My Cover Letter

Dear Sir or Madam,

I am extremely sorry to inform you that this is not going to be a typical cover letter you would expect from a person applying for a job. I am not a “normal”, traditional, sometimes boring sometimes brilliant, teacher and thus this letter is going to reflect my personality and teaching style.

I believe I started teaching at the age of 4, no it is not a typo I meant 4. At that point of my life, teaching was about having power over the other kids that played with me. Sounds cruel? Probably, but I was the eldest kid in the group and so I had that power, knowledge and self-confidence anyway. It is more about how I wanted to use it, how I wanted to share the knowledge that I had at the time and how I realised that I would like to be a teacher in the future that I actually think is worth mentioning.

Ever since that moment I continued my education, primary school, secondary school. Nothing really extraordinary until I went to high school and fell in love with English and Spanish. I knew at the time that I would like to be a foreign languages teacher, not just an English teacher or a Spanish teacher, I fell for both languages and I wanted to share my passion with the others.

I decided to study Ethnolinguistics at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. The career allowed me to develop my language skills, however it did not prepare me at all for teaching. For that reason I did my post graduate studies in teaching at Higher School of Humanities in Leszno. You might wonder now, what is so special about me that makes me different from all the other teachers. And I will give you two reasons.

First of all, I am going to mention my scouting experience as I believe it is something that has marked me forever. Thanks to volunteering in an NGO, I have learnt to work with different age groups. I have also discovered the power of learning through doing. Moreover, I have established a habit of completing every task that I have started and always looking for a new challenge. I have learnt to be well-organised, responsible and punctual. Whenever I ask my friends what the first adjectives that comes to their minds that best describes me is they say reliable.

Secondly, even though I am a young and newly qualified teacher I have quite a lot of hands-on experience. Thanks to a not very propitious economic situation, I had to work and study at the same time. As you probably can imagine, juggling university life with part time jobs was not easy but it taught me a lot and prepared me for teaching much more than spending hours in university library. Before I graduated from university, I had already taught toddlers, kids aged 3 to 12, teenagers and adults. I had had the opportunity to work with beginners, intermediate, advanced and proficiency students.

At the beginning of this letter I promised you to describe to you my teaching style. I regret to tell you that I do not have one. The only thing I could tell you about it is that it is very mercurial and a little bit like a chameleon. What is more, it is absolutely flexible and I adapt it to my students’ needs. Therefore, if I were to choose one word to describe it, it would probably be student-centred. I am no longer 4 years old and I know that the whole teaching process is about the students themselves rather than me as a teacher. Even though I am technically in the spotlight, I always do my best to reflect that light into my students through my teaching.

Before I ask you to contact me, there is something I would like to highlight. I am fully aware of the fact that I am not a native speaker, but I actually see it as one of my strengths and I would like you to see it as such too. I have spent years learning English and Spanish and I am someone my students honestly tell me, they look up to. Why? Because they can see the final “product” of the process. They can actually see that hard work pays off and if you do your best you can achieve your goals. In addition, I know how to explain, for example, some grammar points thanks to the fact that I had to understand it and learn it myself first. Therefore, please consider my being non-native speaker as an argument in favour rather than against me.

If you still are not sure I could be a great asset for your school, please give me a chance to talk to you in person and tell you more about my-teaching-self. You cannot waste the opportunity to meet as an enthusiastic and crazy English teacher as I am!

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Yours faithfully,

P.S. If you still wish to receive a more “traditional” cover letter just let me know, in the end I am flexible too…