisis Intervention
Crisis intervention is immediate, short-term support when students hit emotional or behavioral boiling points. Stabilize, reduce harm, and set up better next steps.
Why It's Important
Handled well, crises become safer, shorter, and rarer. Instruction resumes, trust survives, and students leave with strategies.
How to Improve Crisis Intervention Skills
Know the plans cold: Individual triggers, signals, and step-by-step responses. Practice before you need them.
De-escalate with intent: Regulated voice, non-threatening stance, time and space. Safety over speed.
Set the room up smart: Clear pathways, low-clutter zones, and predictable routines that lower risk.
Train and refresh: Evidence-based de-escalation and safety courses; refreshers so skills don’t fade.
Debrief and restore: After-action reviews, restorative conversations, and updated plans based on what you learned.
Document accurately: Objective notes, timelines, and notifications aligned with district policy.
Protect your bandwidth: Team support and self-care routines; resilience is professional, not indulgent.
How to Display Crisis Intervention Skills on Your Resume
