How do I get professional teaching experience?

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

Professional teaching experience is an important asset as you pursue teaching in a higher education environment. Beyond the immediate benefit to students, building your skills can contribute to your professional growth and effectiveness over time.

You may be wondering how to get teaching experience if you aren’t currently in a classroom environment. These tips can help you practice and hone your skills – and may help you find opportunities you can highlight on your resume.  

 

    1. Teach at work

Teaching opportunities are prevalent in the workplace. Offer to train new employees or colleagues on a new initiative, or provide guidance as a mentor. Using your expertise, develop lunch-and-learn sessions to help co-workers meet their professional and personal goals. Your initiative could attract the attention of supervisors and lead to other opportunities to present what you know.

 

    2. Present at community organizations

Local chapters of organizations can be an excellent source for teaching opportunities. You could offer to speak on an area of interest an organization like the Rotary Club, Lions Club, Kiwanis Club or similar organization. Represent organizations at volunteer fairs or fundraising events. (Capella University does not have affiliations with Rotary Club, Lions Club, Kiwanis or other community or service organizations.)

 

    3. Tutor at a local post-secondary educational institution

Polish your tutoring skills in an area where you have expertise. In addition to receiving hands-on teaching experience, you’ll have a chance to gain credibility with faculty – something that can help build your professional network.

 

    4. Offer teaching assistance

A local post-secondary educational institution may feature events that offer guest speaking, assistant teaching or group facilitation opportunities. These are a great way to build teaching experience while making yourself known to other professionals in the field.

 

    5. Look for nontraditional teaching roles

Share your knowledge and expertise through community education. Whether you’re a specialist in a specific field or have a unique skill set, you can develop a teaching course and offer it through your local community education department.

 

    6. Present at local, state or national conferences

Demonstrate your knowledge and proficiency by presenting your subject matter to others at relevant conferences or professional meetings. Most professional associations hold annual conferences and provide submission guidelines for proposals on their websites.

 

    7. Develop online courses

Try your hand at online course development by designing an online course for sites like Coursera or Udemy. You can start small by volunteering to create webinars in your community or at work. Showcase your work to potential employers by posting your syllabi, teaching demonstrations and other online course materials to an online portfolio like LinkedIn. (Capella University does not have affiliations with Coursera, Udemy or LinkedIn.)

 

As you explore how to gain teaching experience or how to supplement the classroom experience you may have, these tips can help you build professional skills to highlight on a resume. By gaining experience through these opportunities, you’ll work toward building a diverse portfolio, not to mention developing transferable soft skills like confidence in presenting to a group and leading discussions.

Build your professional skill set through an online education degree. Explore MS in Education programs at Capella.

The Capella Career Development Center mission is to help empower students and alumni to proactively manage their careers and make meaningful, and effective, career decisions.*

*Capella cannot guarantee any specific job, promotion, salary increase or other career outcomes. You will need to conduct your own research to understand what opportunities may be available to you. Note that some career paths may prefer or even require previous experience, licensure, certifications or other designations along with a degree.