Sometimes a prospective employer may offer guidelines or forms, and when those are online they help everyone. Check your local adult education center’s website to see if it offers online proposal guidelines. Read whatever information you can find for online writing classes at your favorite writing sites, too.

In most cases a proposal will need to include at least five basic elements:

1. Your contact and personal information (such as citizenship status, for payment purposes) as well as your professional biography.

2. Your sense of target audience for your class.

3. Your sense of what students will gain/learn from your class.

4. Your sense of course expenditures (including costs for guest lecturers or other needs, especially for “live” classes).

5. Contact information for individuals who will serve as referees for you.

Still, if you can’t find specific program proposal guidelines and requirements that you need online, you must contact program directors at local colleges/continuing education programs by phone or e-mail, yourself. Explain that you are a writer who is interested in learning about procedures for proposing courses. Be forewarned that institutions and programs operate on different schedules; some may plan ahead just weeks at a time, while others may have an entire academic year already set previous winter.

Fine. What if, after all that, you're simply instructed to send a cover letter and a general course proposal? What then?

I trust all professional writers to handle cover letters. You should also take this opportunity to update your resume or c.v. and review your list of references in case you are, indeed, asked for that information as screening process continues, too. It’s also a good idea to review your clip file and consider which of your writing samples you might submit if requested to do so.

As for proposal itself, here are some additional elements that will render it immediately more professional and complete:

Something else that is important to remember is that good criticism should not be frowned upon. Always take into account suggestions from your readers. If they don’t like a certain segment of your work don’t worry, criticism should not upset you but make you a better writer.

If someone suggests that a sentence our line is out of place, take it into account and look it over a few times. Read it to yourself and then out loud. Hopefully they have made a suggestion as to what to replace it with, but if not just think of something and replace it and see if you like it any better. It doesn’t hurt to edit your work and then edit your work again. Whatever it takes is what we as writers have to do.