Top 12 Special Needs Teacher Skills to Put on Your Resume
Crafting a compelling resume as a special needs teacher means spotlighting the skills that make inclusive learning possible. Show how you adapt, scaffold, and support. Let your resume breathe compassion, but also precision—evidence of growth, data, and teamwork living side by side.
Special Needs Teacher Skills
- IEP Development
- Behavior Management
- AAC Devices
- PECS Implementation
- Sensory Integration
- Differentiated Instruction
- Boardmaker Software
- Proloquo2Go Proficiency
- Crisis Intervention
- Sign Language
- SMART Board
- Collaborative Teamwork
1. IEP Development
IEP development is the art and science of building a truly individualized education program for a student with disabilities. You gather input from families, specialists, and the student, then shape goals, services, accommodations, and progress measures that actually move the needle.
Why It's Important
A strong IEP turns broad hopes into measurable action. It aligns support with strengths and needs, protects student rights, and keeps everyone rowing in the same direction—toward meaningful progress, not just paperwork.
How to Improve IEP Development Skills
Sharpen your IEP practice with habits that stick:
Collaborate deeply: Center family voice, include student preferences, and convene the right specialists. Shared ownership fuels follow-through.
Write SMART goals: Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Tie each goal to baseline data and clear criteria for mastery.
Know the law: Stay current on IDEA, Section 504, and state guidance. Compliance matters—and so does access.
Align services to needs: Match accommodations and specialized instruction to the actual barriers the learner faces. No generic menus.
Use technology: Track progress with simple, consistent tools. Visualize data so teams can pivot quickly.
Plan transitions early: For older students, embed career readiness, independent living, and community participation with NTACT:C-aligned practices.
Review often: Monitor data, adjust supports, and document changes. Iteration beats inertia.
How to Display IEP Development Skills on Your Resume
2. Behavior Management
Behavior management blends proactive design, skill teaching, and respectful response to challenging moments. It creates predictable routines, builds replacement behaviors, and honors communication—even when it shows up as behavior.
Why It's Important
Because learning wilts without safety and structure. Thoughtful behavior systems let students access academics, peers, and independence without constant friction.
How to Improve Behavior Management Skills
Know the function: Identify triggers, patterns, and purpose of behaviors. Let data guide interventions.
Teach skills explicitly: Self-regulation, requesting, turn-taking—practice them like academics.
Use positive reinforcement: Catch successes quickly and often. Be specific. Be consistent.
Build sturdy routines: Visual schedules, clear expectations, and smooth transitions reduce guesswork.
Communicate clearly: Short directions, visuals, and calm tone. Less is more when stress rises.
Team with families and providers: Align strategies across settings so students don’t relearn rules daily.
Care for yourself: Rested, regulated adults de-escalate faster. Model the calm you teach.
How to Display Behavior Management Skills on Your Resume
3. AAC Devices
AAC (Augmentative and Alternative Communication) devices range from picture boards to robust speech-generating tools. They unlock voice for learners whose speech is limited or emerging—voice for needs, feelings, ideas, and humor.
Why It's Important
Communication is access. With AAC, students participate, connect, and grow independence. Academics follow when expression is possible.
How to Improve AAC Devices Skills
Customize relentlessly: Vocabulary, access method, layout—match the learner’s cognitive, motor, and sensory profile.
Teach across the day: Embed AAC in routines, play, academics, community. Communication lives everywhere.
Train the team: Students, peers, staff, and families need practice and prompts. Shared fluency accelerates use.
Go multimodal: Gestures, signs, AAC, verbal speech—more paths mean more success.
Review and refine: Track use, note barriers, tweak vocabulary and access. Expect evolution.
How to Display AAC Devices Skills on Your Resume
4. PECS Implementation
PECS (Picture Exchange Communication System) teaches functional communication through picture exchanges. Students progress from simple requests to sentence building and commenting, step by step, with careful prompting and fading.
Why It's Important
PECS offers a clear, concrete pathway for early communicators, reducing frustration and opening doors to interaction and learning.
How to Improve PECS Implementation Skills
Start with assessment: Establish communication baselines and motivators to anchor instruction.
Personalize materials: Use highly preferred, easily recognized images. Keep organization tidy and portable.
Engineer the environment: Set up opportunities to request and comment throughout the day.
Be consistent across settings: Align home, school, and community use so skills generalize.
Leverage technology when helpful: PECS-aligned apps and tablets can supplement hard-copy systems.
Seek formal training: Certified workshops clarify phases, prompting, and error correction.
Monitor progress: Graph data, adjust prompts, and celebrate spontaneous exchanges.
How to Display PECS Implementation Skills on Your Resume
5. Sensory Integration
Sensory integration work helps students process and organize input—sound, touch, movement, light—so the world feels navigable rather than overwhelming. Better regulation, better learning.
Why It's Important
When sensory needs are met, attention stretches, anxiety shrinks, and participation blossoms. It’s foundational, not extra.
How to Improve Sensory Integration Skills
Create a sensory diet: Mix alerting and calming activities tailored to the student’s profile. Build them into natural routines.
Use play as therapy: Sand, water, putty, swings, obstacle courses—joyful movement teaches the nervous system.
Tune the environment: Reduce visual and auditory clutter. Offer quiet corners and predictable signals for breaks.
Partner with OTs: Occupational therapists refine strategies and ensure activities are safe and targeted.
Educate the team: Share simple guides so staff and families recognize signs of overload and respond consistently.
How to Display Sensory Integration Skills on Your Resume
6. Differentiated Instruction
Differentiation means shaping content, process, and products so every learner can access, engage, and demonstrate understanding—without watering down rigor.
Why It's Important
Because one-size-fits-all fits no one. Tailored pathways build confidence and competence together.
