How I Came Up With the Perfect Teacher Cover Letter

Hi Everyone!

Megan here again,

What is the perfect teacher cover letter? So many people have asked me how I landed my teaching job. There were over 400 applicants and only 12 positions open. I got so many emails and questions about this after my article I decided to reveal my secret.

When I was at the school district job fair, everyone there seemed to have more experience than me. The lady in line in front of me had been teaching 9 years and the woman behind me had 7 years of teaching experience. As you probably know I had only 2!

After my three interviews with the board, my final interviewer told me they had chosen 36 candidates out of 412 to interview. Then she leaned in close and almost whispering told me I was going to get the job. I was so shocked I asked her why me? Why was I chosen? Were my qualifications better? Was it my resume?

She told me that my resume was not the best she had seen and there were many candidates more qualified than me. She said they had been impressed with all my interview answers but what got me my first interview was my cover letter! So for all you out there that want to know how I got a perfect teacher cover letter, I am going to tell you my secret, and the whole story.

Click Here if you want to skip my story to see how I created my teacher cover letter

Has anyone else agonized over their resume besides me?
I worked on my teacher resume off and on for almost the whole school year. When I was finally satisfied the time came to hit the job fairs. That’s when I realized I had not written a cover letter and had only two weeks until the first job fair in the district where I really wanted to work.

I looked up examples online and wrote about 10 letters that night. None of them sounded right. After three more days and about 10 more letters I was starting to panic. Why didn’t I think about a cover letter nine months ago when I started my resume?!

Then I found a resume writing service online that also wrote cover letters. They would do mine for $29. I completed the information form and made the payment. What I got back was a shock. The first file would not open at all. I requested they please resend  and I did not hear from them for four days. When I finally got a file that opened I was blown away. There were five misspelled words and the English was horrific. I complained and I have still not heard anything from them to this day.

I needed help fast! I knew there was going to be a lot of competition for teaching positions in my area. I had to do something that made me stand out from the crowd.

Then it happened…

The next day while searching on Google I stumbled upon an article that made a lot of sense and opened my eyes. The article was by a writer named Phil Baker and talked about how writing teacher resumes differs greatly from business resumes. The reason is because most business accomplishments are written in easily quantifiable terms: numbers. Teacher accomplishments are much more difficult to measure. This made perfect sense! Employers love numbers. You can see this teacher resume article.

While I was visiting Resumedictionary.com I saw an ad for Phil Baker’s OneClick Cover Letter Creator. I visited the site and saw that this is software that creates your cover letter in most any program or email without cut and pasting. That sounded terrific.

Because I had just been burned I read the entire website three times before deciding to buy. The download and installation was easy. The program has labeled cover letters depending on your purpose.

You enter your signature (name and contact information) one time and it appears on every letter. There are fields for who you are sending the letter to and for things such as the position you are applying for and your skill or accomplishment statements. Just chose your letter and click the letter is created in whatever program you have open, in my case word or mozilla thunderbird email. You can edit any letter to your liking. All of a sudden this cover letter writing was fun!

Now I wanted a few statements about my accomplishments in my cover letter that had real meaning.

How to Include Numbers in Your Teacher Cover Letter

Teacher Cover Letter Information
I wrote 4 accomplishment statements with numbers using the ResumeDictionary.com for power words.
Here are my 4 statements:

I used the “Skills Match” cover letter from the OneClick Cover Letters program to list my skill accomplishments in my cover letter.

Education
You can see this was a place for me to use a number and shine! I included a statement about my gpa. If you have an acceptable or outstanding gpa you should include that. If you attended a high ranking college include the name, this can give you an edge. Teachers are all about education!

Work Experience
If you have teaching experience like I did you can include some accomplishment statements about your experience. I included the test score improvements for my students and also how many students I tutored from other classes and schools outside my job. I wrote statements that said how many committees I worked with and how many projects volunteered on during my 2 years of teaching.

Following Up
Here is another thing I learned that worked. I am known to be a little persistent about things so I do follow up. The OneClick Cover Letters program is full of follow up letters. I used the “Additional Skill Letter,” the “Duplicate Letter” and I must admit I sent the “Resume Update” letter five times! This letter is one you send every time you update or change your resume (I wanted to keep my name in front of them!)

Please see my teacher cover letter ideas article and send me any ideas you might have.

P.S. Please join my new forum!