Posted 2020/3/11
Where Do You Begin?
Cover letters and resumes have many similarities. They serve to advertise the candidate and use many of the same writing conventions. Both draw on information from your Personal Profile and your Resume Reservoir. However, the constrained length of the cover letter requires you to be extremely selective about content. The cover letter does not simply present an abbreviated version of your resume. Instead, it presents and interest-generating calling card that is tailored to the needs of the reader.
To design an effective cover letter, you should work from two directions. First, start with what you know best: yourself. Review your Personal Profile and Resume Reservoir to identify your strengths and achievements. You will want to highlight these areas in your letter.
Next, reread the School Profile Form of the school to which you are applying. If you’ve done your homework well, you should be able to determine qualities the school is looking for in an ideal candidate. Your job is to find where the school’s needs and your own strengths and accomplishments dovetail.
A high school with a strong college-prep program, for instance, might be please to know that you taught an upper-level course as a student teacher. Similarly, a middle school would be interested in a candidate who worked on an interdisciplinary team, and an elementary school screening committee might have its curiosity aroused by a teacher who has a strong background in remediation of reading deficits.
Your Basic Strategy
Think of the cover letter as an advertisement. An effective advertisement is carefully matched to a target audience. In other words, an advertisement speaks the language of a particular audience by addressing the concerns of its members. An advertising for you does the very same thing. In crisp fashion, it grabs the reader’s attention by connecting our experience, training, and talents with the needs of the school. Obviously, your cover letter deals with some of the same items included on your resume, but only in brief. It will encourage the reader to think, “Let me find out more about that!” and then turn the page to read the accompanying résumé.
One final but very important note: although we suggest that you design a cover letter that follows the format we espouse, we also recognize that the letter provides an opportunity for a school administrator to glimpse your personality, that special quality that makes you who you are. To be successful, your cover letter must blend our formula with some of your own writing style and can feelings to produce the genuine article. Nothing can turn a reader off more quickly than reading a mass-produced template. You have a big job ahead of you, so let’s get to work.
