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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
