Cover Letter For Teaching Position: Fill & Download for Free

While your resume should outline your education and relevant job experience, your cover letter should reiterate your professional and academic highlights and add context to your application. Try to include the following components in your first-year teacher cover letter:Academic credentials: When you are applying for your first teaching job, focus on your academic credentials rather than your limited professional experience. Include any certificates you have earned, too.Student teaching experience: As a new teacher, you may not have much professional experience to discuss. Instead, use your student teaching experience to highlight your work in the classroom.Teaching skills and specialties: In your cover letter, take the opportunity to discuss key technical skills for teachers, such as managing classrooms and developing personalized learning plans.Relevant soft skills: Your cover letter is the ideal place to showcase your soft skills. You can mention important abilities like patience, organization, enthusiasm, and reliability or courses you might have taken.Experience with technology: To demonstrate your ability to help students use the most cutting-edge learning tools available, highlight the platforms you are fluent with and the technology you typically use.Reasons you are a good match: Your cover letter should also discuss reasons why you are interested in the position in question and why you are a good choice for the job.Keep it conciseTo increase your chance of getting their attention and standing out as a strong candidate, make your cover letter clear and concise. Rather than writing a lengthy cover letter, try to keep it to one page.Include keywordsAs you write your cover letter, review the job description and reread the requirements for the position. If you have the required qualifications, be sure to mention them in your cover letter. Taking this step is a good way to demonstrate that you took the time to read the job description carefully and that you are an excellent fit for the position.Highlight your top skills and major achievementsWhile your resume might include all your technical and soft skills, your cover letter is the ideal place to highlight your most important skills and achievements. Try to be selective by including only your most advanced accomplishments and skills mentioned in the job listing.Customize your cover letter for each job applicationIf you apply to more than one teaching job, your cover letters may be similar. Each time you write a cover letter, however, you should customize it for the job and organization in question. Make a point of discussing why you have an interest in working for the organization and why you are such a good candidate for the specific job.Make it easy to readTo increase the chance that your cover letter will stand out, make it as easy as possible to read. Use a standard font, preferably the same one that your resume uses. Include no more than three or four sentences in each paragraph to ensure that they are short and easy to skim. Consider double spacing your cover letter to add more white space, too.

In the US, an application for an faculty job usually has several parts: statement of interest in the position, research statement, teaching philosophy, CV, letters of recommendation, and sometimes a diversity statement. In the humanities and social sciences, one usually also provides a writing sample (a single-authored published article or thesis chapter one has written is typical).Sometimes applicants will structure the cover letter to be simply the brief statement of interest in the position. In this case, it states which position one is applying for (to ensure there is no confusion about whether the person’s application has arrived at the correct search committee), why one thinks one is a good match for the advertised position, and how eager one is to work with people already in the department and contribute to the department’s mission. If the ad stated that the position is primarily research focused, the cover letter should make clear that the applicant is a serious scholar; if the ad mentioned that teaching is important, the letter should convey the applicant’s interest in teaching. A cover letter of this short type is necessary and should be written with care — but it is not sufficient, on its own, to win the position.In other cases, an applicant may write a long cover letter that has subsections functioning as the research statement, teaching statement, etc. In this case, the cover letter has expanded to cover some of the central parts of the application and the information it conveys will be absolutely crucial to the candidate’s success at being chosen for an interview.

I'm overqualified for my current position. When I applied, I created a cover letter that had a two column table. In the left column, I listed all of the position description requirements (required and desired). In the right column, I identified how I had experience in every part of the job requirement.When my current boss called me for the interview, she said I was a "98% fit" for the COO position. I'm still not sure what 2% I didn't fit, but I am still in the job 3 years later and I have rarely had any difficulty doing any aspect of my job. In fact, I was getting a bit bored with the job and so I took an adjunct teaching job on the side to keep myself challenged.When you write your cover letter, simply show how you qualify for the job. You do not have to mention anything about being "overqualified."If you are concerned about being passed over because your resume is too strong, consider toning it down a bit. How? It depends on how/why you think you might be overqualified. In my case, the COO job I applied for indicated a bachelor's degree was required. I had a bachelors, two masters, and a doctorate. I knew that was overkill, so I left the doctorate off the resume. I probably could have removed one of the masters, but since one was an MBA and the other was an MSc, I thought the business and technical mix was helpful.Lastly, if you have 30+ years of experience (like me), you might consider dropping one or two of your first jobs. Does anyone really care if I was an analyst in 1984? Probably not. Does dropping it from my resume hurt my chances? Doubtful.