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:
Strengths-Based Assessment for Data-Driven Decisions
- Identify Student Strengths and Needs: Employ a range of diagnostic tools to build a holistic profile of each learner, focusing first on their strengths and assets. This includes:
- Literacy: Assessing foundational skills aligned with the Science of Reading to identify both areas of proficiency and specific needs for growth.
- Numeracy: Evaluating mathematical skills through a conceptual framework to understand a student's reasoning strengths and conceptual gaps.
- Executive Function: Determining specific strengths and challenges in areas like working memory, planning, and self-regulation to inform support strategies.
Data-Driven Intervention & Strengths-Based Planning
- Leverage Strengths in Support Plans: Make data-based decisions to write and update Individual Education Support Plans (IESPs) that explicitly leverage student strengths, interests, and cultural assets to build confidence and drive progress toward SMART goals.
- Implement Evidence-Based Literacy Interventions: Design and deliver explicit and structured literacy interventions rooted in the Science of Reading, making instructional decisions based on student response data.
- Implement Conceptual Math Interventions: Plan and execute math support using conceptual frameworks (e.g., Concrete-Pictorial-Abstract), adapting instruction based on ongoing assessment data to build deep understanding.
- Provide Explicit Executive Function Support: Directly teach, model, and embed strategies for executive functions, using a student's areas of strength and interest to foster engagement and skill development.
Progress Monitoring for Informed Decision-Making
- Track Progress Towards Goals: Utilize precise strategies to continuously and systematically monitor student progress toward their specific literacy, numeracy, and executive function goals.
- Use Data to Guide Instruction: Maintain accurate records of interventions and student progress, analyzing this data to make timely decisions about modifying, intensifying, continuing, or discontinuing supports.
Collaborative, Strengths-Based Partnerships
- Foster Strengths-Based Communication: Collaborate with PLC members, teachers, students, and parents to co-create support plans, framing all conversations around student strengths and progress to build a positive, goal-oriented team.
- Lead Collaborative Data Analysis: Drive the data-based decision-making process within Professional Learning Communities by facilitating the analysis of student data, sharing progress, and planning responsive, evidence-based interventions.
- Partner for Inclusive Instruction: Collaborate with classroom teachers to build their capacity, embedding effective, research-based strategies into core instruction that capitalize on student strengths within the inclusive classroom.
Position Requirements & Qualifications
- Bachelor's Degree in relevant field
- Master's Degree in relevant field preferred
- Teaching license or a degree in education
- A certification in special education preferred
- At least two years full-time teaching experience preferred
- Extensive experience working with students with a variety of learning differences
- Experience differentiating instruction and assessment based on student learning needs
- Experience tracking effectiveness of teaching strategies or interventions with the use of progress monitoring documentation
- Experience with tiered supports including but not limited to Response to Intervention (RTI) framework or Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS)
- Experience with a research based Social Emotional Learning curriculum
- Experience writing asset based individual education plans using learning data
- Comprehensive knowledge of current best practices in teaching early literacy and numeracy skills
- Demonstrate proficiency in implementing strategies and interventions to support the development of executive function skills.
- Extensive experience in collaborating in Professional Learning Communities to review data and share progress monitoring documentation and planning for next steps for a plan of intervention.
- Must be confident in their ability to teach any student, and have a willingness to provide intervention regardless of the significance of disability or learning need(s)
- Standards-based curriculum experience 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, chaperone and participate 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.
