Elementary teachers come from a variety of backgrounds and enter the career field with a multitude of experiences. To make your resume stand out amongst the crowd of other job candidates, craft your resume to highlight your unique experiences and characteristics that qualify you for the job.

Highlight your teaching experience. While an education is important, in the teaching world experience speaks more than education. Even if you have never had a professional teaching job, chances are you completed student teaching as a part of your education. You can list that under "Teaching Experience" on your resume as well. Having teaching experience on your resume tells a prospective employer that you won't be coming into the classroom empty-handed.

Include other relevant experience. If you haven't had a lot of professional teaching experience, include other jobs or experiences you have had that will help you in the classroom. For example, you may have been a babysitter, tutor, Sunday School teacher or summer camp counselor in your past. All of these jobs relate to the career of teaching and can help you demonstrate your understanding of working with children to educate them.

Explain your education. List the degrees you have and where you earned them, and highlight anything that makes you stand out. For example, you may have earned a dean's list honor during college or you may have graduated with your master's degree with a 4.0 GPA. Showcase these things that make your degree experiences different from every other teaching candidates.

Include awards and honors that specifically relate to teaching. A prospective employer may not care that you were your sorority's "sister of the month" for June 2008. However, they would be interested in hearing that you were the president of your campus's educational honorary society or that you received an award from your high school's Future Teachers of America Club. These honors specifically showcase your teaching skills and educational knowledge.

Add information about pertinent memberships. If you were a member of your school's honorary society for education or you worked as a tutor for elementary students during college, these memberships in student organizations showcase your interest in teaching. They demonstrate that you joined organizations that would further your knowledge and experience in the teaching field before graduating; this shows a level of passion for your career that prospective employers will appreciate.

Include positive references. Your references should include people who had a chance to supervise you in a professional context. They might be professors, supervising teachers who worked with you during your student teaching, or parents who hired you as a babysitter or tutor for their children. Your resume references should not be personal, unless you don't have any professional references to include. Even a professional reference from an unrelated source (such as your manager from your summer job at a retail clothing store) can speak to your work ethic and dedication, which are important skills in any job.