How to Improve Differentiated Instruction Skills
Know your learners: Baselines, interests, readiness levels. Let profiles drive your plan.
Set crystal-clear goals: Map objectives to standards and IEP targets. Then backward-plan supports.
Flexible grouping: Rotate by skill, interest, or strategy. Heterogeneous and homogeneous both have a place.
Leverage technology: Offer multiple representations, readings at varied levels, and scaffolded practice.
Formative checks: Frequent, light-touch assessments guide quick adjustments.
Reflect and refine: Keep what works, ditch what drags. Iterate weekly.
How to Display Differentiated Instruction Skills on Your Resume
7. Boardmaker Software
Boardmaker helps you create symbol-supported materials—visual schedules, communication boards, social narratives, and interactive tasks—so students can see what to do, say, and expect.
Why It's Important
Visual clarity lowers cognitive load. Boardmaker turns abstract demands into concrete, predictable steps for diverse learners.
How to Improve Boardmaker Software Skills
Master the symbol library: Learn categories, search tricks, and how to adapt symbols for cultural and contextual fit.
Build reusable templates: Create go-to layouts for schedules, token boards, task analyses, and choice menus.
Design for access: Consider size, contrast, spacing, and motor demands. Test prints; adjust quickly.
Create interactive sets: Develop drag-and-drop or clickable activities that mirror IEP goals.
Collaborate and share: Swap boards with colleagues, standardize conventions, and maintain a shared library.
Collect feedback: Watch students use materials, note friction points, and revise without mercy.
How to Display Boardmaker Software Skills on Your Resume
8. Proloquo2Go Proficiency
Proloquo2Go is a symbol-based AAC app that can be tailored to a communicator’s vocabulary and access needs. Proficiency means you can customize, teach, and troubleshoot with ease. Note: Proloquo (a newer companion app) exists, but Proloquo2Go remains widely used and respected.
Why It's Important
When the tool fits the student, language flourishes. Skilled setup and coaching transform a grid of icons into genuine conversation.
How to Improve Proloquo2Go Proficiency Skills
Explore every setting: Voice, dwell time, button size, vocabulary sets—know what each tweak changes.
Customize vocabulary: Start with core words, add personal fringe items, and organize logically.
Teach modeling: Use Aided Language Input. Point to words as you speak them across the day.
Practice daily: Embed the app in routines, games, and academics. Repetition builds fluency.
Join practitioner communities: Swap page sets, ask questions, and learn from real cases.
Seek feedback: Ask the student and team what works, what’s clunky, what’s missing. Then refine.
How to Display Proloquo2Go Proficiency Skills on Your Resume
9. Crisis Intervention
Crisis intervention means recognizing escalation early, responding safely, and restoring regulation—without shame or power struggles. Safety first, dignity always.
Why It's Important
Prepared teams prevent harm, protect learning time, and help students rebuild trust after hard moments.
How to Improve Crisis Intervention Skills
Spot early signs: Track precursors and patterns. Intervene before the peak.
De-escalate skillfully: Calm tone, space, choices, and clear safety plans. Less talk, more support.
Individualize plans: Write actionable, student-specific strategies and rehearse them with the team.
Train regularly: Refresh techniques, practice scenarios, and review legal/ethical guidelines.
Debrief and restore: After incidents, analyze data, teach replacement skills, and repair relationships.
How to Display Crisis Intervention Skills on Your Resume
10. Sign Language
Sign language—ASL or the primary sign language of your region—uses handshapes, movement, and facial grammar to convey rich, nuanced meaning. It’s a full language, not a set of gestures.
Why It's Important
It grants direct access to instruction and community for Deaf and hard-of-hearing students, and offers a powerful visual modality for many learners.
How to Improve Sign Language Skills
Practice with people: Engage with native signers and Deaf mentors. Real conversation accelerates fluency.
Take structured courses: Build grammar, classifiers, and cultural knowledge step by step.
Study expressiveness: Facial expressions and body shifts carry grammar and tone—don’t skip them.
Use it daily: Teach content, routines, and social language in sign to cement learning.
Seek feedback: Invite corrections. Celebrate progress. Keep going.
How to Display Sign Language Skills on Your Resume
11. SMART Board
A SMART Board is an interactive whiteboard that turns lessons into touchable, visual, and auditory experiences—gold for engagement and accessibility.
Why It's Important
Multisensory instruction meets diverse needs. Interactivity pulls students into the learning moment and keeps them there.
How to Improve SMART Board Skills
Adapt access: Adjust touch sensitivity, button sizes, and page layouts for varied motor abilities.
Design interactive lessons: Include drag-and-drop, reveal, and sorting tasks aligned to IEP goals.
Pair assistive tech: Use speech-to-text, screen readers, or alternative input devices when needed.
Use strong visuals: High contrast, large fonts, and uncluttered screens reduce cognitive load.
Upskill regularly: Explore new features, templates, and classroom workflows. Practice live before you go live.
How to Display SMART Board Skills on Your Resume
12. Collaborative Teamwork
Collaborative teamwork means families, educators, therapists, and the student co-design supports and instruction. Roles are clear. Communication is honest. Strengths steer the ship.
Why It's Important
No single professional holds the whole picture. Together, the team builds a plan that’s complete, coherent, and sustainable.
How to Improve Collaborative Teamwork Skills
Communicate transparently: Share data, decisions, and next steps in plain language. Document agreements.
Leverage strengths: Map expertise across the team and assign tasks accordingly.
Align goals: Start with shared outcomes, then carve pathways that honor each role.
Learn together: Host mini-PDs, share observations, and debrief what worked—and what didn’t.
Center the student: Include student voice in planning and reflection. Ownership builds momentum.
How to Display Collaborative Teamwork Skills on Your Resume
