Position Responsibilities
Elementary School Educator Responsibilities
1. Classroom Culture & Student Well-being
- Foster Student Belonging: Cultivate a caring, joyful, and purposeful learning community where all students feel valued, respected, and motivated.
- Promote Social-Emotional Learning: Utilize principles like Responsive Classroom to support the physical, emotional, and intellectual well-being of every student.
- Uphold School Values: Model the school's Core Values of respect, responsibility, honesty, fairness, and compassion in all interactions with students, staff, and the community.
- Implement Culturally Responsive Practices: Create a learning environment that is culturally responsive and affirming of students identities.
2. Curriculum & Instructional Planning
- Standards-Based Planning: Use a planning framework to identify essential learning based on Common Core State Standards (CCSS), learning targets, and a culturally responsive curriculum.
- Interdisciplinary & Real-World Connections: Design curriculum that demonstrates an understanding of interdisciplinary teaching and connects learning to real-world issues.
- Collaborative Curriculum Development: Work with PLC teams and administration to develop cohesive curriculum materials, establish common goals, and participate in curriculum review and budgeting.
3. Pedagogy & Instructional Delivery
- High-Impact Instruction: Employ current, research-informed pedagogical practices and high-impact instructional strategies to deliver engaging lessons.
- Differentiated Learning Experiences: Design and implement collaborative and differentiated learning experiences that meet the diverse academic and social-emotional needs of all students.
- Flexible Grouping: Use data to flexibly group students based on their individual needs, abilities, and assets.
- Technology Integration: Integrate technology in innovative ways to enhance daily instruction and student learning.
- Responsive Interventions: Respond to learners diverse needs, including those related to emerging multilingualism and neurodivergent profiles, by using measurable, research-informed interventions and extensions.
4. Assessment & Data-Driven Practices
- Comprehensive Assessment System: Design and use a variety of quality formative, summative, and self-guided assessments to provide students with frequent feedback.
- Monitor and Adjust: Continuously monitor student learning through standards-based assessments and data analysis to make appropriate modifications to goals and strategies.
- Communicate Progress: Use assessment data to accurately communicate student growth and achievement.
5. Collaboration & Professional Growth
- Engage in Professional Learning Communities (PLCs): Actively collaborate with team members to plan curriculum, give and receive feedback, and engage in professional reflection and learning.
- Practice Co-Teaching: Engage in co-teaching practices and utilize flexible learning spaces with intention and purpose.
- Commit to Continuous Improvement: Strive for self-improvement as a lifelong learner by actively engaging in professional development and feedback cycles with coaches and principals.
- Support School-Wide Programs: Cooperate with and participate in the planning and evaluation of the overall school program as needed.
6. Community & Family Engagement
- Extend Learning Beyond the Classroom: Engage students in meaningful extracurricular activities such as coaching, clubs, field trips, or service projects.
- Build Strong Partnerships: Connect with and be available to parents and students during and outside of school hours through in-person meetings and email communication.
Role-Specific Responsibilities
PLC coaches act as champions for their team by focusing on the growth of individual members as well as the collective. They do this in three ways: teaching, coaching, and leading.
- By teaching, they hone their own craft, serve as a model, and experience the same challenges as those they are coaching and leading.
- By coaching, they facilitate feedback, learning, and professional growth for individual team members.
- By leading, they cultivate the health of their team and guide their team's collective focus on enhancing student learning and well-being.
Teach
- Demonstrate willingness to teach
- Demonstrate an understanding of problem-based mathematics classroom
Coach
- Use the to coach on high quality culturally-responsive instructional practices in the learning space
- Observe instruction, analyze student work, and provide regular direct actionable feedback to coachee(s)
- Focus on individual and collective growth in both hard skills (e.g., pedagogy) and soft skills (e.g., trust, collaboration) and invest in development of own skill set related to teaching, coaching, and leading
- Coordinate team professional learning based on needs emerging from coaching experiences, data and current research
- Facilitate the goal setting, learning, monitoring and reflection process with the team. Support coachees and PLCs to ensure their goals are focused on measurable student learning outcomes and/or school/division priorities
- Demonstrate a willingness and ability to build and sustain trusted professional relationships with teachers, leaders, and other coaches. This may involve demonstrating a willingness to be a learner, to be vulnerable, and to establish a conducive working rapport with educators that enables them to grow and learn in their teaching practice.
- Collaborate with other PLC coaches and participate in PLC coach professional learning related to: working with adult learners, giving feedback, providing coaching, and regularly giving input into the PLC coach model
Lead
- PLC Support and Leadership
- Lead PLCs with engaging in the 5 question PLC inquiry cycle and ensuring roles and responsibilities within a PLC are distributed effectively and there are norms for collaboration.
- Support PLC teams with collecting, organizing, and analyzing common assessment data. Review data across the department and focus on evidence of student learning and not-learning.
- Support PLC teams with taking action based on student learning data.
- Collaborate with school leaders on how to best meet team needs and implement school priorities focusing on culturally responsive practices to plan, teach, and assess, as well as social-emotional learning
- Instructional Leadership
- Provide strong curricular and instructional leadership in the department.
- Coordinate effective facilitation of department meetings and professional learning
- Lead department members in fulfilling expectations and best practices in standards-based assessment, grading and reporting.
- Lead the department and division in our journey towards a more personalized learning environment for students and collaborative work experiences with flexible learning environments. Collaborate with the DEI specialist to support individuals and teams transition to new practices.
- Provide support and/or participate in subject-area reviews and/or coordinate participation of colleagues and lead implementation of the review.
- Monitor and support subject-area instructional program alignment across all divisions (PS-12). Work with the divisional Principal Leadership team and the Office of Learning to ensure consistency and strong planning, instructional, and assessment practice.
- Contribute to shaping the academic direction of the division by participating and providing regular input at divisional leadership team meetings.
- Provide support as needed to the division and/or Department Coordinators with the annual review of courses and information included in division handbooks.
- Program Leadership
- Collaborate with Department Coordinators and/or divisional Principal/Deputy Principals on aligning talent, resources and the curricular and instructional program of the department.
- Participate in the hiring process for open positions within the department and provide hiring input to divisional principals.
- Participate and lead in professional development and new faculty onboarding for designated days during new faculty week each year.
- Work collaboratively with Department Coordinators and/or team leaders on other needs of the department or grade level as needed.
Position Requirements & Qualifications
- Bachelor's Degree in relevant field
- Master's Degree in relevant field preferred
- Teaching license or a degree in education
- At least two years of full time teaching experience preferred
- At least two years instructional coaching and/or leadership experience preferred
- Standards-based curriculum experience preferred
- Experience working as part of a learning community and leveraging flexible spaces preferred
- Training and experience with the Science of Reading approach to literacy instruction preferred
- Experience teaching multilingual learners in general classroom settings preferred
- Excellent verbal and written English language skills
- Confident technology skills for teaching and administrative tasks
Working Requirements
- Sponsoring and/or coaching after school activities are part of the responsibility of the professional educator. Therefore, faculty shall be available to coach and/or sponsor an athletic team or other extra curricular activity. Each faculty member is expected to do a minimum of one category 1 activity or sport per year.
- Mandatory attendance of school orientation and participation in a minimum of four evening and/or weekend school activities each year, as assigned (including Back-to-School Night).
- Attend Responsive Classroom professional learning (virtual), specified by the school, in the months prior to the official start of employment.
- Attend Illustrative Math professional learning (virtual), specified by the school, in the months prior to the official start of employment.
